Social credit in America - Politics invades personal finance

Nope. Note that in my amendment there is no requirement for women to know or share anything. I purposely create a ridiculous imposition on men to demonstrate that the original imposition on women is also ridiculous.

But it sure looks like it.

So men are supposed to what? Drug the women they sleep with, so they’re unaware that they may or may not be pregnant, may or may not be getting an abortion, or may or may not be carrying a baby to term? You’re right, that is ridiculous, but it does not demonstrate anything except your own lack of understanding and/or your intentional obfuscation of the issue.

Then you must be wearing some really funky goggles.

The only way this is being “arbitrarily imposed by men” is if you accept that your version of “God” is in fact male. Because it’s a burdon being imposed by the fact that only women get pregnant, and that is a fact of biology and entirely out of everyone’s control. No man ever has said “I dont want to deal with getting pregnant, so that’s all your responsibility woman!”; no matter how a man feels or what they want to do, pregancy is never going to happen within his body.

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Surely you’re overlooking the women-claiming-to-be-men category, not large group I know, in such a bold statement. And on the lighter side of these abortion issues,

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So many of the left’s talking points supporting abortion are so out of whack with the reality on the ground. It really is frustrating. According to surveys, the reasons women get abortions are multifaceted. But the most common reason, cited by nearly 3/4 of women that get abortions, is financial hardship.

Yes. Financial hardship. In a country that offers free food, housing/vouchers, refundable tax credits, public school, health insurance, welfare, and God knows what else depending on where you live. At the same time hundreds of thousands of American women are saying the financial hardship of raising a child in the USA would be worse than ending the life of the child, there are literally thousands of pregnant women risking their lives crossing the border on foot after months-long journeys from South America. They are trekking in the hope that they will have the privilege of having their child in the United States in our version of poverty. The financial hardship claim may have been legitimate before the 60s for women that got pregnant out of wedlock and their families refused to help. But using that same tired old claim in 2021 is so full of holes that I wonder if the abortion rights lobby can even be bothered to make a novel argument for why states and localities can’t set their own laws on this issue.

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  1. If they’re considering abortion they obviously do not consider it to be a child. Neither do 90+% of so-called “pro-life” people as they accept abortion in case of rape/incest.

  2. You seriously overestimate the amount of help available.

  3. You seriously underestimate the cost of raising a child.

Well that’s simply not true. The “pro-life people” generally recognize there are two lives involved, sometimes with competing interests. And when that’s the case, there is a need to compromise. There a pretty big difference between holding a woman responsible for the consequences of her own actions, and imposing upon a woman the consequences of someone else’s actions.

The “choice” crowd is all about the woman, and to hell with anyone else involved. If she doesn’t get her way, it’s just men screwing with her for their own amusement. (Ignore the pesky fact that there’s just as many pro-life women as there are men).

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Thus showing that you don’t think it’s a child. If it was a child then abortion would be unacceptable in case of rape & incest. You’re one of those who wants to punish the woman for acts you don’t approve of.

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Yes, being willing to compromise with opposing viewpoints is inherently evil and purely vindictive. MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY, DAMMIT!

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If you really believed it was a child you wouldn’t accept this compromise. A true pro-lifer is about protecting what they consider a child, not about punishing the woman. I’ve encountered a couple in my 40 years on-line.

Again, MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY, DAMMIT! How dare someone be willing to step back and look at the issue objectively, in the hopes of actually making progress. Digging in and deepening the divide is the only acceptable path.

Yet somehow it’s those willing to compromise that keep being accused of causing the problems because they’re being unreasonable, accused by those who are offended by the mere suggestion that they should find a compromise. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:.

Being willing to compromise is not some sort of proof you dont believe your position. It’s showing respect for the opinions of others and acknowledging the fact that in a free society no one’s beliefs are inherently more important than anyone elses, and the only way we survive as a society is to…gasp…compromise.

Besides, as I said, the pro-life side understands that there are two lives involved in every decision, each with competing needs. But you cant acknowledge that, because your entire argument relies on labeling anyone pro-life as being anti-woman. You know full well that them accepting and including the fact the woman has needs as well, you no longer have anything to mindlessly rail against.

