Not This Again...

Note: this is a free-form rant/vocalization not a mission statement or manifesto.  Actual position on this topic might be more fluid/flexible than it may appear.

I get that abortion is a hot button issue.

No denying it.

Here's something the pro-life side might consider...

Tone down the murderer rhetoric.  Screaming, "ABORTION IS MURDER!  YOU ARE A MURDERER AND MUST BE PUNISHED!" is not a winning argument.

Convince, not force.

You know, like you believe and advocate about any other position?

The reason the whole murderer thing is an actual line in the sand item for people who were pro-choice but may now come to agree with you is brutally simple.

It's entirely possible that a pro-choice person has had or has paid for an abortion.

If you manage to successfully legislate abortion as murder; murder has no statute of limitation.  Your "burn the witch" fervor on the topic definitely convinces them that once it's declared murder then what's a medical procedure now will be declared a methodology of homicide and the doctor's records will be used to prosecute them.

Stop scaring them!  You might find a more receptive audience if your approach includes some forgiveness.

While we're equivocating:  The core assumption with many pro-life arguments is the embedded embryo has the potential to become a person.  Ignoring that it is not yet, and will not be, a person for quite a while (and the moment of personhood is a VERY subjective event).  I'm familiar with the "potentiality" lines of thought for banning an activity.  I learned it from gun control.  Because my AR has the POTENTIAL to do some very nasty things, we must ban them.  You don't accept this rationale with guns, why do you use this logic with babies?  Don't even fucking try to say, "but this is different!"  Just don't.

I'll even come out and say it.  Abortion is wrong.  It is at the least, a waste.  Abortions are a solution akin to closing the barn door once the horse has already fled.  The actual problem is that people who don't want to have children are having sex.  Fix that and the abortion question becomes meaningless.

There's another fly in the ointment here too.  A prominent portion of the people who are pro-life are also very much against children learning anything at all about sex.  Since the age where "children" reach sexual maturity is well before they reach legal adulthood; we have a problem.  Biological imperatives are difficult to suppress and near impossible without sure knowledge that denying them is for the greater good.  Just saying that sex is wrong will probably not get you there, kids ask "why?" and "God says so" or "you're not ready to" isn't going to be strong enough.

Never mind that there's lots of sex that can't lead to pregnancy that could be going on that slakes the urges; isn't that preferable to unwanted babies?

Never mind that the blanket pro-life position assumes that these people are worth saving.  My oft repeated Shitheel example(s) lead me to think that some abortion, and straight up execution, would do the world a great deal of good.  Preventing Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel having his first three children would have saved us from three counts of welfare from cradle to 18 then fifteen MORE counts of welfare...  Guess what his grandspawn are learning...  They are not learning to be people, they are learning to be parasites.  Killing them in the womb would have been CHEAPER.

But you never know...  One of them POTENTIALLY could break out of the cycle and become a model citizen, so I suppose we have to give them the chance.

The pro-life plan has to include a prevent Shitheel clause.  They always cite their Catholicism as the reason for not using birth control or having an abortion.

In Perfect World™ there are no unwanted children and every baby is born into a loving, welcoming home.  In real world there are unwanted children.  Which is actually better?  Dying before you are born or spending your entire childhood being raised by people who don't like you and wish you'd never been born?  In the latter case it's a pretty miserable existence, because my Dad didn't want me to be born and resented my existence right up until the State stopped garnishing his wages for child support.  I, in turn, will resent his treatment of me until the day he dies.  Should be soon.

Is that enough sharing for everyone?

A-B-O-R-TION In The Summer Sun

Michael Z Williamson says, on Facebook:

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion. However, it ruled that this right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and protecting prenatal life. The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: the Court ruled that during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother. Because the Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as "fundamental", the decision required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.

Which, in a nutshell, says that the recent abortion laws in Alabama and such are going to get struck down and it's VERY unlikely that cert will be granted should it make it to the Supreme Court.

To strike down Roe, the pro-life side will need to prove that there is no fundamental right to privacy derived from due process and the 14th Amendment.

This is the same 14th Amendment we gun owners want to be stronger and more widely applied, by the way, because that increases our chances to get the 2nd applied to the states in the way that suits us best.

