HOW WE GOT HERE: It seemed like a very unusual profile!

FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2022

Who killed Roe v. Wade: On Tuesday afternoon, a new arrival on the front knocked Dobbs out of the news.

The previous Friday, there had been a different arrival on the front. On that day, the new arrival on the front had been the Dobbs decision itself. 

The Dobbs decision brought Roe v. Wade to an end. It constituted a terrible political defeat for our own flailing blue tribe.

Two days later, in its Sunday print editions, the New York Times published a very unusual profile. The profile was written by Elisabeth Dias, the newspaper's National Faith and Values Correspondent.

In some ways, the profile was a type of journalistic boilerplate. Headline included, the profile started like this:

For Conservative Christians, the End of Roe Was a Spiritual Victory

For nearly 50 years, conservative Christians marched, strategized and prayed. And then, on an ordinary Friday morning in June, the day they had dreamed of finally came.

Ending the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade took a decades-long campaign, the culmination of potlucks in church gymnasiums and prayers in the Oval Office. It was the moment they long imagined, an outcome many refused to believe was impossible, the sign of a new America.

For many conservative believers and anti-abortion groups grounded in Catholic or evangelical principles, the Supreme Court’s decision was not just a political victory but a spiritual one.

“It is more than celebration,” said Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “It is a moment of gratitude to the Lord, and gratitude to so many people, in the church and beyond the church, who have worked and prayed so hard for this day to come.”

For the record, we know of no reason to believe or assume that Dias shares the religious or political views of the people being profiled. That said, we were surprised to see this report in the New York Times.  It struck us as highly unusual.

In some ways, the profile was journalistic boilerplate—a bowl of tapioca. 

Over the course of nearly fifty years, a certain group had achieved a very large political win. In conventional journalistic fashion, the profile recorded the feelings of a few members of this group concerning their very big win. 

This is standard journalistic practice; there's nothing "wrong" with this practice. What surprised us was this fact:

The Dias profile treated these "conservative Christians" in much the way the New York Times would treat any other such group.

The profile treated these players as normal people, not as a gaggle of Others. To us, this seemed like unusual work by the Times, though we could always be wrong about that.

As journalism, the profile resembled a bowl of oatmeal. It's hardly surprising to learn that people feel elated in the aftermath of a large political win. 

(In a similar vein, it's hardly surprised to learn that people feel devastated when their homes have been swept away in a flood. But every time houses get swept away, CNN arrives at the scene to ask the people who lost their homes how they feel about it.)

The Dias profile was a form of boilerplate, but it seemed highly unusual to us. Our tribe has routinely tended to treat these political winners as Others—but now, the Others had achieved a big win, and the Times was willing to profile the group as it would any such group.

In some ways, this 49-year-old story represents a resurrection of the ancient tale about the tortoise and the hare. The over-confident, self-impressed hare slumbers and dozes during a race. 

Doggedly, the tortoise keeps at it, and the tortoise eventually wins.

In this case, the Christian conservatives who won the race are American citizens too. They aren't planning to go anywhere. At least according to basic theory, they have a right to their views.

At times, our tribe has been willing and able to show respect for those views, and for the people who hold them. At other times, perhaps maybe not. Could that possibly be part of the way our tribe ended up in this place?

We think there's a lot to learn from the results of this decades-long story. Rightly or wrongly, we were struck by the way the Times was willing to profile the group of players who ended up winning this race.

Tomorrow: "Safe, legal and rare?"


99 comments:


  1. " the Others had achieved a big win"

    What nonsense, dear Bob.

    Either Roe v. Wade was decided appropriately, or it wasn't. Apparently (and obviously!) it wasn't.

    When an inappropriate judicial decision is corrected, sanity is restored. Everyone wins, no one has lost, end of story.

    Only in your liberal-totalitarian lunacy this is a win-lose situation, we're sorry to say.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That’s nothing.
      I once met a lunatic who didn’t think all Republicans were bigots.
      I believe he’s been committed.

      Delete
  2. Turns out all that sweet tea and bless your heart of our lessers concealed a political prowess that made complete fools of us over here on the Very Smart left.
    “HoW cOuLd THeSe BibLE tHumPeRs vOtE foR TrUmP?”
    Now we know.
    He literally asked them for a list of justices to nominate, they gave him one, and he fulfilled their wish.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The religious right weren't political masterminds. They were used by the GOP to further their own ends. This is their payoff for helping to put Trump into office. I do believe, however, that the justices Trump put onto the court to do his bidding are also true believers.

      Delete
    2. Anyone who isn't a bigot, or isn't perfectly fine with bigotry, left the Republican Party more than two decades ago.

      Delete
  3. Somerby complains that an article about the religious groups behind the overturning of Roe v Wade was a bowl of oatmeal. In a way, his own essay today is similarly a bowl of oatmeal too.

    First he seems surprised that the news covers emerging stories, current events, stories that change daily, calling them "new arrivals" on the scene (a very oblique reference to his Chekov story). How is it surprising that a newspaper covers news?

    Then he seems surprised that the NY Times does not vilify The Others in its story about the Catholic and Evangelist Christians who were behind the anti-abortion movement. The main oddness is that Somerby ever expected the NY Times would do so. This is the same NY Times he has praised for interviewing conservatives and moderates in a series of articles in the past month or so. Why wouldn't they similarly treat these religious activists as "people"? It is a major strawman to assume they would do anything else.

