this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.

The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.

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[–] [email protected] 239 points 10 months ago (4 children)

a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.

Except it is every clear that they don't care about the life of the fetus either since the publicized cases pretty much all involve a fetus that would die within hours of birth.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 10 months ago (2 children)

6th Grade Biology taught us that an 'ectopic pregnancy' is, by definition, unviable. By their own Book, God creates ectopic pregnancies so They can have the pleasure of destroying an innocent soul.

[–] [email protected] 117 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Reminder that, in Ohio, Republicans pushed a bill that would have required doctors to reimplant ectopic pregnancies in the uterus. A medical technique that doesn't exist. So doctors who didn't do this non-existent technique would be "guilty of murder" and doctors who tried it and failed (because it's not a thing we can do) would also be guilty. And either way, the woman would likely die.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Well, that's the most insane thing I've ever seen in politics, bravo

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's the thing. It's okay when their god kills a fetus for fun. But we're never supposed to no matter what.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They literally want to investigate every miscarriage as a potential murder

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Yes. The objective is to punish women for the crime of having sex.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Punish poor women.

The Rich and Politician daughters and mistresses will still have full access to abortions under the guise of health retreat/2 week vacation/etc etc.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

Sex with anyone but them, mind. You know they'd have no issues flying their mistresses to a more permissive state for an abortion.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Having unauthorized sex. Look at that GOP woman who was having three ways to 'save her marriage.' It was fine for her to have relations with another woman as long as the owner approved.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Which is absolutely insane, especially considering 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage (and that's just confirmed pregnancies! The actual number is likely higher!)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

From what I recall it's actually the majority of pregnancies that end in miscarriage, it's just that they usually occur before the woman can even really notice she was pregnant or is having a miscarriage. From the woman's perspective she may of had a particularly unpleasant monthly period when it was actually a miscarriage. It's one of those things no one likes to acknowledge because people find it disturbing and it completely undermines a lot of assumptions people like to make about "the miracle of life".

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Meanwhile, the backlog of untested rape kits keeps growing and growing...

Priorities.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Philosophically, the law should not involve itself in trading on lives. I actually find this heartless abortion position more consistent than the others and appreciate the soulless honesty of it.

The fact that nearly everyone agrees there should be at least some cases where abortions are legal means pretty much everyone believes that abortion should be legal and just hasn't fully thought out the underlying ethics.

Because it means basically no one really believes in the unconditional right to life of a fetus - if it has an unconditional right to life, it doesn't matter if it came from rape or incest and it doesn't matter if it's going to die within minutes of being born and it doesn't matter if it's life threatens the life of its parent. None of those factors should remove the right to life.

And so since pretty much everyone agrees there should at least be exceptions for some of these situations we must conclude that there is not an inviolable right to life. We clearly think that the right to life of a fetus is just fundamentally lesser from the right to life of an independent and viable living person.

Meanwhile the right to autonomy over your own body still looks pretty unimpeachable to me. Seems to be that the state continues to have no right to forcibly modify or control your body and that it can sooner limit basic freedoms like movement and association before it violates that. The only time we seem to think it's okay to violate body autonomy is if the person has a fetus in their uterus.

What conservatives really want is to be able to dictate the calculus. They want to be able to tell people with a uterus what to do. They want to pick and choose who is and isn't pregnant and offer as little agency as possible to the individuals. That's always been the most important motivation and goal to these abortion bans. They want a breeding slave class and they're just too dishonest with themselves to admit it.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A rape exception alone shows they are totally inconsistent on the question of "life" and "rights."

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

The thing is, even an exception for the life of the mother shows that same moral inconsistency. If allowing a mother to come to harm through intervention that preserves the life of the fetus is acceptable, the other way around -- allowing the fetus to come to harm through intervention that preserves the life of the parent -- is just as acceptable. And it makes no difference if that preservation of life is 85 years or 15 minutes -- the right to life isn't contingent on how long your life may be.

These fake ethicists try to claim there's a fundamental difference between performing an abortion and prohibiting an abortion, but both of these are positive actions taken by the state that engages in trading lives. If you want to argue on the morality of what a doctor or pregnancy's choice to be part of an abortion, have at -- there's reasonably room for debate there -- but there must be no intervention from the state.

I think it's immensely charitable for a person to carry a baby to term. One of the most selfless things you can do. If you carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because you feel you owe it to this total stranger growing in you, you're a damned saint. But our society does not mandate that kind of charity.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Many ethical stances around abortion aren't phrased around the right to life, because usually ethics has a pretty hard stance on that right. So the real ethical question isn't about the unconditional right to life, It's actually about your right to another person's body or bodily autonomy.

Generally it breaks down to, just because a person requires the use of your body to survive does not mean you have a moral or ethical requirement to provide sustenance (your body) for that person.