If I lived in one of the states that just banned first trimester abortions, I'd be pissed that my elected officials just committed to wasting my tax money in a sure defeat in court.

If I was liberal, I'd start worrying, hard, about the timing of these laws.  The states which recently passed these 1st trimester bans have had Republican majorities and governors for years... why now?

Because New York legalized FOURTH trimester abortion.  (Note: there's no fourth trimester).

It's a reaction to New York and, I think, an attempt to get a ruling that if a fetus can be a human, then it is a human; in other words a national third trimester prohibition.  These state laws might just be a tactic to force the issue.

PS: The pro-choice side of this has been couched in "if you don't have a uterus then you shouldn't be allowed an opinion" language in several places I've been reading about it.

Dear women:

For millennia your only value to society was to punch out children, preferably boys.

This was wrong, but it is also true.

Somewhere along the line, the fact that it was wrong was realized and men conceded to the concept that women had more value than as incubators and were, in fact, people.

Men voluntarily gave up the power they held over women.  The vast majority of us are on your side here and are sick of being treated like the enemy.

Feminists are using language that in any other context would be called sexist and bigoted.

Stop it!  If you treat me like an enemy long enough you will find I've become your enemy.

Pro-Choice...

Something that doesn't get mentioned in the abortion debate much is that virtually every woman contemplating an abortion has already made a choice.  Choosing to have sex.

There are varying degrees of "oops I'm pregnant" that fall from that decision all the way from, "I didn't think it would happen to ME," to "the birth control failed."

I don't think I would have an opinion about it one way or the other except for a couple issues.

First, a woman can force me to become a child-support paying father.  Yes, there are consequences to recreational sex, but all of the decision making rights are squarely the female's.

Second, the people I know who've had abortions are people I think would be good at raising a child and generally the reason for getting the abortion is financial.  Can't afford prenatal care let alone raise the child financial issues.

The solution to those, honestly, is to not have sex unless you can afford to be a parent.

Third, the vast majority of the people who I've seen who flatly refuse to consider an abortion are exactly the people who shouldn't be raising kids.  They certainly aren't paying for them, taxpayers are.  And so will be their grandkids and great-grandkids and so on.  At least one felony conviction per generation, many arrests.  Substance abuse, domestic violence... you name it.  By the way, guess what this group's opinion about birth-control is.

I am sure that many of my friends who are parents would also never have considered abortion, but I never got the feeling that, maybe, they should not have kids.  Never thought to ask them, "are you going to keep it?"  I guess if you don't raise any concerns about your ability to raise a child by the way you live your life nobody confronts you on the abortion issue, huh?

So, I am pro-choice.  Choose to keep it in your pants.

Abortion Is A Big Issue This Cycle?

Really?

Purity about abortion is the make or break issue again?

Got a clue for you, Holmes; lots and lots of women voted for Obama because of how they perceive Republicans on abortion.

Woman who otherwise hate everything about him.

As gun owners we should understand the single issue voter viscerally.

Clue number two.

What happened to unwanted babies before surgical abortion?

It's called exposure.

That's what Moses' mom was doing to him when she sent him on his rafting adventure.

That's what dumping baby in the dumpster or toilet at the prom is.

Yes, the ultimate ivory tower solution is to stop fucking if you cannot afford or do not want children.  Get back to me when you can make that work without murdering someone.

Clue three.  Driving people to empower the likes of Obama over the abortion issue is going to return the world to an agrarian medieval society.  The kind of world where there's no entertainment other than fucking and it's expose Jr or someone starves; someone who works.  Buhbye Jr...

This is known as a pyrrhic victory.  Notice that it doesn't end up saving babies in the long run?

Got It

I've watched several vids that were featured on a few blogs lately.

They're nominally about something else, that was the hook that got me to click on the link and start watching.

Notice I say "nominally"?

Every last one of them turned into a video about abortion.

Guns... abortion.

Black history month... abortion.

Economic freedom... abortion.

NSA spying... abortion.

I Grok now!  Conservative = Pro-Life to the exclusion of all other issues and what lip service is paid to those issues is merely a ploy to get people to sit still long enough to begin lecturing them on the topic.

I hate bait and switch.

Fanatic: won't shut up and won't change the topic.

What If

What if the protesters convinced a woman, after going through all the pain of an abortion, that she was a murderer and her soul was indeed irredeemable?

