Pastor Barnhart explains right-wing anti-abortion politics.

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The problem is that people who aren’t doing anything wrong suffer under a tyranny of the majority in which they are
marginalized for being what they are. Using that logic, murderers and pedophiles should constitute a protected class and be allowed to kill people and diddle little boys.

The United States has a system of checks and balances that prevent this from happening. It becomes a problem when a minority happens to actually be wrong about something—a constitutionally protected right to murder someone—that friction occurs. The right to murder never has been a constitutional guarantee but was argued as such under the ACTUAL constitutionally protected right to privacy. If you are a student of the constitution and this leaves you scratching your head, you’re not alone. People my age and younger grow up hearing “constitutional right” with regard to abortion and never give it a second thought. The Roe decision was a terrible one. The relevant point about checks and balances is that 1) women are an oppressed, special victim class, 2) a majority dominated by white men marginalize women by taking away their right to murder babies, and 3) SCOTUS MUST step in and impose immorality on the majority of people who’d never vote to allow people to commit murder. 1) and 2) in America are mostly fictitious.

Checks and balances are important components of a free republic. House bills reflect popular trends. The more powerful Senate reflects experience and wisdom. SCOTUS is about tradition and limiting damage done by popular whims decided upon by legislatures. It’s rare that a SCOTUS decision is progressive or defies precedent. The Roe decision was unusual. Brown v. Board was unusual. SCOTUS got it right with Brown, wrong with Roe, and we’re seeing the inevitable result of what can happen when you hang all your hopes on 5 judges.

If you’re still confused about why the minority should win against the majority, consider the Brown decision. Blacks really did experience oppression under segregation, disenfranchisement under
Jim Crow laws, and so forth. Segregation by itself is not a bad thing. If the black minority is at risk of oppression by the white majority, isolating black communities works to protect them from being attacked. There are some blacks in the present day who would feel safer if they had their own protected safe space, no whites allowed. What was happening prior to Brown was white supremacists such as the Klan were terrorizing black communities, and laws were passed that kept blacks from voting. Black public schools were below standard, unsafe, while white schools were practically luxurious. The lack of access to education was appalling. Brown ruled that separate but equal was not possible, and school districts responded by busing black kids into white schools without consulting with black communities themselves on the best way to end segregation. This in turn led to parents fleeing city school districts and moving to less populated areas with higher property values.

Look at the school zones in Madison County, Mississippi. In the south, you have the Madison Central district that, like, EVERYONE lives in. There’s this tiny strip in the middle where all the kids go to Germantown. All your white kids go to one of these two schools. Flora covers the northwest, Velma Jackson in the northeast, and then you have Canton. These are the black schools.

Or there’s Yazoo County. EVERYONE in Yazoo County goes to the county school. In the middle of the county is this tiny little school district like an island, and that’s the Yazoo City school district. County has slightly more blacks than whites, and there might be 3 white kids in City. Brown didn’t successfully end segregation. Brown just stopped governments from enforcing segregation or passing segregation laws. If people are forced to mix with others they don’t like, they vote with their feet and their money, and there’s nothing the president, Congress, or SCOTUS can do about that.

Since college I’ve only ever lived in poor neighborhoods and among minorities. I send my kids to a private school because it’s a perk of teaching AND I like the school where I teach. But if we’re being honest, many black schools are dominated by gangs or cliques, are tech-prep sites (workforce training for non-existent jobs), and white kids face discrimination for going there. And I haven’t even gotten warmed up—we could talk about lower educational standards, graduation rates, mental illness/mainstreaming, incompetent administrators, and on and on. I want my kids in a school, not a prison. It’s not a race thing, but these schools happen to be populated by minorities who are trapped there. I always say if you don’t like where you are, just move. These communities thrive on negativity, hopeless messaging that kids are stuck there or are traitors for wanting to improve their lives. Kids are
taught that they can’t leave. I had to learn the hard way that career advancement requires a willingness to move and move often. You don’t have to be white to hit the road.