    Third, Somerby is coy in his references to Catholics. Hinting that the author of the article may herself be Catholic. Refusing to mention the 6 out of 9 Catholic majority on the Supreme Court. Somerby pretends to be surprised when the NY Times' "the newspaper's National Faith and Values Correspondent" treats Catholic and evangelistic church members as people! That is about as ridiculous a stance as Somerby could take.

    And then Somerby justifies the elation felt by members of such groups, legitimizing it. He reminds us that they are American Citizens too, forgetting that they are a political minority who have succeeded in imposing their narrow religious views on the majority of the nation, a large majority that does not agree with them or with the court's decision. This, in a democracy purportedly governed by majority rule (with respect for the minority), not minority rule with no respect for the majority.

    And Somerby implies that it is wrong for those of us who disagree with the overturning of Roe v Wade to express our opinions on that topic, to feel bad about it -- even though he magnanimously allows that flood victims will be upset by the loss of their homes. We too have the right to be upset over the loss of a constitutional right, snatched away by 50 years of political maneuvering.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A political minority of one person may "impose" its "narrow view," religious or not, on the remaining majority if the previous ruling was wrong. You seem hostile to the idea that political majorities in each state will be deciding the issue. Hopefully in favor of those youngsters whose lives are at stake.

      Delete
    2. Prove that your minority view is right and the majority view is wrong.

      Political majorities are not deciding when so-called red states have state legislatures that do not reflect the will of the people due to gerrymandering and voter suppression.

      Delete
    3. It's not hard to prove the which view is right, at least to anyone who thinks it's wrong for one class of humans to have the right to kill another class by the millions.

      Delete
    4. So, you think WWII was a big mistake, right? How about the Civil War?

      Delete
    5. Yes, the mass murder in WWll by Nazis and communists that decided they could morally exterminate members of their population to improve their own quality of life was a mistake.

      Delete
    6. You shouldn't be able to confuse abortion with something that kills babies, any more than you should confuse the high price of gas with the 5th Amendment.

      Delete
  4. Every time Somerby urges us to treat The Others like human beings, it creates this false notion that we go around bashing conservatives all the time (as opposed to disputing their ideas and silly statements). I've said this before, but Somerby doesn't listen. Most of us have friends and relatives lost to Trump's conspiracy theories and disinformation. We mourn them and we try to be patient in the hope that they will come to their senses, but we don't mock and bash them. These are people we care about.

    There is a saying among the religious that goes "Love the sinner, hate the sin." This is roughly how most of us feel about our hostages to Trumpism. Somerby attributes other attitudes to us when he demeans us by urging us not to otherize those folks he himself calls The Others.

    I do, however, make an exception for the people who have foisted this upon our country in the name of political power and persona gain. Who are those people? Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Q, MTG and Boebert, Gaetz, Manchin and Sinema, Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert, and the others who have committed crimes and will be indicted by the DOJ, and especially Roger Stone. But I will never meet or have anything to do with them, so it doesn't matter what I say about them online.

    We liberals send far fewer hate emails to our political enemies. We aren't the ones issuing death threats or attending Trump rallies in body armor and bearing weapons. We aren't the ones organizing hate militias and we aren't trying to suppress the rights of conservatives. We are the ones who contribute to ACLU to defend conservative and even Nazi free speech. But that doesn't mean we have to like, respect, or give any quarter to the people Somerby continually sticks up for here. I don't like those people and I don't have to. It is still a somewhat less free country, but there is still no law that I must say anything nice about Trump and his ilk. No matter what Somerby says.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And that goes for the conservative trolls too.

      Delete
    2. You don't have to like us or feel sorry for us for being hostages of any political figure. We wanted Roe v Wade overturned and we worked hard to make it happen. As compassionate people, we don't like the millions of killings you defend as perfectly ethical, and we don't respect you any more than you respect us. We're not seeking your approval.

      Delete
    3. Yes, that is correct. You stole the Supreme Court, fair and square. Congratulations, we are now ruled by a Christo-Fascist Theocracy. It was a nice experiment while it lasted.

      Delete
    4. we don't respect you any more than you respect us.

      I went to see the play To Kill a Mockingbird at the Kennedy Center last night.
      There was one bit of dialogue that stuck with me. Atticus and Calpurnia were arguing about his stubborn refusal to show anger to the racist bigots they were living amongst.
      Atticus says, "I am trying to show respect", to which Calpurnia replied, "Yes, and you don't care how many people you disrespect to do it"

      I think this summed up my main disagreement with TDH.

      Delete
    5. Nobody likes the "millions of killings" because each one represents a tragedy in some woman's life. As compassionate people, we who favor choice have compassion for the woman and her family and not just the clump of cells that may or may not become a human child after gestation, barring complications. The cruelty of the anti-abortion movement is manifest and you cannot claim to be compassionate when you harrass women seeking medical care (of all kinds) and send your most extreme members to shoot doctors and clinic workers and burn clinics. You lost the right to claim compassion when your elected legislators eliminated exceptions for incest and rape. So don't spread your fake compassion here where people know you for what you are.

      Sane people accept the Clinton formulation of making abortion, safe, legal and rare. They aren't fanatics like those on the court, who cannot tolerate allowing any woman to make a decision in accord with his own conscience, but must impose a tyranny of their own extreme beliefs on our nation. How can you claim any conscience at all when you elected one of the most immoral presidents ever, just because he would put your nominees on the court. No religion believes that it is morally justified to commit wrongs, such as the covid deaths Trump allowed, in order to obtain a dubious moral right. If you left women alone but instead tried to convince them (as you have attempted and failed at), you would be within your rights, but instead you have deprived all women of their agency under our laws, making them slaves to your own personally held views. And that is an evil unjustified by any number of prevented fetus deaths.

