Category: abortion

A new solution to the gun issue

May 26, 2022 • 9:00 am

Everybody’s pondering how to stop mass shootings, including tightening gun restrictions, and of course nobody has a solution. Here’s one offered by Phyllis Chesler, whom I hadn’t heard of before. She’s apparently quite a well known second-wave feminist, and (relevant to this piece) strongly “pro choice”. Here’s how Wikipedia describes her:

[Chesler is an] American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women’s studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY).[1][2] She is a renowned second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of 18 books, including the best-sellers Women and Madness (1972), With Child: A Story of Motherhood (1979), and An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (2013). Chesler has written extensively about topics such as gender, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, and violence against women.

Malgorzata, who sent me this link, says that Chesler has been somewhat demonized because she’s a defender of Israel as well as a a critic of the misogyny of Islam. But these aren’t the topics here: it’s gun violence (she brings in abortion at the end). Chesler has a novel solution to the problem of mass shootings. It may be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but given Chesler’s history it’s not that likely.

Here’s her piece from the New English Review (click on the screenshot to read):

Here are some quotes from her piece, which some will claim is anti-male, but really, you can’t argue with the data. Her quotes are indented and the bolding is hers):

President Biden focused both on the Gun Lobby and on God in his speech at the White House in response to the latest horror—the mass shooting of nineteen children by an 18-year-old Hispanic man/boy who, we’ve just been told, had failed to graduate from the Uvalde High School. That was what he was allegedly arguing with his grandmother about when he shot her down.

I guess our President did not read my piece about the single most important variable which is invariably always missing, never mentioned, when it comes to mass shooting, namely, that 99.9% of mass murderers are all male.

. . . President Biden: Where is the funding for mental health that our country needs so desperately? Chirlane McCray: What did you do with the three billion dollars allocated for mental health services? Clearly, nothing much, given all the epidemic of shootings on New York City streets and in our subways allegedly by mentally ill men.

The male ego. The supposedly male thin skin. The inability of some men to absorb abuse, frustration, failure, or disappointment without violently turning it against someone else. Yes, it is a real problem.

Now I tend to bridle when I see men lumped together and dissed as a group (one rankling example is the “old white male” trope). But Chesler isn’t saying that all males are potential murderers: rather,  that there’s something about the male psyche that leads to a higher proportion of mass shooters (and, I suspect, all shooters) among males. And she’s right, whether that “something” be evolutionary, cultural, or both. (I suspect the risk-taking behavior of males, combined with their innately higher aggression are some evolutionary aspects of this situation. And of course “macho”-ness is culturally encouraged in men.)

And here’s her solution, which is funny because of the parallel with anti-abortion activitists:

Sometimes a very good idea crosses my desk. Written by an unknown genius, and passed along by one Nev Schulman, please allow me to share this with you.

Our Anonymous Genius suggests the following:

“How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion—mandatory 48-hour waiting period, parental permission, a note from a doctor proving he understands what he’s about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence…Let’s close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.”

Of course this is sarcastic, but Chesler has a point.

Chesler:

From NPR: Joan L. Roth/Courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan

The Atlantic: deep-sixing the word “woman” in the abortion debate for ideological reasons does not help the cause

May 17, 2022 • 11:45 am

When liberal venues such as The Atlantic start picking holes in the progressive Left’s irrational or woke tendencies, then you may find some hope that the whole insanity gripping the Left (and heartening the Right) might be coming to an end. I hold out no such hopes, but nevertheless cheer on people like staff editor Helen Lewis, who in this Atlantic article raises the possibility that getting rid of the word “woman”, as many Progressives want to do—the rationale is that the word must now include transgender women, and this, causing confusion, mandates flushing “woman” down the drain—may have deleterious consequences for the Left and, in particular for the abortion debate.

If there’s any issue that holds out hope that Democrats won’t be totally destroyed in this November’s elections, it’s the Supreme Court’s upcoming dismantling of Roe v. Wade. The current construal of that soon-to-be defunct decision is supported by 60% of Americans, and if the Dems can leverage and keep harping on a a sensible abortion position like Roe (even if it can’t be passed in Congress), their platform would have more appeal.

