American Politics 3.0 - Back to Brunch

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Had Hillary been elected this wouldn't have happened, Democrats protect the status quo, that is not insignificant as every poor woman in the south is about to find out

If their entire strategy to protect abortion rights, voting rights, etc., hinges on winning every single election in which a SC seat could be up for grabs, they're either morons or liars.

[Wormius]

Is the change of terminology from “pro-life” to “anti-abortion” a reflection on supporters’ real views on human life?

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by rubecube

If their entire strategy to protect abortion rights, voting rights, etc., hinges on winning every single election in which a SC seat could be up for grabs, they're either morons or liars.

It's a better strategy than spending your whole life hoping for a 'proper' left wing Congress that will never ever be elected

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

That is not correct. We have a legal right to abortion, derived from the right to life, liberty and security of the person, enshrined in Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's not that there's a failure to prohibit abortion, it's illegal to prohibit abortion - the government had a criminal law on the books, and that law was struck down.

https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/sc...m/288/index.do

That's my point - if this is the reason you're against an abortion prohibition, the implication is that if the "back alley abortions problem" could, practically, be solved so that it doesn't offset the lives saved, you would then be fine with a prohibition on abortion. You're entitled to that view, but I don't think it's a view held by most pro-choice people.

I'm not a lawyer, but I read the link you posted (thanks!) and it doesn't seem like they enshrined abortion access as an inalienable charter right to me. They struck down the specific prohibition, which has never been replaced since. The following supports this position:

However, it is possible that a future enactment by Parliament that would require a higher degree of danger to health in the latter months of pregnancy, as opposed to the early months, for an abortion to be lawful, could achieve a proportionality which would be acceptable under s. 1 of the Charter .

Given the conclusion that s. 251 contains rules unnecessary to the protection of the foetus, the question as to whether a foetus is included in the word "everyone" in s. 7 , so as to have a right to "life, liberty and security of the person" under the Charter , need not be decided.

I generally agree with your second paragraph, and acknowledge that is not a mainstream pro-choice position. I think that is relatively unlikely to occur, as I can't think of an example where prohibiting something previously allowed has gone well, so I think that's a hypothetical without much practical application. Like prohibition of alcohol in the 20s, I'd expect prohibition of abortion to come with all sorts of issues, and that is primarily why I'm opposed.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

It's a better strategy than spending your whole life hoping for a 'proper' left wing Congress that will never ever be elected

Okay, but that's like saying that playing the lottery is a better get rich strategy than hoping for a random inheritance from a long-lost relative. It's splitting hairs between two hopeless strategies. Hence why I'm saying "just vote harder" is a silly mantra.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

You think abortion ends this? birth control is next my friend, along with mixed race marriages and obviously anything remotely gay, Rosa Parks can get her arse to the back of the bus again, this allows the states to do almost anything they want

94 per cent of Americans approve of interracial marriage. So who’s the political constituency for winding back the clock here?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I'm not a lawyer, but I read the link you posted (thanks!) and it doesn't seem like they enshrined abortion access as an inalienable charter right to me.

It's not inalienable - there are two possibilities. First, a government could impose a restriction on abortion that doesn't contravene this and other SCC rulings about the extent of application of S.7 in this context. That has actually been tried, unsurprisingly - without success. So, in short, there is a legal right to an abortion that no Canadian government can encroach on, but that right has - at least in theory - limits, beyond which the government is free to legislate. In practice, actually legislating restrictions on abortion without running afoul of s.7 has been less than fruitful. There are obviously other subsequent cases on this topic, and experts in the law on this area can speak to those better than I can. But I doubt you'll be surprised to find that after the 1988 decision I linked to, which struck down the criminal law in question, the SCC has taken it further, to a point where even if they don't explicitly say there's a constitutional right to an abortion in so many words, the existence of that right is a practical reality.

The second possibility is that the Supreme Court could revisit the area and change the law - that's always open to them. It seems very unlikely that that will ever happen, but it's technically possible, which also means the right to an abortion in Canada isn't "inalienable".