What if she decided to just start shooting said protesters, she's crossed the moral rubicon, she cannot undo her abortion, why not just keep killing?

Comments from this post:

Abortion

To my Religious Right buddies,

I will grant, for the sake of argument, that once the sperm enters the egg that is now a human being and that killing it is murder.

Given #1. Abortion is murder.

Happy?

Do you know how many people voted for Obama because of the abortion issue? Do you know how many times I spoke to someone about his positions and they agreed that everything bad I had to say about him was likely true, but they didn't want to see abortions banned.

They are far more afraid of the Republicans owing the religious fundamentalists favors than most anything else.

How many abortions in the USA every year? CDC claims about 1.3 million a year (A lot more than I thought there would be!). OK, religious types, if this is indeed 1.3 million murders a year, that's a holocaust, and why are you sitting there doing, essentially, nothing? Isn't God on your side enough for a bloody revolution?

Well, you did manage to do one thing. You managed to get a Republican who couldn't get elected nominated and once he was in place, you got out the vote for his opponent.

I pray for the day when the Religious Right is recognized as the liability that it most certainly is.

I seek a return to a constitutionally limited democratic republic. I will not get that when I have socialist on the left screwing me on the 2nd amendment and religious fanatics on the right aiming at my 1st amendment rights by going for a theocracy!

The whole "when is it human?" question is a religious one. I'm of the opinion that it's not a human until it can live exposed in the atmosphere. Some say it's not human until it starts paying more than it's using (I know some rather old folks who fail this test of humanity).

If the rate of abortions is what's really the issue, I have a couple of things that would likely help. Some of it would be pleasing to the religious too.

Morality. Bringing a common code that society enforces outside of the law would go a long way towards reducing the number of pregnancies that someone wants to be rid of. The trick with such a moral code is not making a theocracy out of it. This would require some fundamental changes in US law as well because at the moment we cannot refuse to associate with someone we find repugnant because of discrimination laws.

Affluence. I am aware of at least one abortion where the parents simply had too much on their plate to add another child to the mix. If they'd been more wealthy, they would have had a larger plate. Has anyone done a serious study comparing wealth and abortion? I'm going to guess that the really poor and really rich don't have them. I think that the really poor see that child as a means of getting financial aid and the really rich are not substantially burdened with a child. I'm going to guess that the middle is where most of the abortions are happening, and because the addition of a child to their lives is ruinous. Loss of at least one income. Increase in expenses. Extra stress at home. And this assumes a 100% healthy child.

A-B-O-R-TION In The Summer Sun

The Dems are pulling out all the stops to scare teh wimmins about abortion bans if Trump is elected.

In lots of places, it's now much harder to get one.  Even a couple of near complete bans.

In other places it's just as easy as it ever was.

How did this happen?

When the Supreme Court nuked Roe v Wade they booted it back to the states to decide for themselves and they have been.

Democracy in action!

Actual democracy, not "Our Democracy," as the Democrats define it.

I don't see Trump toeing the religious fundamental line that is the underlying fuel for banning abortions.

It should also be noted, for Republican run states that have made it a lot harder, abortion bans aren't near as important or popular as you might think.  Likewise, abortion isn't as popular as Democrats think.

But the narrative being spun by the Democrats is effective and sways voters.

Neither side is all that interested in the middle ground that most people are thinking when they think about when an abortion should be legal.

This large group doesn't have a voice, and they're noticing.

Could lead to some interesting politics.

RavenClawEric Speaks

At long last, there may be light at the end of this tunnel.  You have no idea how sick I am of this nonsense, and I know for a fact that when Ruth Bader Ginsberg falls off the twig, it'll start right straight up again.  Frankly, I've seen better-looking corpses than her, the way she looks these days.  Not that she was ever an oil painting, or that I have any room to point fingers.

Ever since bloody 1973, the Supreme Court has been the captive of the Roe vs. Wade decision.  I remember carrying papers to my customers that announced that decision, and figuring that that had been decided, once and for all.  I was wrong---I've seldom been wronger---but in my own defense, I was only 12 at the time.  Ever after that, every nomination to the Supreme Court has had to go through an endless fuss where everybody knows that Roe vs. Wade is the big issue at hand, but almost nobody has the cojones to say it.

