Biggest Abortion Case in 29 Years at the Supreme Court

-1 not funny
:slight_smile:

Except…

Just like eating dinner is a long process - and an abortion (in terms of reproduction) is eating 7 of the 8 slices of pizza then claiming it’s inedible so you’re entitled to a full refund.

1 Like

If you’re not denying that reproduction is a long process, then you also can’t claim that reproductive rights end when the reproduction process begins.

Welp, you got me on that one. Can’t argue with that logic. Killing your own child is totally a right if you are a female.

It’s a legit implication. The ERA removes all legal distinctions between the sexes. Since you still need sperm from a male in order to make a baby, how does the male not have the exact same rights over the life of the unborn baby as the female in a world where the ERA is the law of the land?

2 Likes

No, it is not:

Just because men and women have equal rights does not mean that one person (in this case the male) can violate the rights of another person (in this case the female).

This isnt rocket science. You simply cannot have an abortion until after the process of reproduction has begun - be it a conscious choice or an unintended consequence. After that point, and for the rest of the process, all you can do is change your mind/avoid the consequences. There is no other point where you must choose to remain pregnant, you can only choose to not continue it. Thus, it’s about regret, not rights.

1 Like

It’s really funny how that “leap” you took only implied that you agree that, currently, women have more entitlements in the reproductive process. Which is a fundamental basis of their entire position.

1 Like

Now swap “male/men” with “mother” and “women/female” with “baby” in your sentence and you will get why people on my side look at your argument as completely inconsistent.

You’re still arguing like we’re in a pre-Dobbs world, but we are now in a post-Dobbs world. The claim that the fetus has rights is now something you have to debate with us. It’s no longer something you can just hand-wave away with “no, it’s not a person” like you could for the last 50 years. Your side had 50 years to come up with an argument. When the right says “women don’t have the right to kill their offspring,” I can’t believe after 50 years, the best you can come up with is “yeah, they do.”

Back to this… I don’t think you understand the ERA. Literally everything relating to the differences between the rights of men and women will go back to the drawing board. That means that there WILL be males that argue (and there WILL be judges that agree) that an unborn baby belongs equally to both the male and female that created it. Will this result in forced abortions? That is quite unlikely. Will this result in court injunctions barring females from getting abortions when the male that helped create the baby objects to it? I bet that it will. Men have already attempted this in the courts, and in a post-Dobbs world, we’ll likely see it attempted again. Most lower courts will continue to find in the favor of the mother for the time being, but now that Roe and Casey are no longer the law of the land, there is nothing stopping SCOTUS from striking down the father’s rights claims that it previously said were an “undue burden.” If you throw the passage of the ERA into the mix, however, you will be much more likely to have lower court judges that will not even follow previous mother’s rights precedence since those old decisions were made during a time without an ERA.

You can put your head in the sand and keep pretending that “undue burden” still means the same thing and that “personhood” laws are unconstitutional. Or you can wake up and realize that all this stuff is now on the table and actually come up with an argument in favor of why mothers should still have the right to kill their unborn babies and fathers should be excluded from the process. I completely understand why you may not want to come up with that argument, but if you want to continue debating the subject and be taken seriously, you’re gonna have get into the details.

3 Likes

I disagree. The reproductive rights do not stop when the reproductive process begins.

I didn’t say I don’t get it – I get it. And I suspected you might say this after I wrote what I wrote. We just disagree on when a baby is a baby and when it’s not yet a baby.

Dobbs did not settle the debate, it simply punted the debate to the states.

You’re only guessing what the lower courts may or may not do. If I had to guess, I’d guess that it will depend on the judge, just like Roe and Dobbs depended on the judges. So we’ll have different outcomes in different jurisdictions.

1 Like

So how about explaining what part of it you disagree with? Am I wrong, and there is something a woman must affirmatively do mid-pregnancy to continue being pregnant? I’m pretty sure that once started, the only thing a woman can choose to do is interrupt/terminate the process they previously chose to start.