I suppose that it's also technically true that no Charter right is inalienable. After all, there is a clear set of rules about how to amend the Charter. It's possible, though extremely unlikely, that a set of circumstances could occur that eliminate your right to free expression, for example. So from that perspective no legal right in Canada is inalienable.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

94 per cent of Americans approve of interracial marriage. So who’s the political constituency for winding back the clock here?

that's the whole point of social media, whipping up anger against things and people no one cared about a few years before, if your whole party relies on angry racist nostalgia you have to keep finding meat to feed your base, no one gave a toss about Brexit in 2010 but a handful of nutters

[Dion]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1521683203056046080

[afc wimbledon]

Senator Braun of Indiana on the states banning inter racial marriages, I guess they just assume we know the gay marriages are toast so what's the point bothering to ask

"When it comes to issues, you can't have it both ways," said Braun. "When you want that diversity to shine within our federal system, there are going to be rules and proceedings that are maybe going to be out of sync with what other states would do. It's the beauty of the system and that's where the differences among our 50 states in points of view ought to express themselves."

Asked point-blank whether he would be "okay with the Supreme Court leaving the question of interracial marriage to the states," Braun replied in the affirmative.

"Yes," he said. "You're not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too."

[GGG]

I don’t think same sex marriage or interracial marriage will be sent back to the states.

Gorsuch in Bostok wrote the opinion which extended employer protections to gay and transgendered individuals. Robert’s and the liberal justices joined him.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by GGG

I don’t think same sex marriage or interracial marriage will be sent back to the states.

Gorsuch in Bostok wrote the opinion which extended employer protections to gay and transgendered individuals. Robert’s and the liberal justices joined him.

They dont have to be sent back to the states, all it needs is some southern ####hole, Mississippi or Arkansas would be my guess coming up with their own laws using the States rights this ruling establishes, obviously their law gets challenged and then the mostly politically motivated court adheres to its own precedent and rules that as terrible as it is banning mixed marriage is all part of the rich tapestry that makes the states unique

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Okay, but that's like saying that playing the lottery is a better get rich strategy than hoping for a random inheritance from a long-lost relative. It's splitting hairs between two hopeless strategies. Hence why I'm saying "just vote harder" is a silly mantra.

Sure. But if a guy is going to shoot me in the face and I get to pick his gun - I'm going to choose the one that fails 1% of the time vs the one that never fails. Both of my options suck - but only 1 of them gives me a chance of not getting shot in the face.

Its silly - but its the only realistic option. And people saying 'screw the democrats' and not voting just leads to more republicans. It gets you further away from you want.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Sure. But if a guy is going to shoot me in the face and I get to pick his gun - I'm going to choose the one that fails 1% of the time vs the one that never fails. Both of my options suck - but only 1 of them gives me a chance of not getting shot in the face.

Its silly - but its the only realistic option. And people saying 'screw the democrats' and not voting just leads to more republicans. It gets you further away from you want.

But it's not wrong that people expect more from the officials that they voted in and that the gun fails more than 1% of the time. There are mechanisms in place.

For instance, they could make BBB better so that Manchin approves it, ie, protecting energy while still addressing climate change instead of a massive new green deal. And then Democrats throw up their hands saying that the Senate is undemocratic.

[AltaGuy]

If Roberts is somehow able to get Kavanaugh back on his side to support only incremental change to Roe, I think that the US Supreme Court might survive as a reputable institution.

Absent that, I do not see any good reason why the Dems shouldn't stack the obviously political court and forget about any nostalgic goals of non-partisanship or judicial impartiality.

The text messages between Meadows and Ginni Thomas were also incredibly damning.

I really hope that because of this issue the Democrats can be galvanized into actually fighting back instead of meekly accepting Mitch et al's naked power grabs.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

But it's not wrong that people expect more from the officials that they voted in and that the gun fails more than 1% of the time. There are mechanisms in place.

For instance, they could make BBB better so that Manchin approves it, ie, protecting energy while still addressing climate change instead of a massive new green deal. And then Democrats throw up their hands saying that the Senate is undemocratic.