Unless, that is, the whole issue gets sabotaged by those who want to get rid of the word “woman” on ideological grounds. And so it is going, pushed along by the newly woke ACLU who have decided that in every relevant respect, including sports, abortion, and jailing, “transwomen are women”. Well, yes, for nearly all purposes, and I’m happy to use whatever pronoun makes someone comfortable. But I won’t pretend that biological men or women who change gender are exactly the same as cis men or women in some circumstances. And expunging “women” from the abortion debate is not going to make a lot of biological women (or people in general, including lesbians and gays) very happy.

Click to read.

A few of Lewis’s excerpt with the relevant tweets. Here’s one that got her going:

You can see the problem, of course. Abortion bans disproportionately harm biological women above all, if you take the normal meaning of “disproportional.” Lewis notes that 99.9% of those who need abortions are cis women. She dissects the tweet:

, , , on May 11, the ACLU once again caught the moment, posting a tweet that perfectly encapsulates a new taboo on the American left: a terrible aversion to using the word women.

According to the ACLU,

Abortion bans disproportionately harm:

■ Black, Indigenous & other people of color

■ the LGBTQ community

■ immigrants

■ young people

■ those working to make ends meet

■ people with disabilities

Wait. Run that second point past me again? Surely one of the many things to recommend lesbian sex is that it doesn’t risk getting you pregnant. Unsurprisingly, multiple commentators struggled to see how abortion bans “disproportionately harm the LGBTQ community”—even if those laws do indeed harm parts of it, such as queer women and trans men who have procreative sex. The ACLU’s defenders have pointed to data from 2015 showing that high-school students who self-define as lesbian but have had sex with male partners are more likely to get pregnant than their female counterparts who identify as heterosexual. But comprehensive longitudinal studies have found that lesbians across the age spectrum are about half as likely to get pregnant as straight women. Another suggestion would be that abortion bans could also affect IVF provision, which many gay and lesbian couples rely on to have a baby. To a casual reader, though, the ACLU has used phrasing that reads like an incantation—a list of disadvantaged groups that are more interesting than women. There’s something of the record-store hipster about it all: I care about groups with intersecting oppressions you haven’t even heard of.

Lewis reminds us of how the ACLU arrantly changed the words of the late Justice Ginsburg in a pro-abortion ad last year, eliminating all references to “women.” Remember this?

Why is this effacing of “women” happening? Because supposedly jettisoning the word “women” makes one’s appeal more inclusive and thus rakes in more money for organizations like the ACLU (they’ll get no dosh from me).

Lewis:

One of the most irritating facets of this debate is that anyone like me who points out that it’s possible to provide abortion services to trans people without jettisoning everyday language such as women is accused of waging a culture war. No. We are noticing a culture war. A Great Unwomening is under way because American charities and political organizations survive by fundraising—and their most vocal donors don’t want to be charged with offenses against intersectionality. Cold economic logic therefore dictates that charities should phrase their appeals in the most fashionable, novel, and bulletproof-to-Twitter-backlash way possible. Mildly peeved centrists may grumble but will donate anyway; it’s the left flank that needs to be appeased.

Pointing out that women are the ones who largely need abortions is very second wave, boring, old-school, so done. Witness those placards held by older women that read: I can’t believe I’m still protesting this shit. Instead, the charities think: Can we find a way to make this fight feel a little more … now? And that’s how you end up with the National Women’s Law Center tweeting, “In case you didn’t hear it right the first time: People of all genders need abortions. People of all genders need abortions. People of all genders need abortions. People of all genders need abortions. People of all genders need abortions. People of all genders need abortions.” (No, that’s not my copy-and-paste keys getting stuck. The group really said it six times.)

Yep: see for yourself.

It’s not hard to see that this circumlocution and annoying repetition takes away the power that the Left really has on this issue: to most liberals, abortion instantiates a biological woman’s right to control her body and that right is being taken away. (And yes, it’s only biological women, who happen to include transgender men, who need abortions).

But does eliminating “woman” really help the abortion-rights campaign in America as opposed to catering to a few people who insist that men can get abortions? Lewis doesn’t think so:

In Britain, where I live, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, a major abortion provider, announced that it would continue to use women and other gendered language in much of its general literature, while developing tailored materials for clients who identify otherwise. Not only has the sky not fallen as a result, but Britons continue to have access to state-funded abortions, paid for out of general taxation. While American charities congratulate themselves on the purity of their language, the communities they serve—people of all genders who could have a free abortion in Britain—struggle to access terminations. No one should be polishing their halo here.