I think part of the reason that liberals are so fanatical about defending Roe vs. Wade is because almost all their big gains were not gained by appealing to a majority of voters, but by court decisions.  They're afraid that if Roe vs. Wade is overturned, we'll be headed on a toboggan straight back to the 1950s.  They also cannot understand that overriding the wills of a majority of voters, not once in a while or for extreme emergencies (like getting rid of Jim Crow), but as SOP, creates doubt in the voters' minds about the democracy we supposedly espouse.  

I've made myself thoroughly unpopular by telling some liberal friends of mine that if they're so worried about the right to an abortion they should grow up, put on the big boy/girl pants, and get buckled down on passing a Constitutional amendment mandating that abortion be legal, no ifs, ands, or buts.  Of course, that would mean work, and we all know how pampered urban liberals feel about work...much less about getting out and talking with people outside their safe little bubble worlds.

And I've said the same thing, in reverse, to my fanatically anti-abortion friends (and yes, I do have some.)  I've pointed out that most Americans don't oppose abortion per se, but would prefer that it remain rare, and that if they're so madly gung-ho about not "killing babies", as opposed to punishing women for having s-x, maybe they should be pushing birth control with all their might along with getting stuck in on a Constitutional amendment banning abortions.  The way they shriek and clutch their pearls at the forbidden words "birth control" confirms my suspicion that the conservative movement picked up this nonsense partly from hanging with the Catholics, and partly from their own philosophical, and in some ways physical, descent from the people who were never really on board with the social changes that started with World War One.  I've met conservatives who would be blissfully happy if they could make everything like it was at about 1900---like that ultra-lame Spider-Woman villain, Turner D. Century.

Diversity

I'm starting to notice that conservatives and Republicans are gaining in diversity of thought as Democrats shove ever further left.

Yes, it does mean that Republicans are skewing more to the left as people shift, but the defectors are moving right to meet them.

I've noticed that I can still have a civil discussion with a staunch, red-winged, conservative, Christian abortion prohibitionist about abortion.  I don't change their mind, but they don't walk away wishing me dead.

It's because we feel that the proper course is to convince rather than force.  That we fail to convince each other isn't casus belli to begin to force the other to confirm.

Personally, I've walked away with fresh perspective.  It's where my statement that people who've a religious objection to abortions shouldn't have their tax money spend on funding them.  And because money is fungible, that means that no government funding of abortions would be allowed under the 1st Amendment and 14th Amendment.

Private funding would be available for the same reasons.  You cannot force your religion and its position on abortion on someone else with government.

You're free to convince them outside of government, and you should keep trying.

IMPORTANT NOTE: That was an example, not an invitation to voice your opinion on abortion or try to convince me to your side.  Comments along those lines for this post will be deleted with as much Ruth as the SCOTUS currently has.

But the fact that we can actually talk among ourselves about many of these divisive issues shows more diversity than the supposed party of diversity.

They only care about the superficial differences and visible diversity.

All must conform.

That's why their judges are in lock-step.  Conformity.

That's why our judges often piss us off.  Diversity.

It's why we're more comfortable with freedom.  We're independent, not dependent.

It's why when I was asked, "do you have any black friends?" I replied, "No.  I only have friends."

But What About...

I am not taking a position on abortion here, not pro or con.

But an observation I've had over many election cycles.

The real third rail of politics is abortion.

I know of ten (10) women who are very much otherwise conservative who voted for Obama twice because Maverick or Mittens were definitely going to ban abortions.

This ties into open carry because the loudest voices of late who condemn OC will, without hesitation, talk about abortion = murder.  Check their blogs.

The pro-life stance gets Democrats elected.

Democrats then pass all kinds of anti-freedom stuff none of us want.

Democrats then nominate and confirm judges who rule on all kinds of anti-freedom stuff none of us want.

Democrats oppose reasonable expansions of all kinds of pro-liberty stuff we all want.

Democrats oppose the nomination and confirmation of judges who would rule on all kinds of pro-liberty stuff we all want.

So, tell me, who's doing more damage here?

Me with no advocacy, or you with a staunch Pro-Life stance?