Sure - they could. But the BBB that Manchin approves won't be the one that Rubecube wants.

I just dislike the idea that Democrats fully control everything that happens in government and the Republicans are some kind of robotic evil creature that is easily stopped if the Democrats just did something different.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

But if you do think that it's ending the life of a human person, then saying "I think this is ending the life of a person, and I think that's a moral evil, but I don't think the state should be able to interfere with your ability to take this particular type of human life" is a position for which you have yet to provide any good rational argument for that anyone would accept.

A bit late to the discussion, but your whole argument is based on completely false assumptions.

For starters, you're trying very hard to apply rigid logic to morality, while it is EXTREMELY well established that people's actual morality is basically never consistent, and it's doubtful whether it's even possible to be consistently logical. In fact the whole idea that people should strive for logically consistent moral positions is itself a somewhat marginal moral position, and not how the most people see morality.

Also in practice, as much as people (men especially) like to talk about applying logic to morality, this is not how morality functions at all. Morality, as I'm sure you would agree, can really only come from two places: inside or outside, aka personal emotions or belief in an outside authority (such as the law or a religious text), and there is never any one fundamental belief that underlies any persons morality. Instead there are always numerous various beliefs that are always going to be in conflict.

One of the most primal urges of humans is the need to in some way belong to some kind of a society. This is what drives that outside morality, but it also drives a lot of base emotions, such as the mostly extremely healthy idea that it's just better to let other people do what they think is right if it doesn't bother me.

Which is how you get the by far most common position on abortion in the world, which is "it's okay for them to kill their own babies if they want, as long as I don't have to kill my baby if I don't want to".

Babies getting killed in general is not really a big deal for most people most of the time, as long as no one rubs it in our face. Just like we are totally chill with genocide if it doesn't come too close to us. (See; uighurs and people not bothering to do even the bare minimum about it like not buying chinese stuff where it's easy.) If people weren't generally pretty chill about it, there would be no debate over the universal medical care or social security, or gun control, or traffic safety, or really a lot things that are messed up in the US.

I would in fact argue that there is no genuinely held moral position where abortion is bad but those other things are just fine as they are.

If this was actually about "unborn babies are people and we should protect them", then logically those same people would also be extremely concerned about the quite high infant mortality rate in that country. That's like (quick math) 10,000 extra dead babies every year the government is doing nothing about!

We also know that the vast, vast majority of the people who think they genuinely care about the topic would very quickly stop caring about it if the topic disappeared from national discussion. We know this, because this is what has happened in every other country that doesn't talk about this constantly.

In fact, we know that even in most countries which get constantly bombarded with the US discussion on this issue, the anti-abortion stance is a clear minority position.

The only reason why it's "a big moral question" in the US is because it's one of the few talking points the conservatives have where most liberals actually show respect to their garbage inhumane political grandstanding and treat is as a somewhat legitimate moral position, which it isn't. It's just US politics.

We also know that the same people who can throw rallies against abortion clinics can completely forget about the topic when they move abroad. We also know they can be totally okay with someone close to them actually having an abortion.

In my eyes, you're defending people's right to a position they mostly don't even really have, at least not in the way you describe it.

I would also like to point out that in consequentalist morality, it's immoral for you to treat that position with respect, because treating it with respect and letting it fester is clearly shown to lead to laws which have some pretty obviously evil real world consequences.

Just in general, defending people's right to have bad ideas is not good. It gives the ideas of those people legitimacy and power they would not have on their own.

Classical liberalism is just a very fundamentally flawed idea.

[Leeman4Gilmour]

If this conversation leaks into Canadian politics, I'm going to be very pissed off.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by rubecube

If their entire strategy to protect abortion rights, voting rights, etc., hinges on winning every single election in which a SC seat could be up for grabs, they're either morons or liars.

You are still fighting this fight that the democrats are no better...seriously what more needs to happen. Wake up dude.

Everybody knew this would be the consequence of Hillary/Trump

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour

If this conversation leaks into Canadian politics, I'm going to be very pissed off.

It already has, not that it ever really went away.