And the potential harm: ignoring the most important issues (and alienating supporters) by getting bogged down by pronouns. As Lewis notes above, one can still be sensitive to transgender men who can get pregnant and yet still keep the word “woman”. She continues:

Language battles should not distract us from the true injustice raised by the potential repeal of Roe v. Wade: the removal of the right to privacy and bodily autonomy for 51 percent of Americans. But something is lost when abortion-rights activists shy away from saying women. We lose the ability to talk about women as more than a random collection of organs, bodies that happen to menstruate or bleed or give birth. We lose the ability to connect women’s common experiences, and the discrimination they face in the course of a reproductive lifetime. By substituting people for women, we lose the ability to speak of women as a class. We dismantle them into pieces, into functions, into commodities. This happens in many ways. This week I also saw an Axios editor rebuke a New York Times reporter for writing “surrogate mothers” rather than “gestational carriers”—as if the latter phrase were not dehumanizing, a whisper away from “vessels.”

To her credit, Lewis does consider at several points reasons people adduce for eschewing the word “woman”, but in the end rejects them. Her last sentence here is eloquent:

In my view, the best argument for gender-neutral language in the abortion debate is the ACLU’s unspoken one: History suggests that society doesn’t care much about women, so maybe abortion rights will have more appeal if supporters invoke some other causes instead. And yet I can’t stomach it. Supposedly progressive groups like the ACLU are free riding on the work of centuries of feminist activism, all of it based on the implicit or explicit premise that there are two sexes, one that did the voting and property-owning and being president, and one that did the unpaid scut work and giving birth. The ACLU can afford to wipe away the word women only because everyone knows which half of the population needs abortions. Women will continue to exist, and to be disproportionately harmed by abortion bans—even if their existence becomes unspeakable.

Now that is good writing!

 

Quote of the Day: A Catholic notes the benefits of Roe v. Wade while still opposing the decision

May 10, 2022 • 10:00 am

In today’s NYT you can find the op-ed below (click on screenshot to read), a defense of overturning Roe v. Wade written by Matthew Walther. As you can see by the subtitle, Walther is editor of the bimonthly Catholic literary journal Lamp. 

I suppose you could say that it’s to Walther’s credit that he admits that there could be bad socioeconomic consequences of overturning this bit of “settled law,” but in the end it’s clear that he thinks those consequences, good or bad, are irrelevant. As he says in his last sentence, “What is right is very rarely what is convenient.” For he sees the shelving of Roe v. Wade as equivalent to “the joyful fact of hundreds of thousands of additional babies being born.”

In fact, although he mentions that there may be some economic downsides of Roe v. Wade, in the main he seems to agree with this:

It is not possible to conceive of our present way of life — the decline of heavy and textile manufacturing and the rise of the service economy, financialization, the collapse of traditional familial and other social structures, the subsuming of virtually every facet of our existence into digital technologies — in the absence of the estimated 63 million abortions that have been performed in America since 1973.

and this:

[In the last twenty years], countless economists and social scientists have argued the opposite: that legal abortion is not only compatible with but also necessary for sustained economic growth. Among other things, reduced access to abortion is correlated with lower rates of labor force participation, reduced wages and increased job turnover.

If the actions of major corporations in states such as Texas, which recently banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, are any indication, America’s business establishment agrees. The boards of corporations like Citigroup, with a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, have announced that they will subsidize travel for employees who seek out-of-state abortions.

Opponents of abortion should consider the possibility that these corporations are correct in their apparent assumption that abortion contributes to the maximization of shareholder value. Are we prepared to accept the converse proposition, to invite a reduction in shareholder value by banning abortion?

So here we have a Catholic saying that the economic consequences of banning abortion could well have been good, but he doesn’t care because abortion is a fundamental wrong—it’s murder.

I don’t care that much about socioeconomic consequences, either, but for the opposite reason: I see abortion in the main as a societal and personal good, preventing the state from interfering from a woman’s ability to control her own body. The difference between Walther and me is that I don’t see a fetus as equivalent to a sentient human being, and would probably extend Roe v. Wade further than even the its present limits (first and perhaps second trimester).