But my main point is that if SCOTUS hadn’t stepped in to end segregation, blacks wouldn’t even have had that opportunity. If you WANT to segregate, as an American individual you have that right. If I don’t like black people, I can avoid them. The constitution cannot force me to associate with blacks. Or gays. Or women. Or extraterrestrials. Or ANYONE. But I CANNOT deny ANYONE their civil rights. This is why it’s important to protect the rights of minorities from the majority when majority interests might prove harmful to them.

Roe was an attempt at making abortion a civil rights issue. It came at a time when race and women’s rights were relevant topics in the Supreme Court following a trend of activist judges getting court appointments. SCOTUS at the time was not seen as an activist court, unlike the 9th Circuit. And that makes overturning Roe such a watershed moment if it happens. It wasn’t an activist court then, it’s not an activist court now. The problem with thinking that minority rights be respected against a majority tyranny is that minorities themselves become tyrannical. American checks and balances seek to limit this on both sides, and the tyranny of Roe as a poor court decision is an example of SCOTUS righting a wrong.

Understand, of course, that the court doesn’t reverse its decision post-leak. The leaked opinion dates back to February. It has happened that actual decisions changed. I’m kinda still in denial that Roe is going to be overturned because it is such an unusual sort of thing with SCOTUS. See what happens a year from now.

Here’s one for you, Cornflake. If someone entrusts another person to a piece of property with the understanding that said property must be returned at a later date, does the person borrowing or holding that property have the right to destroy it or refuse to give it back? If two people have equal interest in a piece of property and one person destroys the entire thing, is the other person entitled to relief?

You're setting up many preconditions there, but it seems you're arguing that a man has an inalienable right to his progeny, irrespective of the circumstances of its creation, and a woman should just fall into line with that as its vessel.
While both parties may have rights in this matter (eg a rapist should have none), relationships are more complicated than this so it's not that simple - and my question remains unanswered.

I just hope they don't reverse Roe v. Wade. it would set a bad precedent, and bring our national morality back to the dark ages.

Saying this, both men and women have to do the responsible thing, and prevent unwanted pregnancy at all costs.

Oh but are you saying that the I am saying the minority should win against the majority, or what are you saying exactly, sorry?

No, no, keep it simple. Take it as two separate conditions if you like. If someone is given something with the expectation of getting it back and they destroy it can they be held liable for it? The second issue is if two parties have a piece of property in common and one of them destroys it can a person be held liable for 1/2 of the possession? In context, look at it as not a woman’s right to her own body, but rather a man’s right to his own DNA. Also, set aside the possibility of conceiving through Sexual assault, or otherwise abuse.

Another question would be whether someone has rights to property that they either abandoned, or they forced someone to take that property. The way I see it, someone who is given some thing without consent and without an understanding that the giver has an interest in getting it back, for example, a loan versus a gift, or an investment made with the expectation of a return, cannot be held liable for either keeping it or disposing of it in someway. As an example, I think it is in poor taste for a man to give a woman an engagement ring only to expect to get it back if he calls of the engagement. The woman has lost time in which she could have been in a different meaningful relationship, got married, had children, etc. The least she should expect is to at least sell the ring and use that money to somehow get that part of her life back. With pregnancy, the same principle holds except that we’re talking about another human being and not an engagement ring. And if a man does something either through force or through false pretenses that result in the death of another human being, then I believe he is guilty of murder, and I don’t think that a woman should ever have to fear any consequences anytime that is the case. At best, a man involved in a consensual sexual relationship should be charged with negligence or negligent homicide.

Hehehehe



Since you asked - in short: biological differences do not or at least, should not, abate moral duty. From a moral standpoint, there is no inequality, neither man nor woman should be allowed to kill their own children without very good reasons. Pregnancy is uniquely female, yes, both blessing and curse, and yes, biology is "unfair", but this does not mean women should get a free pass to act like monsters.

