Roe to be overturned

Whaddya know. Nine House Retrumplicans--all staunch champions of the right to life for the unborn--voted against helping poor families to buy baby forumula. These included the usual suspects: Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Thomas Massie, Clay Higgins, Matt Gaetz, Chip Roy, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I guess it's true. Once they're born , these Retrumplicans think the kids are on their own!

 

We're #1! The Retrumplican legislature of my home (reddest of red) state of Oklahoma, Buckle of the Bible Belt, passed the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., The bill is now before Retrumplican Governor Stitt who has vowed to pass such a law. Wimpy Texas bans abortions after the woman is pregnant for six weeks. We ban abortions before pregnancy! Yes, that's right. We ban it from the moment of fertilization (pregnancy happens only when the fertilized egg is implanted). There are exceptions for life of the mother, rape, and incest; but the latter two events have to be followed by filing a police report in order to qualify. And saving the life of the mother, of course, must be determined by a physician who would be subject to second guessing and possible lawsuits by citizen vigilantes. Like Texas, our law authorizes private citizens to sue abortion providers who induce abortion of a pregnant woman. Anyone involved in performing or abetting an abortion is subject to civil liability--"abetting" being vaguely enough to make it risky for anyone to advise or help a woman in this regard. And citizen vigilantes can sue for a minimum of $10,000 per abortion. The liberals managed to slip past a provision exempting Plan B morning-after pills or other forms of emergency contraception. I'm sure we'll get rid of those on the next round. As the song goes, "Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee..." First in abortion bans, near the top in teen pregnancies, and first in incarceration of women (not only in the U.S. but in the whole world !) We keep 'em barefoot, pregnant and poor!

 

Don't like the law...

"Liked" for being posted here...

 

They also demanded a native American girl remove a feather from her head during graduation.

 

The law mentioned in Post #104, which seems pretty extreme to me, follows logically from the premises that taking of a human life is seriously wrong and that human life begins at conception. In other words, a one-celled human zygote is a living human being. This, of course, is the position of the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant, mostly Evangelical, churches. It follows logically if we accept the premises that human "beinghood" happens when a human sperm and a human ovum, with 24 chromosomes each, get together and become a zygote with 46 chromosomes, now an embryological organism or "being" genetically distinct from each of its parents. It's obviously human homo sapiens, not canine, feline, equine, etc. And it "has the nature to become rational and self-aware". lifeissues | When do human beings (normally) begin?

All very logical, but sometimes logic doesn't square with sound judgment. Some of us outside and Catholic and Evangelical circles have trouble thinking of a one-celled zygote as a human being, entitled to the same rights as humans who made it through the womb and we can wheel in a baby buggy. A Gallup opinion poll in 2018 showed that that most Americans think a woman's right to an abortion depends on the circumstances and the stage of pregnancy. Four-fifths think abortion should be should be legal to save the life of the mother, n the first trimester, three-quarters in the third trimester. Most think abortion should be legal if done because of rape or incest,varying from 77% in the first trimester to little more than half in the third.

I personally think a fetus becomes a person before birth but farther along in development than conception. The zygote may have the potential for personhood, but needs a lot more more development. I think at least a rudimentary ability to feel and think are essential, which requires a rudimentary nervous system and cortical development. If I get time, I'll try to expand my thoughts, but for the time being I thought I might put it out there and see what the rest of you think.

 

That discussion of political philosophy limits the Democrat's ability to respond. That's what the right extremists of the Bible Belt want. They want the Democrats to fight with hands tied behind their back. The main question in this debate concerning abortion is: Where does any state get the right/power to impose its will on a woman when the fetus/zygote/child is still inside her body? I listened to a local radio program just the other night and a caller told states already charge a drunk driver with two homicide counts if he kills a woman with child in an accident. It's a good argument to enrage simple-minded Republicans in the audience. The Democrat response should be that it's a matter of a woman wanting to continue with her pregnancy or not. Where does the state or church get authority to force a woman to carry for nine months? Do the Christian fanatics want to reduce women to the way the were when "animal husbandry" applied to them? If the right wingers say that's a child and a full human being in the third trimester, we need to ask two questions: (1) It's a child but who does this child belong to, and who has say to speak for the child. What I mean is who has the authority to speak in a court of law for this child? (2) Each state has an Age of Emancipation law. This law explains at which age this child may leave home and get married, or quit school, or other similar situations. So if a man and woman agree to make a child then change their mind a month later, do they have to go to court and comply with some stupid Bible Belt concocted new law which enforces Christianity on all new parents?

 

If republicans are so prolife, why do they support the death penalty?

is a poor example of a Native American. Cherokee, I believe

She should complain to governor Stitt.

 

Of course, the right to lifers see it as not just the mother's choice. If the fetus is her "baby", they say, she doesn't have a right to kill it, regardless of whether it's inside or outside her body. Australian philosopher Peter Singer argues, along the same lines I did, that human personhood depends on the capacity to feel and think in a rudimentary way, which depends on neural and brain development. These begin to develop at 6 weeks (the Texas cutoff for regulating abortion), but the cerebral cortex isn't really functional until the third trimester. Singer argues that the woman's preferences almost always outweigh those of the fetus, which is barely, if at all, able to feel and think. Unfortunately, citing Singer may do more harm than good, since his extreme advocacy of animal rights puts him in the same class with AOC and the Squad in the minds of right wingers. Another thing they say is that when the fetus can feel, and think, and become conscious is too variable and the only clearcut divider between human being and non-human is conception. As a utilitarian, I don't see being clearcut as the deciding issue.