And this difference comes from Walther’s Catholicism. Where, I ask, is the evidence (beyond that asserted by religious authorities) that abortion is identical to murder, even in its very early stages? There is clearly a developmental continuum in a fetus, with an abrupt break when the baby is born, and so drawing a line for when a fetus becomes equivalent to a person with rights, including freedom from “murder”, is purely arbitrary. Many Catholics, though, draw the line at a rationally insupportable stage: fertilization.  A “person” is not created at fertilization: we have a zygote that now will go on to continue development. That zygote is an undifferentiated ball of cells without mentation or the ability to feel pain. And there’s no evidence it has a soul or anything differentiating it from the embryos of any number of vertebrate species.

But I digress: read the article:

Here Walther asserts the equivalence of abortion with murder, which outweighs any possible negative societal consequences (my bolding).

The scope of the problem is far broader than economics. Research over the years has suggested that an America without abortion would mean more single mothers and more births to teenage mothers, increased strain on Medicaid and other welfare programs, higher crime rates, a less dynamic and flexible work force, an uptick in carbon emissions, lower student test scores and goodness knows what else. If you sincerely believe, as I do, that every abortion means the deliberate killing of an innocent human being, is there some hypothetical threshold for negative growth, carbon dioxide levels or work force participation rates beyond which the protection of that life would be too burdensome?

For me, the answer is no.

. . . .I believe that those who oppose abortion should not discount the possibility that its proscription will have consequences that some of us would otherwise regret. To insist, as opponents of abortion often have, that the economists John Donohue and Steven Levitt cannot be right about the correlation between Roe and the reduced incidence of crime two decades later strikes me as a tacit concession that if they were right, our position on abortion might have to be altered.

So far, so good. At least he admits there’s a downside to prohibiting abortion, though he sees abortion as an act whose downside can never be large enough to warrant allowing it. But then he puts on his Tish Harrison Warren suit and says, “Well, let’s justify banning abortion by being ever so much nicer to the unwanted children who are born, and by creating an atmosphere in which they could thrive.” If only it were that easy! And even if it were, I would still say that abortion is a choice best left to the pregnant woman.

Walther continues:

For the same reason, opponents of abortion should commit ourselves to the most generous and humane provisions for mothers and children (paid family leave, generous child benefits, direct income subsidies for stay-at-home mothers, single-payer health care) without being Pollyannaish. No matter what we do, in a post-Roe world many children who would not otherwise have been born will live lives of utter misery, and many of our fellow Americans will be indifferent to their plight. If we wish to dispel the noxious argument that only happy lives are worth saving, we will have to be honest about the limits of social policy and private charity in regulating the turbid ebb and flow of human suffering.

The last sentence puzzles me.  A life that can be either “happy” or “unhappy” does not begin until a child is born. Yes, you can say that a fetus has a “life”, but it is not a noxious argument to say that one of the major benefits of abortion is that it prevents unhappy lives from coming into being. 

Here’s what I can live with: 60% of Americans are satisfied with keeping the Roe v. Wade prescriptions in place. I would go further, but this “settled” law seems to me a good compromise, though largely a compromise with religious people who wish to force their beliefs on the rest of us. The compromise is necessary, in religious America, to hold our Republic together, and it’s done a pretty good job in the last fifty years.

Could there be a downside of allowing abortion that’s so harmful that I would favor abolishing the practice? I can’t imagine one. There’s no chance it will drive the population to zero, and any economic consequences seem to me not harmful but helpful.  But in the end I see it as the right of a woman to determine what to do with her own body, and, like the First Amendment, that’s not something to be monkeyed with.

Pastor Tish Harrison Warren sees prohibiting abortion as part of the Social Justice Movement

May 9, 2022 • 10:00 am

Reader Kenneth said he found the latest NYT column by Anglican Priest Tish Harrison Warren “hallucinatory”. His reason, amply supported by Harrison’s words, is that she is in favor of the upcoming Supreme Court decision that overturns Roe v. Wade (and is apparently against abortion per se), but sees this as an opportunity to create more social justice by supporting women and their now-to-be-born children, as well as by giving women opportunities that prevent them from getting pregnant.

This is all part of Warren’s schtick of downplaying her religious beliefs to seem more liberal and kindly. After all, the NYT don’t want religious fundamentalists in their pages, particularly ones who oppose abortion because the fetus has some kin of soul. Yet Warren, according to her column, apparently has that belief. The cowardly thing is that she doesn’t say this outright: rather, she either quotes others or conveys her views obliquely. Yet though it is her first responsibility in such a column to tell us where she stands on the issue, she shies away from it. Nevertheless, there are several places where she makes her opinion clear.