      You have always had the right not to get an abortion if you don't want one. But you want to impose your desires on everyone else. That is as much a dictatorship as if Trump had succeeded in staying in office (his desire) in opposition to our laws. Use of force to compell others to do your bidding is wrong, and that is what you have done. You should not feel proud or satisfied. You should be sad that it has come to this. But you don't feel that way. And that is another part of what makes you morally ugly, awful people.

      Delete
    6. I try to show respect to the people who accept or support all the killing but never considered it could be showing disrespect to the millions of voiceless who were victimized by their actions and views. I see your point.

      Delete
    7. With obvious exceptions that account for 2% of abortions, we can't be convinced that opposing the rest is immoral, or that supporting their legality is anything but the moral equivalent to any other genocide, or even worse. "Clump of cells" isn't convincing to us because we are all clumps of cells with different capabilities at different stages including adulthood.

      Delete
    8. Bullshit. No one who showed respect for an alternative point of view would phrase things as you have just done.

      Delete
    9. I respect the humanity of the holder of the view, seeing them as brainwashed by a culture steeped in the celebration of the most anti-humanist ideology in history, but not the view.

      Delete
    10. Pro-life people do not have the moral upper ground here when they (1) do not care about children after they are born, (2) tend to support Capital punishment, (3) are willing to kill to prevent abortions, (4) do not care about the life of the mother or any other adult, only fetuses, (5) are unwilling to support sex education, (6) oppose contraception, (7) consider women unable to make their own moral decision, (8) would impose forced birth on women who have been raped or victims of incest, (9) disrespect the rule of law and interfere with the rights of others, (10) are willing to trade support for a moral reprobate to get what they want and pack the court with Catholic activists.

      God Himself is the most callous killer of children. How can you object to abortion in the name of religion when the Bible says nothing about it and there are many examples of children being killed, including for religious purposes. If a fetus had the protected status you seek, under God, it would say so in the Bible.

      Are you aware that in the Middle Ages, someone who killed another person was required to make restitution to the family of the murdered person, to compensate for the financial loss of that person's labor or support. That's all. People were put to death in all sorts of horrible ways -- with the belief that their time on earth was temporary and they would merely be going to live with God, to the afterlife, not having their sole existence terminated as those who are non-religious believe. A fetus has no conscious awareness whatsoever (at the stage where 98% of pregnancies are terminated) and thus has lost nothing. If you are religious, it has gone back to live with God, like the 20% of pregnancies that end in natural miscarriage.

      Delete
    11. I try to show respect to the people who accept or support all the killing but never considered it could be showing disrespect to the millions of voiceless who were victimized by their actions and views.

      Do you understand that your statement above is your own personal religious opinion? This country was founded on freedom of religion, to get away from the European religious dictators. You have no respect for the very foundation of this country.

      Delete
    12. Personally, we believe that birthing persons should have a choice to abort their child -- unborn or born -- any time, if they get upset about child's behavior.

      Because we respect birthing persons' right to peace of mind and mental health. Refuses to eat his vegies? Abort, abort.

      Delete
    13. As a strong pro-choicer, I maintain respect of anti-abortioners by imagining that the issue infanticide. Suppose the SC had ruled that the Right to Privacy means that parents are allowed to murder living infants, as long as do so in private. Suppose the pro-infanticiders argued, "If you don't want to murder your infants. you don't have to do it." The way I would feel about this argument is the way anti-abortioners feel about my pro-choice position. I don't agree with them, but I don't disrespect their POV.

      Delete
    14. This explains Putin's treatment of his political opponents and dissidents.

      Delete
    15. @David,
      do you disagree with anti-abortion people's view on late-term abortions too? Or is your disagreement limited by, say, the first trimester abortion?

      Delete
    16. David, we understand why Mao is ridiculous, but your imaginary supreme court, which makes laws instead of deciding cases, constitutes a reductio ad absurdam argument. No one has argued that privacy should permit people to break laws, whether by murdering their children or counterfeiting $100 bills or raising too many chickens in a suburban subdivision. Privacy is about what laws a government can make concerning behavior that the state has no vested interest in regulating.

      If you don't disrespect ridiculous arguments (like your own), then you are abdicating all reason and behaving like an idiot. If this is a sample of how you reason about things, it is hard to understand how you ever decided to be pro-Choice (assuming you really are).

      In some other cultures, infanticide is legal in the sense that it is not prosecuted. Babies are killed because they are female and a son is preferred, because the family cannot afford another mouth to feed, because the child has a birth defect or socially undesirable trait (such as a birthmark, sex organs of both sexes, missing or extra fingers or toes), or because of social or cultural turmoil (born of rape or in a war zone or to a single mother in a fundamentalist regime, or as a product of infidelity). This has happened throughout time, after the birth of the child, just as there have always been methods of abortion (less safe than today's).

      This is a complex issue and true compassion requires that the government (or courts) not meddle in personal decisions. Those who would impose morality on them are the true Dimmesdales (someone Somerby has oddly not mentioned in this current controversy). People survive the best they can and sometimes that means that they cannot survive and children die of hunger in their parents' arms. A loving God would not allow that, but this world offers no guarantees, even if you are an evangelical or Catholic fanatic. Respecting those who would interfere in the most personal decisions by telling women they cannot make decisions affecting their own bodies, lives and family, is so hideously morally wrong, that it astonishes me that anyone would treat such opinions (much less this court decision) with respect. It doesn't deserve respect.