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I think you misunderstood my point. All I’m saying is that the LAWS that impose restrictions on women are created and passed almost entirely by men.

Ignore the fact that even if that is a fact, both are in a minority.

No, that is not ‘all you were saying’. All you were doing is trying to avoid the fact that there is no possible way to exclude woman from the equation, and that is in no way a man’s fault. Because your entire position requires this to remain focused on a faux men verses women argument, rather than the women verses babies issue it is.

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With this claim, you are contradicting everyone that is pro-choice that says that abortion is a difficult decision for a woman to make. For decades, their view on abortion was safe legal and rare because they do consider it to be a human life (or at the very least - potential human life). If women didn’t consider the fetuses they are aborting to be children, then there would have been no need for the “rare” qualifier.

As for your other claim - that 90% of pro-lifers don’t consider it a child either because if they did, they would be against rape and incent exceptions - that is just as ridiculous. 1. glitch99 is correct - people compromise. it is pretty much understood that new abortion restriction laws without rape/incest exceptions are dead on arrival in the legislature (even Texas’s heartbeat law has them). 2. If you talk to people that are actually pro-life, you will hear WAY MORE than 10% of them say that if it were up to them, and it didn’t make them look like uncaring monsters, they would not allow exceptions for rape and incest.

Are all those things I just listed not available to nearly all single mothers in the US?

I have two. I know how much they cost.

I honestly don’t understand where a viewpoint like this could come from. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Do you really think 90% of people that advocate for abortion bans don’t think that the unborn babies being aborted are children. You think pro-lifers think the unborn babies are just clumps of cells and pro-lifers really just want to punish poor women that don’t use birth control? That’s their main motivation?

It is a fact. However…
I’m on the extreme end, so I have every incentive to claim that my viewpoint is the dominant viewpoint. But it’s just not, and neither is the other extreme.

Ban all abortion people are 10-20% of the population. Abortion up until birth people are 10-20% of the population. People that believe abortion before the 1st trimester is ok, but the older the unborn baby gets, the worse it seems is 60-80% of the population. All the views along the spectrum are generally held equally by men and women. It doesn’t make for great headlines, but the truth is, most Americans’ opinions are in line with the laws on the books in Europe. Dare I say it, but had Roe v. Wade never been decided in the odd was it was way back when, most states would probably have laws like Europe’s and most people wouldn’t be nearly as up in arms about it as they are today.

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Note that “potential human life” != “child”.

If it’s a child abortion is murder, the method of conception is irrelevant. The only reason to consider such an exemption is because it’s not the woman’s “fault”–but that’s not a pro-life position, that’s a pro-punishment position.

Over the decades I’ve been in a lot of debates about abortion–and given time virtually every person I’ve been dealing with has admitted the her-fault aspect. The few that I consider truly pro-life not only never said anything about fault but explicitly were sympathizing with the woman put in a hard situation.

Note that much of the government help has time limits on it far shorter than what it takes to raise a child.

It’s not a binary situation.

And most “pro-life” people do want to punish women who have non-reproductive sex. A simple test: Look at the positions taken by the “pro-life” community. Compare them to positions that would minimize abortion and compare them to positions that would maximize the danger of non-marital, non-reproductive sex. The first comparison finds many mismatches. The second is a basically perfect. Obviously, their true objective is the second one.

There’s also the phenomenon observed in many abortion clinics of the very people who are protesting outside showing up for abortions.

Pretty hard to do an abortion before the first trimester. Now, if you’re talking about in the first trimester–that’s when the vast majority of non-medical abortions are performed anyway. The vast majority of abortions after that point are either because something went wrong or because of fetal defects. (Many defects can’t be picked up until late in the second trimester.)

Does it? I thought it didn’t, because the teevee said so and I saw a video where the TX governor was asked a question about this and he redirected to something stupid about not allowing any rapists in the state.

Also, in case anyone cares, the 6-week “heartbeat” claimed in the moniker of these laws isn’t an actual heartbeat, it’s an electrical signal that’s not audible and can only be detected by ultrasound. The heart doesn’t start beating until 10-12 weeks.

Last I checked there’s a wide range of laws in Europe, from few restrictions in the north to downright Handmaid’s Tale in Poland.