Click to read:

 

First, the two statements where Warren makes clear that she’s “pro-life” (aka “anti-abortion”); the bolding is mine:

Pro-life activists have been working toward overturning the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision ever since it came down in 1973. But as I spoke to folks from pro-life and whole-life movements last week after the leak of a draft opinion that indicated the court will overturn Roe, the mood was complicated. I did not find unalloyed jubilance or triumph.

Most people I talked to expressed cautious optimism and hope but also concern. This was in part because they worried that the court’s draft opinion may shift in weeks to come. But more so because those who take a holistic approach to reducing abortion feel that legally restricting abortion, while a win for justice and the voiceless and vulnerable, is not alone enough to create a culture that is holistically pro-life and addresses the needs of both women and unborn children.

It’s pretty clear that she’s expressing her own take here by quoting others (“Most people I talked to. . .”) who agree with her. She also expresses her virtue by refusing to gloat.  Here’s the other statement:

The pro-life community has to reckon with the long-ignored elephant in the room: Economic realities, not abortion laws, are our true antagonists. Creating a pro-life culture that supports women and mothers economically is how the pro-life movement should have responded to Roe v. Wade in the first place. And now we’re two laps behind. To truly value life, we must pursue policies and community resources that support paid leave for parents, child care, equitable health care and education.

But what is Warren’s stand? Does she favor banning all abortions, including those from rape and incest? And if she grants those an exception, does she favor banning all other abortions, from the get-go? (This is implied in her statement that “legally restricting abortion” is a “win for justice and the voiceless and vulnerable.”) But she doesn’t want to be explicit.

Again, and perhaps to her credit, Warren doesn’t gloat over a court victory that she surely supports. But support it she does. Note, though, that the last sentence, “To truly value life, we must pursue policies and community resources that support paid leave for parents, child care, equitable health care and education,” tries to link the anti-abortion movement with social justice—a weird pairing indeed!

Here’s her own program to reduce abortions to nearly zero, most supported with statements by other religionists. The bullet points are hers, but my comments are in parentheses:

  • Prioritize paid universal leave
  • Address the elephant in the room (this involves rectifying the “economic inequalities” that she mentions in the last quote above).
  • Focus on affordable housing, child care, and transportation
  • Find creative ways to serve women and children (sanctuaries for abused women and children, job training for economically disadvantaged women)
  • Promote pregnancy prevention. (She mentions increased contraception and a “decrease in risky sexual behavior.” But her failure to mention “promulgating the ‘Plan B’ pill” leads me to believe that she thinks all abortion should be banned, since the Plan B Pill is an early-term abortion of a one-day-old zygote).
  • Build a coalition of people with different views on abortion. (What she means here is that everyone should accept the refutation of Roe v. Wade and work together “to boldly advocate the social services that will ensure care for both mother and child.” But what if the woman doesn’t want a child?)
  • Empower economically disadvantaged women.

It’s very clever of Warren to try folding the antiabortion movement into the social justice movement, but it won’t work. For one thing, many of the women who now seek and get abortions are already well off and economically empowered. Mistakes will be made by women from all groups classes, and to force a woman to pay for a slip-up by carrying and presumably caring for an infant she doesn’t want (the former: for nine months; the latter for at least 18 years) is a big price to pay in contrast to, say, taking the Plan B pill, which simply gets rid of an early-stage and non-sentient zygote.

The fact that Warren considers such a zygote as a human being leads me to believe that her opposition to abortion is not only wholesale, but based on the religious assumption that at the moment of fertilization, a “soul” or some holy feature enters the zygote, rendering it immune from removal. Why won’t she tell us that she believes this?

Although I of course agree with most of Warren’s suggestions (except she needs to include Plan B and stop opposing Roe v. Wade), I do so in the interests of improving the lot of women (indeed, of everyone), not to reduce abortions (I agree with Roe v Wade and, indeed, would go farther). Her suggestions won’t work, as we can see from the fracas already ensuing before the court has even ruled. Telling women that they have to carry a child but it’s okay because they’ll get parental leave is not going to substantially reduce abortions.