Qoute from a nytimes article:

The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, in 1971, put forth the most famous version of this argument as it related to abortion: Imagine that a woman woke in bed intravenously hooked up to a famous violinist, Thomson wrote in her seminal and controversial essay, “A Defense of Abortion.” The musician in this scenario suffered from a rare medical ailment, and only this woman’s circulatory system could keep him alive. His survival requires her to sacrifice her own bodily autonomy. Must she? Is she a murderer if she does not?

Phrasing it as right to life automatically discounts the real ethical question, does this being have a right to my body?

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[–] [email protected] 137 points 10 months ago (16 children)

Wait wait wait….. wasn’t “death panels” what the right was screaming about with Obamacare?

[–] [email protected] 81 points 10 months ago

Death Panels are only good when Insurance Corporations and Republicans are making the decisions.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago

You're thinking of the bad kind of death panels. Those are the good kind of death panels, obviously.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 10 months ago

It's always projection with fascists.

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 10 months ago (9 children)

People who believe in a sky god are creepy as fuck.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Maybe so, but the war against abortion isn't based on religious texts. It was ginned up by pieces of shit who tied it to the bible artificially by painting a complex issue as a black and white case of "murder". Which is bullshit to anyone remotely understanding of reality.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It may not be directly tied to religious works. However, religion is being used to prop it up, as usual. I still agree that people can practice what they wish, though I'm beginning to feel strongly that religion is a plague and we'd be better off without it. Yet, I suppose, evil fools would just find something else to cower behind.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Most of religion isn't based on religious texts. The texts are just the marketing material. Once you're inside they're largely ignored.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (4 children)

1000 flies eat shit. 1000 flies can't be wrong.

That's their mentality.

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Something needs to be done about the 5th circuit. They routinely make decisions that are directly counter to established law and the Constitution itself.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (4 children)

but do not counter state laws

the US has been letting states make decisions instead of making federal laws stick just like cannabis is federally illegal unless the state says so

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (9 children)

State laws don't trump federal laws. Weed is still federally illegal and you can't own firearms if you smoke, regardless of what your state says.

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 10 months ago (8 children)

I remember going through Roe v. Wade in law school and thinking how shaky the legal foundation was. This is a great case study of why we need to formally adopt laws in congress and not just rely on the whims of the court.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (8 children)

You're not wrong. No one wants to hear it, but Roe was reasoned terribly. They attempted to appease everyone by protecting abortion but setting limits.

While laws are a better avenue, I do not believe Congress has the authority to regulate abortion. From where does the authority arise, interstate commerce?

The Supreme Court could have ruled that the most basic and fundamental right, which is woven throughout the constitution, is a right to bodily autonomy. The idea of controlling one's own body is supported by a host of amendments. Incorporate the right with the 14th and abortion is protected everywhere.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 10 months ago

I remember how US conserves would look at euthanasia laws in the Netherlands and falsely claim that there are death panels there who decide when you will die.

Turns out they weren't just only lying, they were fantasizing

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago

I'm so glad I got my tubes removed when I did, because there's a long waitlist now. My sister just gave birth and had severe complications ... I cannot imagine if we had lost her over a law like this. It sounds harsh, but you can always make another baby if the uterus is saved (or adopt one of the hundreds of thousands of orphans in the USA).

[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yep. When DARVO-ists like Palin were bleating about "death panels" they were demonstrating their usual projection.

Conservatives and the Republicans are a death cult. They should never be allowed into office, ever.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.

Where an individual reasonably believes an attacker poses a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, any person is justified in using any level of force - up to and including lethal force - necessary to stop the attack.

If the claims made in this article are accurate (and they very well might not be), then In setting the standard of care at the point where a person reasonably fears "grievous injury or near-certain death", the courts may have inadvertently justified the use of force in self-defense and/or defense of others against any executive using the power of their office to attack an individual.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

Indeed, language like this puts a bullseye on healthcare professionals that already have/had one because of COVID and the fascists spreading wild conspiracy theories. This is almost a 2 birds with one stone stroke for them, you make abortion something any medical professional wants to distance themself from out of fear of their own life, but you also help undermine the whole medical field by would-be parents afraid to go to a hospital with complications as they may not come back out (or having suffered irreversible health effects).

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (9 children)

While this would in theory work for justifying the actions of the mother it does nothing to help enable medical professionals in providing care. The court ruling basically tells all medical professionals that they may not perform abortions for any reason. It's a death sentence pure and simple and now the hospitals are only allowed to sit back and watch.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

The conservative judges would have quite the quandary should a dying woman shoot her ectopic fetus.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

What the actual fuck.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is going to put a lot of doctors and medical people in a dangerous spot.

Good luck hiding behind laws when you have a distraught husband who has just watched his wife, and the child he hoped to soon meet, die slowly and horribly.

But it's also illegal for our hypothetical heartbroken and angry husband to beat a doctor to death, or just shoot them because texas, right? That makes it all better I'm sure.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

When did they try to hide this? They've been pretty explicit about this for a while now

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