      Delete
    17. Good question, Mao. I'm less and less pro-choice as the fetus grows. However, if I had to choose between abortion being illegal always or abortion being legal up to 9 months, I'd go for the latter. I am horrified by states that are enacting laws so extreme that Morning After pills are made illegal.

      Delete
    18. Meh. Why does it have to be either 0 or up to 9 months?

      First trimester on demand is probably the most likely compromise.

      Delete
    19. That's what it was before Roe v Wade was overturned.

      Delete
    20. It wasn't, dear government scientist. It was fetal viability.

      Delete
    21. At least David in Cal is able to state the point of view of those who are celebrating changes to laws that have led to millions of killings. It's true the deaths are viewed in the same way as infanticide, sometimes even worse for the simple fact that the fetus is younger. We don't have a problem calling it feticide or abortion or infanticide because those are all words describing the killing of small humans. The killing of humans is what we find objectionable.
      No one has come up with a good reason why these millions of human deaths and the way they are cavalierly regarded by half the population even when almost all are elective is good, compassionate, or moral. Every analogy involving the physical or mental status of the fetus applied to an older person fails to justify putting the older person to death for being unconscious, not fully developed, of low aptitude or ability, physically dependent, unwanted, temporarily unable to breath without assistance and the like.

      Delete
    22. As far as women controlling their bodies, the same people who are supporting the tragedy of millions of abortions are also supporting the conscription of hundreds of thousands of men in Ukraine who are being forced to use their bodies for the benefit of others' lives and at a significantly higher risk of death, because they see benefits to themselves from sacrificing those men in a far away country.

      Delete
    23. Yeah, liberal tribe's bosses are real serious about world domination.

      What's a few hundred thousands of ugly clumps of cells in far-away countries compared to beautiful hedge funds and brilliant currency speculations.

      Delete
    24. Can I assume then that you were all conscientious objectors during past wars? I'll bet not.

      And no, it is not infanticide before the baby is born, because it is not yet an infant. It is a fetus until it is born.

      Delete
    25. First, you overestimate the number that are elective. Second, you overestimate the number that were the result of voluntary sex. Third, there is nothing cavalier about the attitude of anyone involved in seeking or providing an abortion. Fourth, people's lives are terminated when they are adult and not conscious nor minimally functioning in their brains, with no prospect of waking up. Further, people are often allowed to die when their bodily functions prevent them from continuing to live unassisted (e.g., they are terminally ill), which is the situation of a fetus at all times up until viability. I notice that you inserted the word "temporarily" in your description of an adult who is on a respirator. Many people who are in the situation of being unable to live due to physical disability choose to die and are allowed to die a natural death. A fetus with severe abnormalities is in that situation and many parents choose death before birth to allowing the child to be born with a painful and imminently fatal genetic condition, especially one involving no prospect of a meaningful quality of life before death at a young age. Your denial that such situations exist is noted.

      Delete
    26. Those who deny the right to abortion also tend to deny the existence of poverty, trauma, and unsuitable living conditions for a baby. They assume that there must be some way to address such situations, but they are not the ones providing any remedy. Hunger and poverty exist in our country. They are made worse by the addition of another mouth to feed. Other situations exist where a baby cannot be cared for but the mother cannot give up a child to unknown circumstances. Everyone wants to adopt a white baby, but a black or biracial baby may not find a loving home and may be institutionalized or worse, abused. A mother who cannot support herself or her other children may not want to bring a child into the uncertainty and poverty of her own suffering existence. In the case of a child of incest, the mother may be 11-12 years old with no resources to raise a child. The mother and father of such a family have abused their own child and cannot be trusted with a baby. Will such a child be welcome as an adoptee? Sometimes a young girl who is not permitted an abortion is married off to a much older man (who has seduced and abused her already) and the baby is then raised in an abusive home with a mother who is too immature to deal with her own trauma, much less a baby. Should criminals be given a baby to father, knowing that such homes result in divorce in nearly all cases?

      Delete
    27. The rosy alternatives imagined by those who oppose abortion are not what real life is like for women who seek abortions. They imagine that all the mothers are promiscuous white single parents with healthy pregnancies, whose babies could be easily adopted out. That is a ridiculous assumption. Most women who seek abortions are married and have previous children, who they are having difficulty caring for. Some are drug addicts without good prenatal care, some have undiagnosed AIDS, which means the babies will have physical problems after birth. Some are women with voluntary pregnancies who subsequently discover the fetus has genetic health defects, usually severe enough to prevent a good life, and others discover they have a form of cancer that cannot be treated without chemotherapy that will harm the fetus, without which their own life will be in danger. Some have ectopic pregnancies and other life-threatening situations such a preeclampsia, diabetes, a heart issue, or other situation putting their life at risk. Abortion must exist as an option for such situations.