When you look at the multifarious reasons why women get abortions, the futility of her program becomes clear. (As I said, I favor the program in general—just not to cut abortion.) 60% of Americans favor Roe as it stands, in my view mainly because women want to be the ones to decide about whether to have a child, not to throw that decision into the hands of others. To think otherwise is to imbue a non-sentient zygote or fetus with some supernatural property that gives it complete immunity. She might consider that “truly valuing life” also involves valuing a woman’s own adult and sentient life against that of a ball of developing cells.

Warren (from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship):

The leaked Roe decision: culture war or theocracy?

May 5, 2022 • 10:45 am

Jennifer Rubin, a centrist op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, just produced a piece about the leaked Supreme Court abortion decisions. According to reader Steve,  the piece is

“One of Rubin’s best, IMO. She brings the key issue front and center, viz. white evangelical Christian supremacy.”

Click the screenshot to read:

Rubin first discards the notion that betokens a “culture war”:

The livid reaction from progressive advocacy groups and Democratic politicians across the country about the potential evisceration of abortion rights — and possibly others protected by the 14th Amendment — should tell the media this is not simply about “culture,” nor is it a “war.” It’s a religious power grab by justices who, according to at least two female Republican senators, dissembled under oath about their intentions regarding Roe. The Senate Judiciary Committee should hold hearings and call GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) to testify. If those senators were really duped, they should consider advocating for extreme measures, including impeachment and a filibuster exception to codify Roe.

Well, that’s a distinction without much of a difference, for one could conceive of it as a “culture” war if evangelical religion is a form of “culture” (it is), and a “war” is a “battle for power” (it is). But to think that Collins and Murkowski were duped by justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh assumes that these Senators were sufficiently stupid to believe the assertions of conservative nominees for the Court. Alternatively, one could suggest that those justices—and Barrett—really were keeping an open mind about Roe and could have changed their minds about abortion after they got on the bench.

The latter hypothesis is insane, and the former unbelievable. The most parsimonious hypothesis is that Collins and Murkowski were playing to their audience as “liberal” Republicans, and knew exactly what they were doing.

But put that aside, for Rubin makes a larger point that rings true:

It’s important to identify the nature of the threat to Americans to understand the reaction that would likely follow a ruling along the lines Alito laid out. A Supreme Court decision that would criminalize abortion, eviscerating the ambit of privacy and personal autonomy afforded by the 14th Amendment, would expand governmental power into every nook and cranny of life — from a doctor’s office in Texas treating a transgender child, to intimate relations in a bedroom in Georgia, to a pharmacy counter in Ohio. Will government dictate a set of views that have not had majority support for decades?

The right-wing justices and their supporters appear ready to reject one of the Founders’ core principles: that religion shall not be imposed by government edict.

Other Republicans have given away the scheme. In his 11-point plan, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, declares: “The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science.” Put aside the utter incoherence (is it God or science?): The senator is explicitly calling for state power to be used in the service of his religious beliefs.

And it’s no slip of the tongue. As would a number of Supreme Court justices, Scott would impose religious views while refusing to admit his views stem from a particular religious perspective. “Abortion kills human children,” Scott pronounces. “To deny that is to deny science.” Actually, he wants to mandate conduct based on the religious view that humanity/personhood starts at conception.

I appreciate that if you think abortion is murder, you can be impelled to make your religious views into law. But there are many religious and secular people alike who see nothing sacred that begins when a sperm unites with an egg. The zygote isn’t sentient, doesn’t feel pain, and so on. The view that zygotes are “human children” is like saying an acorn is an oak tree. The only difference is that zygotes and not acorns are thought to have souls. The Supreme Court’s decision is an implicitly religious one.

Rubin again pronounces that “This is not about ‘culture.’ It is about appropriating state power to enforce theocratically driven positions.” She keeps saying this again and again, as if the folding of the draft decision into the “culture war” narrative is a gross and harmful mischaracterization by the press. But really, Americans aren’t dumb enough—even those who voted for Trump—not to know that, at bottom, this is a religiously based decision.

Rubin:

In sum, the media’s “culture wars” shorthand is an evasion, a refusal to recognize that what is at stake are the rights and lives of those without the resources or power to defend themselves (e.g., travel out of state for an abortion). The Supreme Court is poised to roil the very essence of our constitutional tradition and strike at the heart of a pluralistic democracy. Let’s call it what it really is: state-enforced theocracy, or, if you prefer, religious authoritarianism.