We can argue until the cows come home about when life begins. My point was that your claim, that women considering abortion do not consider what they are aborting to be a child, was incorrect.

Agree.

Disagree. If the goal is fewer abortions, than laws restricting abortions, even if they contain exceptions, can be considered a move in the right direction. If putting a poison pill in a law makes you feel better, but keeps the law from being passed, it’s nothing but campaign flyer material. You sound like AOC saying that the soft infrastructure plan that Manchin in willing to vote for is worthless because it isn’t the 3.5 trillion plan she says we need.

But they go as long as it takes for that child to get a job and way longer than it takes for the child to get into public school and the mother to have the time for a part time job. Not to mention the assistance that isn’t even tied to having children.

I know it’s not. But you are the one that pull the 90% statistic out of thin air. You are the one that claimed it’s more binary than it is.

Once again - the word “most” here is doing a lot more heavy lifting than it should considering you have no stats to back this up. If pro-life people wanted to punish women, why are all new abortion laws introduced punishing doctors and abortion facilitators, but not the women getting the abortions?

I shouldn’t have gone along with the premise earlier (pushed by the left) that contraception access and sex-ed are the main drivers of unwanted pregnancy and therefore abortion. Teen pregnancy and abortion rates have been dropping steadily for quite some time without any significant change in contraception access or sex-ed prevalence. While many on the right are against expanding contraception access (they generally just don’t want it funded by taxes) and some sex-ed that teaches things with which they disagree, those policy preferences wouldn’t have a markedly significant effect on abortion rates. I’m not sure what you mean by “positions that maximize the danger of non-marital, no reproductive sex” other than not wanting contraception paid for via taxes, so if there is another policy you are referring to, please explain.

Phenomenon? To what extent?

Agree.

You say fetal defects, I say anti-down syndrome eugenics. As for “something went wrong,” I assume you mean medical emergencies. This is also a misnomer. There are no medical conditions that require the intentional killing of an unborn baby in order to save a mother. There are some conditions in which a living unborn baby must be delivered early, sometimes before viability, that results in death. But none where a living fetus must be annihilated before removing its body from the mother.

You are right. I was wrong. I remember looking up both exceptions to rape/incest and exceptions for the life of the mother. And I could only find exceptions for the life of the mother. My mistake.

All heartbeats are electrical signals. The point of the heartbeat isn’t the sound it makes, it’s the fact that there is a heart and it is beating. It signifies a new and separate life. The stage at which a heartbeat can be detected and with what instrument isn’t the point. There was nothing that could detect a heartbeat at 10 weeks before abdominal ultrasounds were invented, yet there were still unborn babies with hearts beating in there.

Last I checked, the most common abortion limitations (significant restrictions after 12 weeks) in Europe would be described by an american pro-choice activist as an assault on reproductive rights and contrary to roe v. wade.

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The heart isn’t formed at 6 weeks, it is not yet a functioning organ capable of pumping blood. Isn’t that what “beating” means? My understanding is that the electrical signals are early indicators of the building blocks that have yet to form the heart muscles. And that’s not done until 10-12 weeks.

That’s a nice fantasy – lungs aren’t functional until about 35 weeks, and without medical help it’s usually closer to 37. There’s no separate life without the oxygen from the mother’s placenta (or medical help).

Once again, wrong subject. Life began more than 4 billion years ago. Conception is not the creation of life. It is the creation of a separate living entity, but that doesn’t say that it’s a child.

Then whether the pregnancy is a result of rape or consent is irrelevant.

If the goal is fewer abortions you can also accomplish that by reducing the number of oopses. In practice the places that prohibit abortion entirely have an abortion rate as high as places it’s legal–because their policies result in more oopses.

The school day is shorter than the workday. Big problem. And you think she’s caring for herself + child on a part time job??

Just because you don’t like my statistics doesn’t make them false. Admittedly, I gave that from memory–and I was wrong. 92%, not 90%.

The punishment is being saddled with an unwanted child.

No change? It’s called the internet! Information is a lot more available.

For example, opposition to the HPV vaccine. Anything that makes sex safer is unacceptable.

It’s not something that there would be any way to keep numbers on it–it’s not like they come in wearing a sign that says “abortion protester”. It’s just many clinics have noted the pattern of seeing people they recognize from the protests.