      It is irresponsible to live in the fantasy land that pro-life activists insist exists for women who do not have abortions. The many people with marginal lives as adults are a testament to the problems that exist for those with difficult childhoods. Such people suffer and if you were to ask them whether it might have been better had they not been born, some will say yes. But condemning a baby to such a life without their permission is what pro-life people do without a thought to how they will survive once required to be born. Because pro-life people inhabit the stingiest states with the least help for pregnant mothers who need support. The activists don't want to have anything to do with babies once they are born and they expect that everything will work out, without being willing to provide any help to mothers compelled to give birth. And that contradicts the image that these are ever so compassionate people who just cannot stand loss of life in human beings, but who are totally willing to let people suffer horrible situations without lifting a finger. And that sickens me, because there is no special quality of being young that allows babies to survive bad lives -- if anything they are more vulnerable, and they grow up damaged, without love, and with a life of addiction or crime ahead of them, a life of suffering. And pro-life activists don't care a bit about quality of life. Just forcing others to live under the most drastic circumstances that they would never choose for themselves. When a mother has no choice, neither does the baby and neither does society. If the red states had decent stats for all of the problems that occur after birth, I might have some respect for their opinion, but these are people who just don't give a damn about other people's lives, other than to control women's sexuality and make sure that promiscuous sex (in their imagination) gets punished. Because God wants them to be hypocrites and stick their noses into other people's lives without offering compassionate help to the needy.

      Delete
    28. Those who deny the right to abortion also tend to deny the existence of poverty, trauma, and unsuitable living conditions for a baby. They assume that there must be some way to address such situations, but they are not the ones providing any remedy.

      Yes, it is the very same people. For a very brief period of time after the Dodd decision was announce, the Christo-Fascist propaganda mill started putting out phony claims that this was now a good opportunity for the brutal republicans to take the initiative on instituting new programs to help poor woman and provide support for child care.

      Peggy Noonan was one particularly funny example:

      "Look, you know what the Republican Party should do now?" Noonan asked. "It should use this victory, if you see it that way, to change itself and becomes a party that helps women."

      At that point, the panel erupted in laughter.

      "Change its reputation!" Noonan exclaimed, "To a party that helps women and children, becomes responsible and supportive."

      Laughable, isn't it.

      Delete
    29. Guttmacher says at least 88% are elective. Second, there isn't "no prospect of waking up" in a healthy fetus with a healthy mother, there is a highly probably prospect. Third, their bodily functions don't prevent them from continuing to live unassisted, they are expected to become less and less dependent on others as they get older. All children require almost total assistance for living in their earliest years. The temporary state of dependency of a human doesn't warrant a legal right to end their life.

      Delete
    30. Extreme circumstances like a severely deformed fetus or rape are mentioned over and over again. The vast majority of the tragic deaths through abortion are elective, yet the defenders of an absolute right to end a life avoid addressing the 88% or more whose lives are expected to proceed normally if not ended prematurely. They don't want you to think about it.

      Delete
    31. "But condemning a baby to such a life without their permission is what pro-life people do without a thought to how they will survive once required to be born. "

      Pro-life people do not understand a concern about condemning someone to a possible outcome of a life of hardship "without permission," followed by recommending a solution of condemning them to death in order to "spare" them, also without permission.

      We see this proposition as identical to dropping bombs on poor neighborhoods to kill as many of them, the younger the better, for their own good.

      Delete
    32. Your use of the word elective doesn't mean what you think it means. Medically elective simply means that the woman won't die if she chooses to have the baby -- that her health is not imminently threatened. It doesn't mean the baby will be normal or have a good quality of life after birth or that the woman is capable of caring for the child. You want to reduce this to all births are elective unless the woman's life is at stake -- but that is not how anyone else thinks of this. You don't take into account the circumstances but women have to live under those circumstances, so they do consider them important.

      If you want to make a forced birth law, then you need to also provide a living stipend for the baby so that indigent and financially stressed mother's can afford them, as they do in the Scandinavian democracies. Not all babies are adoptable. When a woman decides it would be better not to have a baby, there are many considerations -- you want to suggest, by the term "elective," that this is a matter of convenience or laziness, when women who become pregnant and have abortions are generally desperate.

      Your attitude is what happens when you think only about babies and never about the mothers and what might force a woman to consider abortion -- which is something that no one really wants to do, even when pregnant unexpectedly. This is a matter of denigrating women's motives and misunderstanding the issue from women's perspectives. A kind of sexism that reduces women to irresponsible children (young single tramps) who never think about their actions and need to be forced to act responsibly. Calling 88% of women thoughtless or callous is just plain wrong. You need to do some research on why women have abortions -- what their lives are like and how they reach the conclusion to have an abortion.

      Delete
    33. I didn't call women who become pregnant and who seek an abortion as the remedy irresponsible children but wouldn't call them qualified to be seen as accountable adults, perhaps that's the same thing. Most abortions could have been avoided and are not a result of rape or abuse or involve life-threatening complications.

      I would support a living stipend with aggressive child support enforcement and already support other programs as a lousy substitute for an intact home the parents should have planned for. Well-funded orphanages are equally lousy but better than killing.

      Delete
    34. Are you sure only 88% are elective? It seems that it has to be many more, at least 98%, probably.

      And of course all that rape-incest bs is probably virtually non-existent. Just for the talking point.

      Delete
    35. You are confusing your stats. 98% occur before 12 weeks.

      Delete
    36. Anti-abortion activists are usually men (without wives, children or pets) who want women to be punished. They are scary guys, full of anger. It is coming across in the comments here.

      Delete
    37. 88% comes from Guttmacher with <1.5 rape and incest combined and the rest of the non-elective is “physical problem with my health” not specified so you’re probably right.

      Delete
    38. Abortion is not mentioned in the Bible.