Or is it that there is no way to dispute the facts, so you’re going to just keep vaguely insisting you disagree? Because all you’ve offered is support for the right to have regrets, the right to a mulligan, the right to some sort of right-of-rescission period after getting pregnant. Nothing about the process of reproduction.

I suspect you dont really disagree with any of it. You just dont like how the conclusions are being characterized.

2 Likes

I didn’t say Dobbs settled the debate. I said Dobbs opened it up to debate. I am debating, you aren’t. You are just replying to me saying “no.” That was all you had to say when Roe was the law of the land. The answer then was “no, that’s against the law” and it was settled. If a state legislature tried to give a fetus any sort of rights or personhood by writing a law before Dobbs, the law was deemed unconstitutional. Now that’s not the case, so it’s up for debate. Maybe not where you live, but it is in lots of places. So just answering “no” when someone starts bringing up rights that compete with the mother’s is the equivalent of putting your head in the sand. If your answer is that you live where the mother’s rights will never be challenged and you choose to live there because you can’t handle any debate on the subject, you can say so. I’ll stop giving you crap about it. But barring that, anytime you just respond to a pro-life assertion with “no” then I will continue pointing out how weak of an argument you have.

I’m sure I asked you this before, but we’re 530 posts into the topic, so please remind me. My view is that a separate human person that deserves the right to life is created at the moment of conception. When is a baby a baby in your view again?

1 Like

I disagree that abortion is about regrets. I disagree that the woman “has exercised her reproductive rights” by having sex. Her reproductive rights do not, should not stop if or when she becomes pregnant.

I disagree – every moment she chooses to remain pregnant by not aborting the baby or endangering it in other ways (smoking, drinking, doing drugs, falling down the stairs or out of a window, etc). Remaining pregnant is a choice, same as abortion is a choice. Both are difficult.

I did not just say “no” though – I explained it in the same reply with the following:

You were suggesting that a man could force a woman to do something, and I countered that such thing would be highly unlikely because even if men and women have equal rights, those equal rights do not include violating each other’s other rights. I think you concurred that it’s not likely that women would literally be forced by men to do anything, but they might get court injunctions. I don’t disagree with you on this, I suppose it could happen. Obviously I think such an outcome would be unfair to women.


Here’s my view and my reasoning:

So you would also claim that billions of women chose an abortion every day by not getting pregnant? And billions of women have had thousands of abortions because of that choice (actually, trillions, since you say it’s a choice made every moment)? That is the same choice as what you are claiming is a choice.

You’re completely (and I suspect intentionally) missing the point. Once pregnant, there is no more affirmative choice to continue the process, you can only chose to stop it. Just like you cannot abort a process that hasnt yet been initiated.

2 Likes

Yet men and women have equal parts in intiating that pregnancy. Only allowing the woman to determine if it continues or not is inherently violating the man’s rights. And if the man has no such right, the woman has no such right either. That’s equality. That’s what the ERA would mandate.

2 Likes

Why is it not unfair to the father of the unborn child if the mother terminates its life without the father’s consent?

Why can a mother choose to abort a pregnancy because she can’t afford to raise a child but a father can’t choose to abort a pregnancy because he can’t afford to raise a child?

Were an ERA to pass, don’t you agree it would be harder to answer these questions than it is today under our current legal standard where the mother has greater rights than the father?

Thanks for the reminder that your line is way beyond the time that a fetus starts to look like an unborn baby and feel pain and is essentially as arbitrary as it gets.

3 Likes

No, I wouldn’t. That’s not the same thing, not even close.

That’s, like, your opinion, man. I don’t believe it makes sense, but you’re free to hold on to it.

I did not say that it isn’t. It certainly is unfair. But them’s the cards we’ve been dealt.

I’m not sure that it WOULD be, but it MAY be. But I’m just a layman, not a lawyer.

My reasons are no more arbitrary than yours. I think we’ve already covered this.

1 Like

Now I know why you think (or don’t) the way you do. :roll_eyes: