- Joined
- Jan 19, 2018
Depends on how you define "life", tbh. If you remove a fetus after 1 month of gestation, will it live outside the womb? By this logic, cancer could be considered a "life" (living cells that have the DNA of the mother).but with abortion somehow it only affects the woman even though the procedure is itself a termination of a second life. If you're unvaccinated but never leave your house, you only potentially harm yourself, but if you abort your healthy pregnancy (especially after the stage of viability) you always harm another, even if you're stuck on a desert island.
This is a fair argument, but as you point out, it's typically not criminalized, and the state that do criminalize it tend to be ones framing it in the Christian "life at conception" way. Termination of parental rights is also not typically immediate--you generally have to demonstrate either such heinous behavior (like murdering a child's sibling) or be completely unwilling to take the requested actions (parenting classes, rehab, etc.) that the state says "fuck it" and asks a judge to terminate the rights.Only a few states criminalize this in certain circumstances, but it's not uncommon in lieu of prison time to strip the mother of her parental rights.
Thinking about it a little more, there's also the bountiful evidence that smoking/drinking/drugs can cause direct developmental harm, but there's much less (if any, really) research on what kind of diet (again, if any) is actively harmful to development of the fetus. There's certainly research that suggests way to improve outcomes (hence recommended vitamin supplements and foods pregnant women are recommended to avoid for various reasons).
I agree to an extent, but part of the problem now is that there are a number of other case decisions that used the same (or very similar) reasoning. Griswold (contraception for married couples), Eisenstadt (contraception for individuals), Lawrence (anti-sodomy laws), Obergefell (gay marriage), Brown vs. Board (desegregation of schools, downfall of "separate but equal"), Gideon (right to legal counsel for criminal cases irrespective of ability to pay) and, despite Thomas conspicuously leaving it out in his concurrence, Loving (interracial marriage). It's also very unusual for the Supreme Court to overturn a longstanding decision that extended a right.Personally I don't think the right to abortion was ever within the 14th amendment's text. It was a fanciful reading of that amendment and was a ticking timebomb just waiting to blow up in women's faces. I personally have no problem with abortion access, but short of congress writing a bill and codifying it into law (in some way that has no connection to the 14th amendment) it's probably going to remain a states' rights issue.
There's also the revelation that at least of the Justices may have been praying in the Court with a group that was part of the Dobbs cases, which is...bad. Not that the Justices (and, in particular, Thomas, Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch) have been pretending to be neutral for a while.
Shit's real fucked up.