If the order of the day is to not freak the mundane, there's nothing the mundane have taken to heart like abortion rights.  Why is it OK for you to freak them out so bad we lose elections but verboten for open carriers to maybe, possibly, could happen any decade now, change a law to the negative?

Especially with all the fairly liberal, pro-choice, people fleeing to Florida from places like New York.

The Subject Has Come Up With The Selection Of Palin

Abortion.

Talk about a sticky wicket.

I do not oppose abortions. I have never felt that abortion was murder. The line in the sand there is primarily religious and I am not a member of a religion that feels that life begins at conception.

I am more inclined to believe it's a human when it starts paying its own rent...(I kid!) But it's a child when it's breathing on its own.

I am getting very sick of the militant, "RIGHT TO CHOOSE!" screaming getting shoved up my nose. Fuck you, bitch, I agree with you, now go yell at someone else for a while! Jeebus! All these unpleasant encounters do is get me to thinking.

My conclusion is that Ms Righttochoose should have chosen to exercise her right to not fuck. Ain't getting no babies without fuckin. Abortion is a non-issue of there's no unwanted pregnancy. Can't get pregnant if you don't have sex. I KNOW that this basic biological fact about mammals was covered in High School Health Class. One could take the position that, yes, you have the right to control your own body but the decision point was when you allowed penetration and is not when you discover you are pregnant.

Please note, I think that Ms Righttochoose SHOULD have chosen abstinence, not that she MUST and after first hand experience with the results of watching the uncontrolled breeding of the Shitheels (and watching my total tax contribution going into their pockets), I don't want anyone who cannot mentally or financially handle being a parent to have a child. If it takes abortion to stop things like Shitheels, then kill all you want.

Edit:
My position tends to make me unwelcome with conservatives. Too many people assume that because I am pro-gun that I am also all-in on being a conservative. Um, nope.

Abortion

Roe v Wade was incorrectly decided.

There, I said it.

But it's almost the correct decision!

Pulling a right to an abortion out of some vague penumbra of a right to privacy attached to the 4th Amendment?

Bullshit.

Saying the Federal Government has been given no power whatsoever about abortions and its a state matter under the 10th amendment?  Correct.

Saying the 9th Amendment protects rights not mentioned already and that Texas' own constitution gives no power to regulate abortions?  Also correct.

Thus a right to an abortion because nobody actually empowered the governments to regulate them.

If you want to talk the talk of restoring constitutional government, you're going to hit walls like this where you're going to need to amend the thing before the government has the powers to do what you want them to do.

Also, considering how closely tied anti-abortion has become to Christianity, there's a strong 1st Amendment argument against the government having any authority here because that would be a State endorsement of one religion's view on the topic.

It's quite sobering to look at the Constitution and see exactly how little power it actually gives the Federal Government.  Then looking at the State Constitutions and seeing they have similarly small grants of power for the most part.

Then you look at the powers actually exercised...  Yes, Virginia, nearly everything Government does is illegitimate and illegal.  Including how the Supreme Court operates, look it up!

Bonus round:  Even if the States granted themselves massive new powers amending the state constitutions (Florida adds several amendments every year by voter referendum) everyone forgets what the 14th Amendment actually says.  The 14th was supposed to be a massive bitch slap to the states and imposing much of the limitations on Federal power to the states.  Slaughterhouse fucked that up...

You Might Wanna Hold Off On That Victory Lap

The Supreme Court did not rule that the new abortion law in Texas was Constitutional, they simply refused to issue an emergency stay.

In effect, they are saying that the Pro-Choice side must actually use the legal system and file suits and go through the entire due-process... which might lead to a ruling that Roe-v-Wade still stands.

Second, this law is to allow Karens to report on their neighbors and sue the abortion provider, not a prohibition on the actual post-hearbeat abortion.

Wanna bet that the courts are going to rule that third parties, like Karen, have no standing to sue because they're not an injured party?

Wanna bet?

Reasons For Quitting Facebook

While the proximate reason I stabbed, "delete account," amounts to a rage-quit...

There's many reasons to never go back to my real-name account.  My nom-du-blog Facebook is still there.

First is the flying monkey effect.  If you're in a debate with someone about a political issue and having an actual reasonable discussion; your friends and their friends can come in and be less reasonable.  Since my "friends" never come in and stand up for me, you can see why this is triple annoying to have it happen repeatedly.