      Over 90% of abortions are done at the zygote/embryo stage, a non sentient and non viable clump of cells. All abortions are done at the non sentient, non viable stage with a reasonable few exceptions that are extremely rare.

      Living creatures are not a clump of cells, this is an infantile view and a complete misunderstanding of biology.

      A "clump" of sperm can potentially be a human life, and let's be real, males waste billions of sperm regularly. Cloning is real and possible, a cell which would normally die and fall off my body can be used to create a human life. There is noting sacrosanct about fertilization, the Bible says life starts with breathing, it says that a fetus is not a life but mere property.

      A fetus is not capable of sensing pain until at least 24-26 weeks, and even at that point it is not necessarily sentient. That is also around the same time as viability.

      You are 13 times more likely to die carrying a pregnancy to term than having an abortion. Studies show that women who have abortions have less psychological issues and more successful lives than women who were in the same circumstance but chose not to have an abortion and complete their pregnancy.

      Abortion has been common for as long as humans have been around, it will continue to be common regardless of laws or SC decisions. All Dobbs did was put women's health at risk, and satisfy the right wing's undying obsession with dominance.

      Abortion was supported by right wingers before Roe, which was decided by Republican SC Justices.

      Officially Catholics opposed abortions, yet was never able to budge the issue, all the while about 25% of women getting abortions are Catholic.

      The anti abortion movement only gained some momentum when Republicans discovered they could weaponize the issue towards their goal of racial oppression; it was when Christian right wingers were facing desegregation in the 70s that they suddenly changed tune and coalesced around their new found concern.

      So there is nothing genuine about an anti abortion stance. The only good it does is feed a right winger's need for dominance and electoral power.

      Taking the tone of the high ground does not give you the high ground, especially when your arguments are as specious, fallacious, and immoral as yours are. The Dunning Kruger effect is when a stupid person thinks they are smart, we need a named effect for when immoral people think they are moral; this would apply to our pious anti abortion defender here.

      Delete
    39. Santa Claus and his unicorns believe that abortion is the way to a better afterlife.
      The anti-believers Republicans put on the Supreme Court, just hate us true believers, even though freedom of religion is the literally in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

      Delete
    40. "Clump of cells." Everyone is a clump of cells.
      "A sperm is a living human being." Go back to third grade biology class
      "Abortion has been around for a long time" All kinds of killing has including legalized killing of the innocent
      "Abortion was supported by right wingers before it was legal" That's nice
      "Some use abortion as a political wedge" That's nice too

      Delete
    41. Are we talking about murdering babies or abortion? People keep jumping from one to the other, making it hard to follow the debate.

      Delete
  5. Lawyers, Guns & Money blog is suggesting that the "Opus Dei" court is going to overturn other measures that will affect current laws in states such as California. They have agreed to hear a suit that may overturn regulations concerning how animals are raised for food in CA and may address cases involving car emission regulations in CA as well:

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/07/other-rights-about-to-go

    Erik Loomis says: "Of course, if Texas wants to go farther than Congress on issues Republicans agree with, then that’s a totally different story, based on the solid legal doctrine of Fuck Democrats.

    I ask you again, you aren’t going to vote these people out. They are already fixing that game with the North Carolina elections case. So what are you going to do about it when voting is never enough. What are the other steps to take?"

    Somerby is apparently urging us all to just lay back and take it, because the Others are human beings with their own opinions too. But these Others are messing with established laws in blue states, imposing conservative will upon the majorities in those blue states. If we cannot use electoral means to combat this activist court, what can we do? That is a legitimate questions, given that this is not supposed to be a nation governed by a 9-person, 6-Catholic majority on a court that has no business interfering with progressive measures anywhere, simply because they serve the interests of corporations and money. We had a semi-free country and it is going to get much worse if Democrats don't figure out what to do about these Others who Somerby urges us to appease.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The logical thing to do is figure out a way to teach women to avoid facing a choice between having an unwanted child and killing them and teach men to avoid participating in creating that circumstance. No one benefits from the current state of affairs.

      Delete
    2. The number of voluntary sterilizations of women has increased since last Friday. Women know what to do. Are you prepared to remove the penis of any man who commits rape, incest, sexual assault? No? I didn't think so. Conservatives have long been against sex education in schools -- the main way of preventing unwanted pregnancies. This gives the lie to those who claim they want to prevent pregnancies. So does the attack on contraception that is next on the pro-life agenda. This isn't about avoiding unwanted children, but about controlling women's sexuality and subjugating them to men.

      Delete
    3. I am prepared to imprison any rapist or assaulter for life with no chance of parole. Women who find themselves with a choice of killing or having an unwanted child have already been subjugated by men.

      Delete
    4. Why sex ed in schools instead of at home? Let parents order materials free of charge if they need them.

      Delete
    5. @12:22 -- the religious right is unwilling to leave sex education to parents. It doesn't trust women to educate their kids -- hence it must deny all options to both male and female kids after they read sexual maturity. It definitely doesn't support sex ed in schools, where it was adopted to deal with the problem of teen pregnancy, because families were not providing sex ed. Religious families are less likely to educate their kids about sex. They prefer to inculcate a demand for abstinence that is insufficient to overcome adolescent sexual urges (in the absence of other education about responsible sex).

      Delete
    6. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    7. The most logical and humane thing to do is to let women decide, with their family and physicians, according to their own beliefs and in the context of their own lives and needs. That is what was happening before this activist court reversed settled law (contrary to the wishes of the large majority of the nations citizens).

      Delete
    8. @1:03 You left out that a prior activist court made a ruling in Roe v Wade that was not justified by the Constitution. When Roe was decided, the illegality of abortion was settled law. The new decision now corrects a legal mistake made by a prior activist Court.

      Delete
    9. You left out that the original Roe v Wade decision was upheld in a subsequent decision and that over 50 years, it became settled law (under the principle of stare decis, which was affirmed by each of the justices during their confirmation hearings who then overturned Roe v Wade, suggesting that they had perjured themselves and misled Congress).

      While there have been people who questioned the Roe v Wade decision, that was not the court's opinion. The finding of a right to privacy which encompassed a variety of decisions concerning behavior that the state had no good reason for meddling in (who to marry, what you can do in the bedroom, whether and when to have children), emerged over the course of numerous decisions. Today's conservative justices are using "originalist" arguments to overturn decision made under a non-originalist philosophy -- that doesn't make the privacy right decisions wrong -- it makes their basis under the law different. The idea that the Constitution could not foresee all circumstances that might emerge hundreds of years later, and that it can be modified, expanded, reinterpreted, seems obvious to everyone who is not a Catholic activist. Women would not have the right to vote under an originalist interpretation. Some religious fundamentalists think that amendment should be thrown out.

      We do not have to be the slave to an antiquated abortion law deriving from a time when women were chattal under the law (could not have bank accounts, own property, serve on juries, take out loans, travel without a male chaperone, go to college, keep their children in a divorce, etc.). Justifying this by calling it settled law is a legal mistake and a social mistake because women are people with equal rights under the law, no matter what it was like in the bad old days.

      There are no laws inhibiting men's health care decisions. It is and has always been left up to men to make such decisions. It should be the same for women. And no, men do not go around killing their children simply because there is no law against it. Although they do abandon them, disown them, abuse them, and refuse to take them to ballgames. But the court has never interfered with their health decisions. Women deserve the same consideration, even when a health decision involves placing their own survival ahead of that of an embryo. It is a woman's right to make that choice because it is her body that is being placed in peril by a biological process, especially when she had no control over getting pregnant or not. Are you aware that it is legal for a husband to rape his wife in some states? How then can a woman be forced to have a child that results, especially one that places her life in jeopardy?

      Delete
    10. David is the guy who helps the arsonist spread incendiary fluid around his neighbor's home, helps him light the match and start the conflagration and then as the house is burning to the ground comes running over to his neighbor to see if there's anything he can do to help save his house.

      Delete
    11. Better to kill millions instead of allowing them to interfere with anyone's sex life.

      Delete
    12. It is pretty weird to call rape and incest part of anyone’s sex life (except the men who suffer no consequences). Have you thought about reducing abortions by medically castrating men?

      Delete
    13. "But the court has never interfered with their health decisions. Women deserve the same consideration, even when a health decision involves placing their own survival ahead of that of an embryo. It is a woman's right to make that choice because it is her body that is being placed in peril by a biological process, especially when she had no control over getting pregnant or not"

      No laws inhibiting men's health decisions? You cited abusing and abandoning and ball game refusing men but not a word about the dead men of Vietnam, WWll, Korea. If women deserve the same consideration, that means expecting sacrifice in order to save lives.

      Delete
    14. It's a biological fact that women are the only ones who can be pregnant. If you're asking whether men should give up "bodily autonomy" after the fact in the form of compulsory labor to provide for those they produce, I'm all for it.

      Delete
    15. If you're asking whether men should give up "bodily autonomy" after the fact in the form of compulsory labor to provide for those they produce, I'm all for it.

      You're all for it, eh? That and $5 will get me a small coffee at Starbucks.

      How soon will Gov. Greg Abbott sign that law do you think.

      Delete
    16. Men do. You want to find a man? Get state departments for family and children on it.

      If they sicced them on Joseph Mifsud they’d find him.

      Delete
    17. There are ways men evade their responsibilities despite such depts.

      Delete
    18. Always. You can not escape biology.

      Delete
    19. The "thing to do" is elect more progressive Dems that can then get rid of the filibuster, introduce rules governing justices, and eventually increase the SC Justices to at least 13 (thus matching the number of District courts, which was the reason for 9 in the past).

      The other "thing" is we can have clever lawyers use the SC's nonsense logic to box them in and either tolerate things they find distasteful, or relent.

      Delete
  6. "Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., on Thursday sent out a fundraising email touting her work to protect women's health care after shooting down President Joe Biden's proposal to codify abortion rights."

    ReplyDelete
  7. Here is an example of the conservative moral high road in real life:

    ""Stone served as a senior consultant to Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign for President, but that assignment ended in a characteristic conflagration. The National Enquirer, in a story headlined 'Top Dole Aide Caught in Group-Sex Ring,' reported that the Stones had apparently run personal ads in a [Florida] magazine called Local Swing Fever and on a Web site that had been set up with Nydia’s credit card. 'Hot, insatiable lady and her handsome body builder husband, experienced swingers, seek similar couples or exceptional muscular . . . single men,' the ad on the Web site stated. The ads sought athletes and military men, while discouraging overweight candidates, and included photographs of the Stones," Toobin reported. "At the time, Stone claimed that he had been set up by a 'very sick individual,' but he was forced to resign from Dole’s campaign. Stone acknowledged to me that the ads were authentic."

    You would think that folks like Trump and Roger Stone would want the Supreme Court to keep its nose out of their bedrooms. According to Somerby, these are the people we should be respecting, because their mores may just be different than ours, even though they are major hypocrites.