Well I read what Roe vs. Wade is, and it says that it was ruled that abortion is a constantutional right, where as I understand, overturning it means it won't be a constitutional right. But what does the law mean when it says it's a constitutional right? Does that mean it's free from the government, and you don't have to pay, or what does that mean?

it means that nobody may legally, constitutionally, prevent you from exercising said right, within a few fig-leaf limits.

But what counts as exercising the right? Asking for an abortion and getting one, as long as you pay?

that is exercising the right, yes.

Yep. And the only thing that has changed is the present court has found Roe to be misguided. Women are NOT constitutionally guaranteed any right to abortion on demand. It doesn't mean that women have no right to abortion at all. Women for the time being DO still have the right to an abortion. It just means that legislatures at the state and federal level have the ability to codify abortion into law. If they want, they could say abortion is murder and women could potentially face charges.

Although...

I guess you can't really charge women with crimes in this regard because a woman seeking a clinical abortion hasn't done anything wrong. She just went to see a doctor. It's the doctor performing the procedure who kills the baby. It doesn't make sense to prosecute women for having abortions. Just make it illegal to provide them.

Medical abortions are different, though, because women are actively killing their babies when they do this. The state would have a difficult time proving this, though. For one, you'd have to drag a doctor across doctor-patient privilege to prove she had been pregnant, and then you have to violate the right to privacy to prove that the woman crossed state lines somehow to get abortion medicine. You can't stop a woman from crossing state lines to get an abortion. She just can't have an abortion in a state where it's illegal. So you risk prosecuting abortion providers in other states where it IS legal, and possibly prosecuting women themselves for crossing state lines since the purpose for doing so was committing murder.

Another thing: Back in the 1980’s, some teachers had been known to help girls get to abortion clinics, sometimes without parents knowing. Sure, this is Fast Times At Ridgemont High-level stuff, but it happened. I didn't realize that it had ever been that much of a thing. At my current school, though, both boys and girls can be expelled for getting pregnant or having an abortion. If teachers get involved, it's a fireable offense. And depending on how bad the situation is, like if a teacher has a student’s baby or gets a student pregnant, that's an immediate loss of credentials. If you're lucky, parents won't file charges and you avoid prison. Once Mississippi’s trigger law goes into effect, I think this is going to raise more issues like that. In states that allow abortion on demand, you still have the question of what parents have the right to know about their teenagers. Are teachers allowed any role in helping girls get abortions if parents won’t allow it? As a nation we never dealt with abortion since we thought it was entirely decided by Roe, thus it's been 50 years almost and we still aren't used to it. Overturning Roe is going to be a MESS. At least it's a step in the right direction.

Oh I see. So nowadays do teachers have the power to get their students abortions without the parents knowing anything about it legally?

No.

Teachers can report their suspicions and knowledge to legal authorities like Child Welfare Services and the Police; but taking matters into their own hands could result in arrest and legal action against them -- absconding with the child without the parents' knowledge or permission falls within the definition of kidnapping.

That would be a ridiculous risk for a teacher to take.

I would say there are very few (to maybe no) teachers who would do such a thing.

If a child is a minor, and a teacher takes a kid to get an abortion without the parent's permission, that's kidnapping in the second degree in New York State. You could get 25 years in prison for this.

...What about a situation where the woman who gets pregnant IS the rapist? Has anyone here thought of that? I mean, it's far rarer for the rapist to be the one to get pregnant than it is for the victim, but I've heard of a case like that, so...



At all costs? Wouldn't that mean not having sex with the opposite sex unless you were ready for pregnancy?



Hmm but if a man has a right to his own DNA (=the fetus growing inside the woman), then shouldn't he also have to take responsibility for all the damage and/or expenses his DNA causes? You know, pay half of the bills the pregnancy causes, like medical bills and possible income loss, and medical bills the woman might get from the complications giving birth to the man's DNA could cause her, including the ones that can last for a lifetime? If a man is not ready to carry those responsibilities, why should his right over his own DNA matter? Were it assured that men took their share of the burden, then I would certainly be more willing to reconsider my position in the pro-choice camp, but as long as it's possible for the man to just walk out, the woman should have the same right.