Then there's the censorship.

Then there's the chance one of the flying monkeys decides that the best way to punish me is to get The Lovely Harvey fired or dox us in some other way.

Then there's the expectation that I curtail my thoughts and opinions on a myriad of topics because they're "controversial" while having to endure the opposite position on these same topics silently from others.

I'm left thinking that if all I'm supposed to post is the most superficial and non-upsetting topics, then my "friends" on Facebook aren't at all interested in being friends with me, but a shallow, banal simulacrum of me.  They're willing to tolerate what I think as long as I'm willing to stop thinking it.

And lest one think this is a liberals problem...  I get it from the "I've found GOD! since high school!" group too.

Dig the archives here and you're going to find that I support LGBT issues and don't give a fuck that Planned Parenthood is murdering babies.  I don't have any invisible friends ghost writing books telling me how to be a better slave to them.  <-- Yes, that's phrased very inflammatorily, and with a lot more derision than I actually feel towards all y'all who've found and keep Faith in the face of so much contradictory evidence.

But you will also see that I want smaller government, fewer taxes, smaller taxes, and more liberty FOR EVERYONE.

While I don't give a fuck about abortion, I also don't think that someone who DOES should be forced to pay for it.  Especially if it's the invisible friend objection and tax money is doing the funding.

Just remember The Shitheels don't do abortions and they're devouring tax money hand over fist in assistance payments.  Abortion is cheaper and eliminates Shitheels, we need more abortion not less in this case.  I support your right to not pay for abortions, will you support my right to not pay for Shitheels?

While I support LGBT stuff, I support LGBT stuff for adults.  Not minors.  You turn 18 and wanna go through the process of having your junk cut off, have at it.  If you're 11 and think you want to change permanently, NO.  And no to your mom.  And no to gender bending drugs and hormones, especially ones which will cause hellish side effects come puberty.  Speaking of which, puberty might just change how you feel.  Puberty often DOES change how many young trans people feel about it, perhaps most.  Getting out of your home town and away from your parents often changes how you feel about it too.  I looked it up.

In Before The Rending Of Garments

And gnashing of teeth.

Ending Federal funding of Planned Parenthood is not a ban on abortion.

You can still go to Planned Parenthood and have an abortion after the Federal teat has run dry.  You'll just have to pay for it yourself.

I'm near as neutral as you can get about abortion, but I have long held that it's wrong to force people with religious objections to the practice to subsidize it.

And using tax money to pay for abortions is exactly that.

If we're going to get worked up about crosses on top of water towers, we'd damn sure better get worked up about this.

Single Issue

There's a problem with being a single issue voter.

The fuckweasils we elect aren't single issue fuckweasils.

They have a panoply of things they want to vote on and implement that have nothing whatsoever to do with the one issue you voted for (or against) them on.

Harry Ried might be an excellent example.  While he was pro-gun and having someone pro-gun as senate majority leader would be good for gun owners; what about the rest of him?  I really didn't know much about him then, since he's in Nevada not Florida.

Well, it turns out that like all fuckweasils he'll toe the party line and his party is pretty much opposed to most everything that most gun owners support that aren't gun related.

Florida has Bill Nelson.  He's anti-gun.  He's hard-core Democrat.  He's gotten the vote of a lot of conservative woman.  Why?  Single issue.  Abortion.

Why would a conservative woman vote for a liberal over the abortion issue?  Because to them it's not about murdering babies, it's about their right to make their own decision and not be reduced to breeding kine.  Do they agree with any other position?  Nope.  But, "abortion is murder" reads as "bitches WILL breed!"

There are slews of other issues too.  Immigration.  Welfare.  Military spending.  Environmental issues.  Taxes.  Tariffs.

If you pick one, and only one, to vote about you're going to get that fuckweasil's position on everything else too; regardless of that one thing you care a lot about.

The really depressing thing is that once you start looking past your single issue, you start finding there's no candidates who don't have a massive disqualifier in their stance.

I am reminded, again, that the only reason any of this matters is because the government has gotten so much larger than its mandate and sent its tendrils into every aspect of our lives.  If the government wasn't actively involved in, say, the bacteria content of milk; I would not need to consider a fuckweasil's position on the matter.

