Roe vs Wade / gun laws

‘Do American women a favor and maybe just focus on women's issues in the UK because if you think this is being a friend to us we don't need enemies.’

Yes, I think I will. Best of luck to you.

Lol, I am literally telling you that we are being beaten in the streets and you ask why I'm not listening? Didn't that used to be a sick joke about why a woman has two black eyes, because she just wouldn't listen.

Do American women a favor and maybe just focus on women's issues in the UK because if you think this is being a friend to us we don't need enemies.

I'm sure someone has a pronoun on their name tag somewhere you can occupy yourself with.

What do you mean by “us”? Do you live in one of those states?

Boxowine

There’s a lot in that post and we would end up going on all day if I engaged. You clearly think I think something that I don’t. I’m sorry we can’t communicate more clearly with each other.

It really was a shock to me. I’d steeled myself for what I’d imagined. But I hadn’t been imagining women who didn’t want to be there. I was only ready for women like me, who were risking a lot for something they believed was the right thing to do in their circumstances, at that time.

An abortion medication wasn’t around in the west back then. But pharmaceutical abortifacients could be purchased where I was at the time. I came under a lot of pressure to take the medicine. But two unlabelled grey pills in a tiny zip lock bag … looked wildly dangerous to somebody from a world where an abortion was a medical procedure with a doctor. So I refused, despite knowing a medical abortion would not look like it did back home. But I trusted an illegal doctor not to kill me off by accident than my then husband with his little bag of grey pills.

In retrospect I wonder how many women had a wanted pregnancy interpreted by pharmaceuticals slipped into their food or drink. I think that’s why I’m leery of medical abortion being prescribed without seeing the patient face to face and without “company”. Not against it, but leery. I can’t pretend those women didn’t exist or that the men and women collaborating to make them be there couldn’t exist in another country, no matter how superficially different.

I just don’t know if the experience coloured my view to a reasonable or unreasonable extent about the number of people willing to bend a pregnant female to their will if they are against the baby being born. So I abstain (inside my head, it’s not like I get a vote) on the telemedicine abortion question. I’m going to have to wait until I get more convincing arguments that what I worry about is deeply and effectively factored into the equation.

@achillestoes why do you say that I won't listen? What a ridiculous statement. I have been listening to their side and their points for decades.

What do you mean by compromise? If abortion is outright banned in a particular state, what compromise can there be? I think the word you meant to use is comply. Not compromise.

I don't know why you keep saying majority. Banning abortion is not supported by the majority of the people in the US and our system of government does not equal a majority viewpoint, I'm not going to get into a whole political science lesson on how our representation works but it's not as simple as the majority voted so that's what you get.

Even if it was, why do you think that women should be okay with a decision made by men?

You're just going to studiously ignore the police officer beating an abortion activist in the street as an example of the pro lifers using physical violence to intimidate while trying to goad me into saying I'm going to do something about either abortion or gun owners when I have said nothing of the sort, or even implied such a thing.

Why do you keep asking me what the plan is? How am I supposed to have a plan to counteract any of this?

As far as listening to people, I have listened to the people on the other side of this debate. At least most of them have the fortitude to state their opinions openly instead of this weird circular mind fuck you're on. Those people I can respect.

‘You are clearly enjoying forcing me to acknowledge my powerlessness and physical vulnerability.’

I’m not engaging with you further.

It is important. But people will people.

We saw how pro lifers shot themselves in the foot (no pun intended) by failing to register that quality argument content and appealing delivery matters, especially when the tide is starting to turn against your once glorious moral majority. And they carried on with that as they lost more and more ground, in part because they would not, perhaps could not, see how the content and tone of their message was doing more harm than good.

Recent history, all in my lifetime, there for the learning from.

It won’t happen.

Pro life side just waited it out until their most chilling (and at the time unconvincing) arguments started to look more realistic. Thanks fading “feminist icon for 2 minutes” sleb who lamented having never had an abortion, et al.

High Visibility pro choice will likely do the same. Just stick to what is said and done now hoping for different outcomes, but able to live without them, rather than take a “own side” critical look at how you can make a parody of your opponent and fight said parody. But that won’t help you much with the actual, complicated, multifaceted, individual people who don’t agree with you 100% about all of the points, all of the time.

