Alabama bans abortion

[Draco Dracul]

Sources and sarcasm aside...this really depresses me. My mother and grandmother fought to defend women's rights to safe abortion. I am so, so scared that we're going back to this.

Blame the people who started the full court press culture wars...

He is, because the full court press on the culture war started with the Reagan revolution in the Eighties with the full integration of the Dixiecrats into the Republican party.

@Darth Wedgius Ever since abortion was legalized, there's been this huge, mostly right-wing segment of the American population who thinks it's been a mistake, even though women were getting abortions far before it was legalized. They hate it. And it's not so simple as "they're deeply concerned about the well-being of the child!" Many of them are religious, and I think they're hypocrites because God's own teachings said, let him handle it, if this kind of thing is a crime. It's the same kind of view that went into outlawing liquor. A bunch of moral religious crusaders trying to shove their views down our throats. And even if it's a minority in the Alabama government, they know it caters well to the religious right-wing. Don't treat this as anything less than a major victory for the alt right and their war on women.

You have a problem with them acting like your beloved progressives?

Yes, because when I think of progressives I think of creating policy specifically designed only to hurt people, like ... or ? and *file not found*.

That was not full court press, you can make the case that the idiocy right after 911 was that.

Hate crime laws, not hard to guess the endgame. I don't think they think of themselves as hurting people.

The Reagan administration included actively ignoring the AIDS crisis for the sake of wiping out gays, and actively destroying the social security net by associating it with the black community.

The end game of hate crime laws is to make it harder to organize large scale hate groups by turning what would be misdemeanors into felonies by acting as aggravating factors. The best example of this is that it's what makes burning a cross on the lawn of a black family a different crime than putting a bag of burning dog poop on your annoying neighbors door step, as by the letter of the law both are a malicious burning.

[Darth Wedgius]

@Darth Wedgius Ever since abortion was legalized, there's been this huge, mostly right-wing segment of the American population who thinks it's been a mistake, even though women were getting abortions far before it was legalized. They hate it. And it's not so simple as "they're deeply concerned about the well-being of the child!" Many of them are religious, and I think they're hypocrites because God's own teachings said, let him handle it, if this kind of thing is a crime. It's the same kind of view that went into outlawing liquor. A bunch of moral religious crusaders trying to shove their views down our throats. And even if it's a minority in the Alabama government, they know it caters well to the religious right-wing. Don't treat this as anything less than a major victory for the alt right and their war on women.

Again, you're assuming their motivation and going from that, rather than going from what the law says. You have no evidence that this is designed to hurt women instead of protecting the unborn, it's just what you want to believe.

[Darth Wedgius]

The Reagan administration included actively ignoring the AIDS crisis for the sake of wiping out gays

Any evidence of that motive?

[Yukaphile]

It's coming from people who most likely don't know the exact scientific process on how we're conceived and born. It's coming from a right-wing state, a red state, one that's known for being generally economically poor off and thus, fewer access to higher areas of education. Yeah, there's no proof, if you wanna rules-lawyer it, but it's a strongly logical assumption to make.

[Draco Dracul]

The Reagan administration included actively ignoring the AIDS crisis for the sake of wiping out gays

Any evidence of that motive?

I mean they laughed as the it killed people.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/art ... a99877bafb

[Darth Wedgius]

The Reagan administration included actively ignoring the AIDS crisis for the sake of wiping out gays

Any evidence of that motive?

I mean they laughed as the it killed people.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/art ... a99877bafb

People laugh at tragedies all the time.

[Darth Wedgius]

It's coming from people who most likely don't know the exact scientific process on how we're conceived and born. It's coming from a right-wing state, a red state, one that's known for being generally economically poor off and thus, fewer access to higher areas of education. Yeah, there's no proof, if you wanna rules-lawyer it, but it's a strongly logical assumption to make.

Most people on either side likely don't know the exact scientific process on how we're conceived and born. Hell, most doctors probably couldn't name the enzymes involved.

Nor does "right-wing" mean "wants to oppress women" and more than "left-wing" means "wants to oppress men."

Are they decriminalizing rape? No. Are they making beating your wife legal? No. Are they saying women can't wear pants? No. Everything thing they are doing is in keeping with protecting the unborn. Everything you accuse them of secretly wanting to do is not supported by actions they have taken.

[CmdrKing]

Are they decriminalizing rape? No.

But they are torpedoing a vital support network for survivors of rape.

Are they making beating your wife legal? No.

But they are making it materially more challenging for women abused by their husbands to leave their husbands.

Are they saying women can't wear pants? No.

Just that their lives are less worthy of preservation, of less value, than clusters of cells not yet distinguishable as human.

Because while many, apparently including you, are unwilling to examine the actual impact of such restrictive laws, the ghouls writing them surely are not. Any competent and reputable woman's health specialist will provide abortion care, because to not do so is unethical. Therefore, these bans will cause them to shutter their clinics, or carry on and end up in prison once they skirt close enough to the edges of the law for one angry boyfriend to "turn them in", or to start ignoring their patients out of fear of stepping too close to this arbitrary legal line.

Once that happens you have multiple knock-on effects. Such specialists are often a first-line caregiver in cases of rape, particularly familial and other intimate relationship (close friends, friends of family, etc) forms of rape. And lacking that expertise and avenue to form trust means many more cases of these things going unreported or undocumented.
Such specialists maintain contacts with violence shelters and other such lifelines. More than that, someone forced to carry the fetus of an abuser is less physically and materially capable of leaving them.
In those cases where health complications ARE present... well then we're having to define what constitutes a "risk to the life of the mother". How strict are the guidelines on this? Does the state get to legally challenge and examine documentation of all such cases? But it's a bit irrelevant because what actually will happen, especially after the decimation of the most skilled caretakers because of the above reasons, is doctors simply assuming anything shy of bleed out there on the table isn't a life-threatening risk. Won't be sent to prison for wrongful death.

As a bit of a coda, we can say definitively that at least one state senator who voted for this ban does not give one solitary fuck about the health of people giving birth. Larry Stutts is a sometime OBGYN who tried to repeal a bill requiring insurers to cover at least 48 hours of post-partum care in 2015. Said bill was named after a woman whose death he was later sued for medical malpractice over. That suit was settled, but going into state government and making one of his priorities repealing that specific bill? That tells you everything you need to know about his motives.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

CmdrKing, it's just a law. It's ink written on a paper somewhere. Are you gonna sit there and really try to tell us that ink written on paper is going to oppress people? What is this, rock paper scissors?? That's just silliness.

[Yukaphile]

Look at the right-wing attempts to repeal no-fault divorce, and those who say female breadwinners are unnatural. They are VERY much stuck in the worst aspects of the 1950s, and not only want to take us back to those times, but make it even worse than they were then. That said, I don't think those in charge who passed this really believe in it. It's like with the GOP, it caters to their hard-line, anti-intellectual base, the far fringe hard-righters, and that's all they care about in chasing voters. Don't feel so sad. The DNC does it too, in refusing to kick Sanders to the curb, call out his long and questionable history, and set limits for his new voters, who frankly wanted to hijack the party like the Tea Party did for the GOP. I've heard those in the center like me call them the Tea Party Left. The Green Tea Party. And so on.