Controversial

The more I observe the phenomenon, the more convinced I am that the current potential Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization isn't really the Pro-Life position winning but the Pro-Choice side overreaching until the average person notices what's going on and deciding to get involved.

The phenomenon is a refusal to accept victory and go home.

It's distinct from a win in an incremental strategy were a positive ruling is one step towards a larger, stated, goal.

The pro-gun movement is doing such an incremental approach in getting laws struck and legislation passed.  The goal is unfettered 2nd Amendment rights and until we get there it's just wins, not victory.  Someday, though, we're going to have to address that that average person doesn't want machine guns to be easily and widely available.

But abortion and gay rights goals were stated and achieved... then they presented new goals and began advancing on those causes.

As the goals get further out of synch with everyday Americans, the less support they have as they accumulate more political power until...

Punctuated equilibrium from the electorate slams them in the face.

The first time I noticed this was with MAAD.  They were going to get real punishments for drinking and driving, did studies, pressed the flesh and made real changes.

One important change was getting "you're too drunk to drive" defined at 0.10% blood alcohol content.  This definition was arrived at through extensive studies of when the average person becomes impaired.  I was a rational standard to adopt.

And it was.

After a round of very public enforcement, the average, rational, person looked at the new severe punishments for drinking too much and driving home then made a rational decision to not drink so much before heading home.

Thus, substantially fewer drunk drivers and this was reflected in a dramatic drop in the police catching and prosecuting them.

Victory, right?

MAAD realized they were now irrelevant.

So a new campaign to move the standard down to 0.08% BAC.  A level that wasn't shown to be associated with impairment for most people.  But it got arrests up again, got their name in the public's mind again and (most importantly) got the donations flowing to the organization again!

Which brings me back to abortion.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the leak has put the debate back into people's living rooms and many people are discovering that there's a much larger overlap in the Venn diagram between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice once they are allowed to talk to each other and explain what they mean.

People are discovering that their position was based on the fringe of the other side and not the everyday person.

The everyday pro-life person didn't really want a full ban, but was hearing the advocates of partial or full birth abortions and saying they would not support that.  The national pro-life organizations are captured by religious organizations who DO support full bans, and are thusly the voice of the pro-life side.

The everyday pro-choice person didn't really want second or third trimester abortions, let alone partial birth and outright opposes full birth.  But the national organizations and national voice does.

Most people, after comparing notes, are realizing that they're OK with abortion being legal with a cut-off date.  There's debate about when that point should be, but it rarely extends past the first trimester.

Both sides appear to be shocked to learn that such a cut-off is in Roe v. Wade!

[D]uring the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

- Wikipedia article on Roe v. Wade.

 Most people are content with this.

But the pro-choice fringe wouldn't leave it alone.  Now the fringe from the pro-life side might be getting a big win and taking the momentum to a place that most people don't want.

This whipsaw oscillation between two tyrannies of the minority pisses people off.

LGBT people just wanted to be people, like everyone else.  To not be second class citizens by law because churches had gotten regulatory capture of marriage so long ago it preceded the term.

But their national orgs couldn't let that victory sit.  And they took it all the way to where the religious fundamentalist bigots said the average queer wanted: Pederasty.

The average bent person didn't want that!

And after looking at the utter lack of compassion I've seen from members of a religion founded on the idea of forgiveness towards trans-genders, I totally understand the motive to stick a knife in the eye of a Christian fundamentalist and give it a good twist.  Even if that twist is pederasty.

Again we're trying to make the fringes happy and pissing off the middle.

You think they're on your side because they're not noticing you and thus not opposing you.  But wait.  You will overstep.  Again.

Note: Comments on this post will be moderated much more strictly than normal.

The Other Side

If you don't want to have children, don't have vaginal sex.

It's really that simple.

Use your hands, mouth or ass.

Hell, use anything that causes friction, just do not insert into ONE particular hole.

Not even a little bit.  Not even if they promise to pull out.

Use protection anyway!

People who say they cannot use protection and or get abortions because of some form of Christian faith.  That had better be your wife you've knocked up.  Another Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel example!  Can't use protection because Catholic, yet is seemingly free to be an adulterer.  HEADDESK

You see, if you don't get pregnant or get someone pregnant, there's no debate about abortion at all!