The iceberg has flipped. I don’t think pro life learned much either. Some, but not much. And complacency will set in fast as the legal wins mount up. That will stick to them, make them the heavier side, then we’ll flip again. There will be female shaped collateral damage in the decades while we wait for that, but at least nobody had to consider how persuasive their arguments & delivery were. Phew !

It's sad that I am oppressed, not that I feel oppressed.

You are clearly enjoying forcing me to acknowledge my powerlessness and physical vulnerability. The online equivalent of a man grabbing a woman by the nape of the neck and rubbing her nose in it.

I suppose you expect me to thank you stepping back.
Why don't you acknowledge the points I made regarding pro-lifers supporting gun laws because both issues are in the same wheelhouse?

I’m not trying to be argumentative - I really want to know what you are suggesting to get what you want, if the solution isn’t political.

‘Is this what you mean by compromise? If we're polite enough will they maybe still allow us to have dead fetuses removed from our bodies before we die?’

Compromise means listening to people who disagree with you and trying for as many areas of agreement as possible, while accepting that both sides may need to move. I am pro-choice. However, the US constitution doesn’t appear to support my position, so that means - if I lived in the US - that I would have to live under state by state laws. How do you propose to get laws that favour your position if you won’t listen and you refuse to persuade or compromise with majorities that disagree with you?

In Oklahoma and Idaho abortion at any stage has been banned with the exception of the health of the mother or documented rape/incest. These exceptions would require that the woman's request be boarded either by medical authorities or the police (If police officers are punching women in the face at abortion rallies, what guarantee will there be that they won't interfere with the process?).

Is this what you mean by compromise? If we're polite enough will they maybe still allow us to have dead fetuses removed from our bodies before we die?

Boxowine

It’s not satisfactory to me at all. It’s terribly sad that you feel so oppressed. But still, the law appears to be - as set out in the Constitution and interpreted by the SC who were put in place by an elected government, that guns are legal. So even if you were not oppressed, you would still need to change the Constitution or persuade the SC - no?

Anyway, you are clearly upset so I will step back.

@AlienatedChildGrown - that was a really interesting perspective.

"But so many women in that waiting room were there under duress. I’m sure legal abortion clinics miss cases of coercion, but I’m equally sure they’d intervene if a patient was sobbing while her much older male partner, or her dad, had a firm grip on her arm and was threatening her sotto voce in a menacing tone."

When you reintroduce illegal, unregulated abortions (which previously didn't need to exist) you risk introducing other unintended consequences.

@achillestoes I have repeatedly told you that dissenting opinions are being met with physical violence, that physical violence has always been used in the US for political oppression and that those in power here are not necessarily elected by the majority of voters.

Our system of government is not a strict democracy and what is happening in the US is not determined via a national referendum as Brexit was for the UK.

Have you ever expressed an opinion and had a police officer punch you twice in the face because he disagreed with you? What do you do when that happens? You keep asking me what I intend to do. I intend to not be punched in the face by a cop in the middle of the street. I intend to not get shot by a gun nut, not even one who has different political opinions than I. This is called being oppressed. For the stronger person or the better armed person, violently oppressing someone works. That's why they do it.

I suspect this response will be very satisfactory to you. To force a woman to admit that she is so afraid for her safety that she will offer no resistance.

Which proves my point that there is a connection between people who are pro-life while simultaneously supporting gun rights. And it has nothing to do with babies.

‘I am firmly onside. So what kind of of impact could be the arguments and the mode of delivery have on anybody who is onside but a bit wobbly, or leans pro choice but with some (potentially growing) reservations ?’

This is so important. You have to compromise and work with people or you just have a polarised fight.

‘Of course there's a solution. Just ban them.’

But then what happens? The SC says you can’t ban them.

Wallaw, I was reading it as you posted.

Yes, that is an interesting article.

I agree.

I had a hunch this is where we’d (by we, I’m mean women) end up about 15 years ago. Right when I started to find my own side’s arguments lacking when in debate.