DUHHHH!  I can’t say whether this is one of Rubin’s best columns, as I don’t read her often, but she’s belaboring the obvious.

What this decision should do is inject new energy into secularism via organs like the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the ACLU (if the latter has any energy left after its fervent wokeism). The highest law in the land is now mediated by a pack of evangelical Christian conservatives, bent on enforcing their religion on the rest of us.

I am starting to wonder if the Court will eventually overturn the “settled law” that deems it unconstitutional to teach creationism and its gussied-up cousin, Intelligent Design, in the public schools. I used to think that really was settled law, but now I’m not so sure. Next to abortion, the issue of evolution is small potatoes. But overturning the Dover and Epperson v. Arkansas cases, among many others, would be a step back into the dark ages: a repudiation of settled science in the name of religion.  (All creationists are, at bottom, motivated by faith.)

I now think it’s only a matter of time before some benighted but devious Southern state passes an “equal time” or “pro-ID” law. Before that happens, let this statement, made 97 years ago by Clarence Darrow during the Scopes trial, be our clarion call:

“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”

A brief comment on the leaked Supreme Court “decision”

May 3, 2022 • 2:01 pm

The fur is flying everywhere after the leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. You can find any number of takes in the mainstream media: the NYT, for example, has the majority of its front-e-page editorials decrying the court’s decision. As a strong advocate of women’s choice, I too am appalled, but not all that surprised, as I’ve thought for a while that Roe was toast.

What is surprising are the number of people who are surprised. Here is one example from the NYT’s ongoing coverage:

  • Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the few Republican supporters of abortion rights in Congress, expressed anger at Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, saying their reported support for the draft ruling “would be completely inconsistent” with what they had told her about their views of Roe as settled law.

Have people not realized that nominees for the Supreme Court always dissimulate in hearings when asked about rulings that go against their own political leanings? “I will remain objective,” they all say. This is largely independent on whether they’ve been nominated by a liberal or conservative President.

That answer is a joke, yet we all pretend to believe is. Did anybody really think that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, much less Barrett, would vote to uphold Roe v. Wade? I mean, seriously? Are prospective Justices supposed to tell the truth in these hearings and say what they really think? No—they’re seeking a seat on the Court, and will say what is necessary. to achieve one.

The Supreme Court has already overturned Roe v. Wade!

May 3, 2022 • 8:00 am

I must rush off the boat, but must note this disturbing occurrence. Read Jean sent me a NYT article noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has already written the draft of an opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade’s decision about abortion. This draft was obtained by Politico, and the link to that draft is in a New York Times article that is giving updates.

From the NYT:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that has guaranteed the right to abortion for nearly a half-century, according to a leaked draft opinion from February published online Monday night by Politico.

In the draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a majority of the court voted to overturn Roe, according to Politico. Justice Alito called it wrongly decided and said the contentious issue, which has animated political debates in the United States for more than a generation, should be decided by politicians, not the courts.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito writes in the document, labeled the “Opinion of the Court,” referring to a second decision that reaffirmed Roe. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

The draft posted by Politico is consistent with the Supreme Court’s published opinions in ways large and small, including structure, length, typography and how legal citations are rendered. Its assertive and sometimes slashing tone reads very much like other major opinions from Justice Alito.

The release of the 98-page document is unprecedented in the court’s modern history: Early drafts of opinions have virtually never leaked before the final decision is announced, and never in such a consequential case. And early drafts of opinions often change by the time the decision from the court is announced.

Shortly after the article was published Monday night, Politico’s editor in chief, Matthew Kaminski, and its executive editor, Dafna Linzer, sent an email to newsroom employees emphasizing its authenticity. In the memo, Mr. Kaminski and Ms. Linzer said that the article underwent “an extensive review process,” describing it as “plainly news of great public interest.”

Asked for reaction to the apparent leak, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said the court had no comment. . .

There’s a lot more at the site.

We all knew this decision was coming, and I haven’t yet read the whole draft, but if this is issued as is, the problem of abortion will devolve to individual states, and you know what that means. I had clung to a thread of hope that the court would abide by stare decisis, but that is not to be—precedent means nothing to this ultraconservative court.

I can’t help but think that a court like this would, besides loosening gun control even further, also be capable of overturning another precedent: preventing the teaching, on First Amendment grounds, of creationism in the public schools.