Obviously you do not have a medical degree.

  1. What if delivery is impossible?

  2. What if the problem occurs before a live birth is possible?

One case I know of that warrants an immediate abortion: Lassa fever infection in the third trimester. Going for delivery is way too slow, going for C-section is a very bad idea and there’s no real point, anyway–fetal mortality is basically 100% anyway. Do the abortion promptly and her risk of death is about 1%. Don’t do it and it’s about 16%.

Or consider what happened to my niece. About 20 weeks, an infection that would be likely to cause blindness. The only treatment was a pregnancy class X drug. What was she supposed to do?

And your “anti-eugenics” is child abuse in my book.

Heartbeats are measured by electrical signals. Actual heartbeats are contractions by the heart. At 6 weeks there are no contractions, no pumping. You are basically saying a TV signal is a TV.

Humor me on the feasibility concerns in the modest proposal below.

Well since the government and states are busy mandating social behaviors including and up to injecting you with whatever they’re in favor of these days, how about we put something in the public water supply for female birth control so by default all the women are temporarily unable to become pregnant? No more mistakes, and no more abortions for anything aside from actual development or serious health problems. Nearly none for rape, etc, either.

If you’re ready to get pregnant, report to your local Dept of Birthing Persons for approval (being of adult age, or with both parents’ consent if say 16-18) and we’ll give you a years worth of daily antidote pills. If you can’t be bothered with the paperwork or to take a daily pill, probably you’re not serious enough about taking responsibility you shouldn’t be having a kid.

Seems like such an arrangement would reduce abortions and unwanted children by a very large extent, goals I think a lot of people would agree with.

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Generally, from 6 ½ -7 weeks is the time when a heartbeat can be detected and viability can be assessed. A normal heartbeat at 6-7 weeks would be 90-110 beats per minute. The presence of an embryonic heartbeat is an assuring sign of the health of the pregnancy.
Once a heartbeat is detected, the chance of the pregnancy continuing ranges from 70-90% dependent on what type of ultrasound is used.

I don’t think your argument about the heartbeat not really being a heartbeat is doing a good job making any sort of point you are trying to make.

It is clear you two don’t like me using the word “life.” I understand you aren’t willing to have the debate on any sort of terms that makes it seem like you are in favor of snuffing out a life. That’s understandable. But I also get the feeling you aren’t even willing to consider what I am trying to say, so I will move on. Don’t bother responding again to correct my terminology and I won’t with you. Deal?

Irrelevant to what? To the moral question? I agree. Irrelevant to most voters that hold an opinion on abortion laws? I disagree. It is clearly relevant to a lot of people or else it wouldn’t be a debated topic.

Care to cite this claim?

Yes. A single mother on government assistance plus a part time job isn’t so terrible a life as to justify the killing of an unborn baby. Like I mentioned earlier, there are thousands of pregnant women risking their life each month traveling long distances from South America crossing our Southern border illegally in dangerous situations hoping to have the CHANCE to give birth to a baby here and raise it in our version of poverty.

You’re memory is indeed failing you. My reference to your 90% claim was when you said this:

Reread what I wrote to you and you’ll see I specifically said “agree” in reference to your claim that the vast majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester.

Incorrect. No one is forcing mothers of unwanted children to keep them.

So the internet is helping drive teen pregnancy down? Ok. If you say so. Since conservatives aren’t trying to abolish the internet, I guess that means you agree with me that conservative policies are unlikely to increase the rate of teen pregnancies and are therefore unlikely to increase the abortion rate.

You are confusing a policy in which individuals can choose whether or not to vaccinate with a policy that prohibits vaccination. A policy allowing people to choose whether or not to be vaccinated does not make sex less safe generally. The choice itself is what may or may not make sex less safe for that particular individual only.

Sounds like a few anecdotes at best or a completely made up “phenomenon” at worst.

No, but this guy does. And he directly contradicts your claim that a c-section is a bad idea.

That’s up to her. But taking a class x drug that is necessary for the treatment of a serious illness in the mother is not the same thing as having an abortion.

What do you mean? I know you’re not saying it’s “child abuse” to give birth to a baby that is likely to have down syndrome?

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