    All those sincere evangelists and Catholic extremists out there should be feeling played by these guys by now. Seems to me they have a lot of work cleaning up their own pig sty, without putting women back in chains and telling gays who they can love.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Now is not the time to respect the Others. I agree with The Rude Pundit:

    "Now is not the time for rational, calm responses that consider all sides. Fuck that. This is a five-alarm freakout because the cruelest states are already teeing up laws to prevent women from traveling to another state for an abortion, as well as outlawing abortion-inducing prescription drugs. They're even coming up with ways to make information about getting an abortion elsewhere illegal. And if you think for one fucking second that the Christian Taliban (which, yes, is a good messaging phrase) justices who shitcanned the Establishment Clause will all of a sudden uphold the First Amendment, you need to fucking get out of the political arena.

    This Court has put it all on the table, all that it wants to undermine in this country. We're heading into an Independence Day that feels sarcastically named in the no-longer United States. The time for fake moderation is over. The majority of the nation backs all the things the supposed "extreme left" wants (because it's not extreme at all). Now, Democrats need to back it fully, and with full voice, as we head towards the midterms with a desperate hope we can stop the country from being murdered by the right."

    https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-supreme-court-tells-21st-century-to.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. pic.twitter.com/9Skxq3rve6

    This pretty much describes the scene with politics in general.

    Warning- typical liberal foul mouthed wrath addict.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is an Unsubscribe at the bottom of each message. You click on it and they stop sending you messages. Is that so hard?

      Without the profanity, no one would listen to this guy.

      And then we have Trump, who bilked his supporters out of 1/4 billion $ to support a non-existent fund and is now under investigation for wire-fraud.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for making my point.

      Delete
    3. You would think that this guy could put on a shirt and make his bed before he goes on camera.

      Delete
  10. @2:24 "You left out that the original Roe v Wade decision was upheld in a subsequent decision and that over 50 years..."

    Plessy v. Ferguson was the law of the land for a lot longer than Roe v. Wade. Aren't you glad that the SC reversed this mistake in Brown v. Board of Education?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The conservatives are going after Brown too.

      Delete
    2. @10:05 - Most of the people who resisted school integration were Democrats.

      Delete
    3. Plessy took rights away, so reversing it gave us more rights.

      Roe gave us rights, reversing it takes away rights.

      It is a startling difference obvious to anyone operating in good faith.

      Delete
    4. And those same Democrats are now Republicans.

      I see good faith is not how you operate.

      Delete
    5. The So Dems left the Dem party during that time and became Republicans. There were protests in Northern and Southern cities. In the South they ignored Brown v Board of Ed but the North attempted integration via busing then gradually settled back into majority minority schools. The South resisted until the 70s when blacks were admitted to public schools while whites fled to private schools and home schooling. At least blacks had schools then. Only the Democrats pressed the issue to make slow progress. Now conservatives want to roll that back.

      Delete
    6. This place is getting intolerable.

      Notice, David is responding to @10:05 (which was my comment), but the comment @10:05 has been disappeared. This is happening too many times to my comments to be an accident.

      Delete
    7. Dear David in Cal,
      Conservative Democrats were racists.
      Conservative Republicans are racists.
      This isn't Republicans vs. Democrats.
      This is Conservatives vs. Humanity.

      Delete
    8. The premise that erroneously decided awful opinions, no matter how old, must be perpetually upheld under stare decisis is one of the more absurd defenses of Roe.

      Delete
    9. Abortion is healthcare.
      Let's not pretend the Right have thought it through more than that.

      Delete
    10. 10:06, that has never been the premise of stare decisis.

      Delete
    11. @7:55 My comments have been disappearing too. Sometimes the same comment is disappeared each time I post it. I'm not sure why.

      Delete
  11. Back to Bob: it is very difficult to believe
    He actually is surprised by an article which
    takes a sympathetic view of (low information?)
    Trump voters. This niche has been endlessly
    filled by The Times, The Post, and many
    other outlets. Bill Maher, who had become
    a truly loathsome figure, argues Trumpworld
    Is merely a cult, so members must be
    treated with the kind patience you would
    afford a mental case.
    Now, an article that treated the WOKE
    type (however misguided) with humanist
    understanding, that would be surprising.
    An article that demanded right wingers
    treat liberals with respect and common
    decency? Unthinkable.
    Beyond that, this is a “rubbing it in”
    piece as Bob as he salivates at the
    prospect of a Republican landslide at
    the end of the year. There is a lot one
    could say about the left’s blunders that
    handed the Court over to Right Wing
    fanatics. Bob really isn’t interested in
    that. He just wants to gloat.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We understand the "WOKE" types, love them as we've been called to love our enemies, feel pity for them, know they don't know, know what warped influences brought them to their ideology, and try to treat them with a mix of patience and constructive criticism while correcting the cultural problems they perpetuate.

      Delete
    2. Congrats on your condescending piety, but you fail to site an article or statement anywhere in the press that reflects what you are saying.

      Delete
  12. God, like a good faith argument made by a Right-winger, is a figment of dim-witted imaginations.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Enough about abortion.
    Let's discuss corporate tax cuts.
    I'll take the side that says corporate tax cuts are immoral because I believe they kill babies.
    Which of you savage, blood-thirsty baby killers wants to take the side that corporate tax cuts are good?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Why all this talk about killing babies, when the discussion is about abortion and keeping women in their place?

    ReplyDelete