 

Yes, I understand the Extreme Right thinking and strategy on this. I agree with you and Singer on the development stage. There is still the matter of Jurisdiction. If it is a fetus, child, or Zygote ... who has the right/authority to decide if the Woman must continue to carry until birth ... so the state of Oklahoma can send the new "Christian by Force" baby to one of their new Indian schools. We can say at six weeks it is a baby, but that still does not answer who has the legal authority. The father can make an argument that he has some authority. His rights do not terminate at the moment he squirts. So, now that the mother is carrying the baby, at which trimester do her legal rights expire? The Republicans are always talking liberty; however, they take it away casually.

 

Republicans are libertarian when it comes to guns, taxes,business, vaccinations, and not promoting equality. When it comes to regulating sex, morals and reproduction, not so much. They subscribe to "My body, my choice" for COVID vaccinations, but to birthing babies? No way!

As for jurisdiction, those questions are settled in the first instance by elected government and ultimately by the courts. At the state level, the politicians respond to the voters, especially the ones who are worked up and mobilized on an issue. Here in Oklahoma, that's the religious right. In rural communities, reproduction and religion are big deals. The Old Time Religion discouraged anything that interfered with making babies. Given the high incidence of teen pregnancies, tough abortion laws will have an impact that may eventually get people stirred up on the other side, but it may take awhile. As for the courts, of course Trump took care of the Supremes at the national level. At the state level here in Oklahoma, the courts have been in pretty good shape since the sixties, when a bribery scandal on the state supreme court led to reforms--including a Judicial Nominating Commission to help select the appellate level courts. But recently, there's been a move to reverse that and give the governor more power to appoint justices. Why? It seems the Republican legislators and the Catholic bishops are unhappy with the Oklahoma Supreme Court for overturning three of its previous anti-abortion laws. The bishops are afraid it could somehow re-instate Roe. Back to the future!.

 

Latest Development: A Democrat legislator has proposed a bill requiring all pubescent males to get vasectomies. Somehow I doubt that will pass as readily as the abortion bill. Those wizeass Democrats! Oklahoma Democrat Suggests Mandatory Vasectomies in Response to Restrictive Abortion Law

 

Not long ago, Oklahoma had a great Democrat in the House of Representatives. I can't remember his name right now. The sad thing about the current situation is if a woman spreads her legs, she has to carry all the way to the end of nine months.

 

Well, there was the late, great Carl Albert, Speaker of the House in the '70s--the "Little Giant from Little Dixie". And before that Sen. Bob Kerr, whose chairmanship of powerful committees to give our landlocked state a port on the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway and more than 200 ,man made lakes. He was an oil baron though. Or maybe Mike Synar who served eight terms in the House?

 

Nobody seems to account for the additional welfare and Medicaid funding that will be needed to support these children. Trust me, this isn't going to be a rich married white girl problem....

 

Maybe Synar. I can not remember right now. Gotta look it up. The one I was thinking of served during Viet Nam so sixties and seventies?

 

GOP will be getting rid of welfare and Medicaid asap, if they get a chance... Those babies can just get a fucking job.

 

There are lots of powerful arguments showing the hardships to women of carrying an unwanted child to term and giving the woman primacy when it comes to those issues of "jurisdiction". The rights of the mother are seldom mentioned by right to lifers, whoend to dismiss those as "policy questions" which are irrelevant to the moral logic and "science" of embryonic development. I gave an example of that line of argument by Professor Dianne N. Irving, M.S., Ph.D. (biology), Ph.D. (philosophy), former research biochemist and biologist at the National Institute for Health. lifeissues | When do human beings (normally) begin? She purports to show methodically that the zygote is a human being, entitled to full rights as such--dismissing one-by-one arguments to the contrary as "myths". Dr. Irving's credentials are certainly impressive, and I'm sure she could think me under the table on many issues. But on this one, it seems to me that her argument goes haywire at a few critical junctures. I suspect that her religious faith may have clouded her judgment. Her doctorates are from Georgetown, a Jesuit University, and her teaching career has been at Catholic universities. Anyhow, her position is completely consistent with Catholic dogma, and her style of argument betrays Jesuitical natural law reasoning--i.e., the notion that moral truths can be derived from the facts of life.

Her argument seems shaky in three areas:
(1) she thinks that a zygote is a person entitled to human rights because it ""has the nature to become rational and self-aware". As I argued previously, "having the nature to become" isn't the same as being rational and self-aware.

(2) she rejects the contention of Mc McCormick and Grobstein that a zygote is not a "developmental individual". She argues that even though some of the zygote becomes the outer layer of a blastocyst which is eventually discarded, part is retained. (This seems to me to be the proverbial glass half full argument); and

(3) she dismisses Singer's argument on neural and brain development because the human brain isn't fully developed until age 25. But who said anything about fully developed? To Singer (and I agree), moral personhood is the point at which it is developed enough to feel and think, which as I understand it, requires a functioning cerebral cortex, which I understand happens around the third trimester.That might rule out late-term abortions, but certainly not ones happening just after fertilization.

Although she presents this as an objective scientific and logical analysis, I think this is really a policy argument based on a religious understanding of life.