I’m in favour of abortion being legal. I had an illegal several decades ago and it’s not an experience I’d want to see more women go through. It was hard enough being there knowing I absolutely did not want my baby born into the mess I was making of life at the time. But so many women in that waiting room were there under duress. I’m sure legal abortion clinics miss cases of coercion, but I’m equally sure they’d intervene if a patient was sobbing while her much older male partner, or her dad, had a firm grip on her arm and was threatening her sotto voce in a menacing tone. That stuck with me more than anything else (and there was a lot that was memorable) about it. I felt like a minority in the waiting room in that I wanted the abortion.

You can’t protect choice for the average woman, who wishes to terminate her pregnancy for typical reasons if rape, incest, child sex abuse and America’s constitution as it pertains to guns/gun crime are the arguments.

Worst case scenario it might help shift a few more towards being sympathetic to more limitations regarding legal and affordable access to abortion.

Which is what I saw happening to the pro life side decades ago. They initially came from the status quo and felt they had the quieter majority onside. They carried on being so dogmatic, self congratulatory, judgmental of others (in the 2D, assumption loaded version they imagined their opposition to be), incapable of nuance and disinterested in anything other than the most extreme examples of awful abortion outcomes/reasons. As the years went on they didn’t notice that people had stopped listening to them. They didn’t regroup and rethink after losing key legal decisions. They were so convinced of the rightness of their position they didn’t feel they had to upgrade it or adapt it to the reality that the public was so turned off by their go-to arguments, tone & attitude towards “unbelievers” (or anybody asking for more than a surface debate) that the public became more & more sympathetic to the other side of the argument.

I’m not blaming high visibility pro choicers arguments, tone & attitude entirely for where we stand today and what might happen next . There are a lot of factors. But it is part. You can’t mount a great defence to new strategies from the other side in a changing landscape, with extra added curveballs, if you copy what the other side did when they were LOSING hearts, minds and legal rulings.

I haven’t changed my mind since I sat in that waiting room when I was a very young woman. I don’t want anybody else to see what I saw, feel what I felt. I don’t regret having the abortion. I have a son in his 20s now. I know what it takes to raise a child to adulthood, and I was right when I decided back then that I not up to job, I was only off the mark by the degree to which I was not up to it, by a long margin, looking back I wouldn’t have entrusted 20ish me with the well being of a hamster, let alone a baby. I want abortion to remain legal & accessible. Because I don’t have to immagine what it’s like when it’s not.

Which is why it troubles me that so many high visibility, pro choice arguments (online and off) sound off-putting, contrived and unconvincing. These days my impression is that the focus is on preaching to the members of the choir, yelling heretic at anybody with questions or doubts, to keep said choir suitable cowed into nodding along.

I am firmly onside. So what kind of of impact could be the arguments and the mode of delivery have on anybody who is onside but a bit wobbly, or leans pro choice but with some (potentially growing) reservations ?

‘You don't seem very good at shades of grey. One interpretation of 2A is the right to arm themselves. It's a big leap to the right to arm themselves with any weapon they want with few or no background checks.’

I’m not bad at shades of grey at all. I understand this. But there doesn’t seem to be a valid SA interpretation that would prevent the sort of mass shootings with legally acquired weapons that we are seeing in the US.

Am I wrong?

And if I’m right, is there a solution that doesn’t involve persuasion?

‘One thing that might work is a system of zones - make it harder to get a gun in a city than a town, in a town than a shack in the middle of nowhere. New York State did, in fact have checks and balances that 8 out of 10 voters supported. The Supreme Court has overturned their right to impose them. So how does your system of zones work in that world?’

I suppose it doesn’t. So where does it leave the argument?

If gun control is deemed to be unconstitutional, how do you proceed? Because it sounds to me - in law - like the people I disagree with are right: they do have a right to arm themselves.

Wallaw

They were saying that. And I’m not making excuses. I dislike guns.

‘Except that the Supreme Court just issued a ruling expanding the right to conceal carry in response to a challenge to NYC's 108 year old ban. There are no zones mentioned in the Constitution so how can they be instituted now?’

Yes. In light of this, and of your stated opposition to guns, what is the plan? You say you can’t get what you want through democratic channels. Is it force then? How is that better than the people who want to keep their guns?