And a great deal of this falls right down to, "why yes, you have rights; but every right comes with responsibilities."

You have a right to fuck.  You are also responsible for the consequences of fucking.  If you cannot or will not be responsible, then stop fucking.

Where's my right to not be responsible for your actions?  Because when you pawn your spawn off on any of the various government assistance programs you are most assuredly making me financially responsible via taxation.

And if I have responsibilities, I get rights.  I get a say.  But that's another topic.

Abortion is the, bar none, stupidest method of birth control ever devised.  It is not a zero risk procedure.  It is not taking responsibility for the consequences of having sex, it is evading them.  Evading them in a morally questionable manner; definitely a sinful manner if you self identify as any of the three major monotheisms.  Also a sin, sex out of wedlock.  (If you self identify as a Christian, for example, there's a book that comes with your Faith that explains all this.  Try reading it.)

It is immoral to force people to force people, via government, to pay for something they have religious objections to.  There's that 1st Amendment again.  Government is forbidden to force me to obey YOUR religious prohibitions and is likewise forbidden from forcing you violate yours. (Yes, I know this is ignored).

Remember rights come with responsibility; forcing a Christian to pay for abortions means they have a right to demand the procedure be conducted in a way that maximizes the discomfort of the subject.  To demand that each procedure be accompanied by mandatory lectures on moral turpitude.

You really want a right to an abortion, assume the responsibility for the whole thing without subsidy.  It's fascinating to me that this right derived from a penumbra of the 4th Amendment requires government assistance where the 1st Amendment doesn't compel the government to subsidize a printing press or broadcast tower for my personal use.  The 2nd Amendment, by this rationale, should mandate that I be given a government financed firearm and training in its use.

I am an Atheist who does not mock or fear Judeo/Christian values.  They are were the backbone of what was the basis for American exceptionalism.  Those values did form the framework that is American culture.  One thing I rail against is people who wish to have the benefits of this exceptional culture without participating in it.  If you don't want to be a member of this culture, go away and find a different one.  What you are doing is breaking a successful culture.  This too is another topic (and pro-choice is not alone in its attempts to make wholesale changes without considering what the long term effects of the change are).

Rights And Responsibilities

I was reading at Roberta X's ( http://twowheeledmadwoman.blogspot.com/2009/01/explain-me-this.html ) site about her thoughts on the draft. A comment from Labrat got my thinker a thinking.

They're right, why are women exempted from the draft? There's just scads of jobs they are capable of and legally allowed to do. I don't even have to work too hard to prove it, they perform those jobs right now.

Labrat brought up the "No rights, no responsibilities" thing. I agree, and I also apply the corollary, "No responsibilities, no rights."

The comments also mention that modern feminism is a cage.

I've touched on this before, all reproductive rights are solely owned by one sex, women. No rights, no responsibilities, no need for a man to pay child support. If he gets rights, then he's got responsibilities. He can, at present, be forced to become a financier of a child he did not want.

Have you ever noticed that the people who are also the most steadfast about abortion remaining legal often tend to also be the ones who are loudest about "deadbeat dads"?

Making a baby is not a one-person job. It's takes two to tango, as it were. I've long proposed that to carry a child to term requires the consent of BOTH genetic contributors. Dad says, "no," then either Mom gets and abortion, or she acknowledges that she's on her own. Mom says, "no," then she's free to have an abortion (if she has the kid anyway she can hand it off do the willing father and walk away free too). Both agree to have the child, what's the problem again? Both agree to not have a child, again, what's the debate here?

Once there's an agreement to have the child, then Dad is responsible for his decision! So's Mom. I feel a lot better about forcing Dad to pay for something he agreed to have happen.

That takes care of the primary actors in our problem.

Let's talk about third parties.

I don't get any rights about how you raise your kids, why the heck do I have to pay for them? It's not my problem that you cannot afford to feed your children, I am not the one who decided to have them. If you want me to be responsible for your kids, I get some say in how you raise them, clothe them, educate them. I get the right to not support THEIR kids when they turn out just like you. I am willing to bet that if I get some say in how the kids that welfare supports are raised then we will see a whole lot fewer people on welfare. What's that? That interferes with YOUR right to raise YOUR children YOUR way? Fine with me, stop taking MY money and I will stop telling YOU how to raise YOUR kids!