Gilead begins: domestic supply of infants

[WarriorNewAgain]

The first thing I thought if when I heard roe v Wade was the impact on and creation of more jobs such as in social work, fostering and care.

The patriarchy exploits and makes money from womens bodies in a variety of ways.

BREAKING: In a brief re abortion, Supreme court Justices Amy Coney Barrett/Alito's Draft, said US needs a “domestic supply of infants” to meet needs of parents seeking to adopt - that those who would otherwise abort must be made to carry to term - giving children up for adoption.

twitter.com/drgjackbrown/status/1522737305710067715?s=21&t=t5iuUtG2SMD8VJwL4ovx3w

The draft opinion’s core argument for overturning Roe and Casey is based on a stare decisis 5 factor analysis (starting on p39). Please note I am paraphrasing their arguments. This is not my opinion, in fact I think it’s a load of stinking bullshit, but in the interest of know thine enemy, here it is, their justification:

• Nature of the court’s error- the above decisions reflect a misinterpretation of the US Constitution. The Court therefore usurped the power of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution unequivocally leaves to the People and the democratic process.

• The quality of reasoning- Roe found that the Constitution implicitly conferred the right to an abortion, but failed to ground it in the text of the Constitution, history or precedent. Casey pointedly refrained from endorsing any of Roe’s reasoning but instead replaced the Roe trimester framework with an arbitrary “undue burden” test. Both resembled the work of legislature and the court made little effort to explain how they could be deduced from the Constitution. They also ignored the consensus of State abortion laws existing at the time. The decision to make viability the line where a States interest becomes compelling was also flawed and ignored concepts of personhood and sentience.

• Workability- An important factor in determining whether a precedent should be overruled is whether or not it is workable in practice- that is whether it can be understood and applied in a consistent manner. Casey’s “undue burden” is subjective and thus not workable. Huge burdens are clearly substantial and trivial ones are not but between these two extremes is a wide grey area. In addition to ambiguity, the rule requires the impact on women be considered but in order to determine whether a regulation is an undue burden on women, the court needs to look at which set of women it has in mind (financial resources, family and work obligations, desire for an abortion, psychological and emotional disposition, etc) and how many women in this set would find the burden to be substantial.

• Effect on other areas of law- Roe and Casey have led to the distortion of many important but unrelated legal doctrines. No legal rule or doctrine is safe from being overruled by the court when it happens to be applied to the State regulation of abortions. The courts abortion cases have diluted the strict standards for facial constitutional challenges, ignored the courts third-party standing doctrine, disregarded standard res judicatory principles, flouted rules on the severability of unconstitutional provisions, etc.

• Reliance interests- Traditional reliance interests arise “when advance planning of great precision is most obviously a necessity”. These do not apply because getting an abortion is an unplanned activity and reproductive planning could be immediately used if States were to ban abortions. Our court recognises only concrete forms of reliance, not intangible reliance such as the effect of an abortion right on society and in particular on the lives of women because both sides have made impassioned and conflicting arguments about the effect of an abortion right on women. The court has neither the authority or expertise to adjudicate those disputes. Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies and allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process. Women are not without electoral or political power. The percentage of women who vote is higher than that of men.
• Having shown that the traditional stare decisis factors do not weigh in favour of retaining Roe and Casey, the final argument is that the American people would lost faith in the court if it made a decision based not on legal principles but due to social and political pressures. There is a special danger that the public will perceive a decision as having been made for unprincipled reasons when we overturn watershed rulings such as Roe. A decision overruling Roe would be viewed as caving to political pressure, but a decision upholding it would be viewed as caving to societal pressure. We cannot exceed our Constitutional authority or allow concerns about the publics reaction to influence our decision. In this case, 26 States have requested in writing that we overrule Roe and Casey and return the issue of abortion to the people and their elected representatives.

(The stunning conclusion) “We therefore rule hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overturned and the authority to regulate abortion be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

The domestic supply of infants is such an inverted homage to Swift's Modest Proposal that I still am not wholly convinced that it can have been used in ignorance.

This.
It's great there aren't enough babies for adopters, because it should be a last resort.
It is not a trade.

Although believe what above?

Obviously women's bodies and bodily autonomy don't feature at all in that summary of arguments anti-abortionists arguments.

Absolutely, nor does it consider the impact on those children removed at birth. Children removed at birth experience trauma in the removal, before we consider their pre-birth experience which we now know can have life long impacts eg drug use, alcoholism use, lack of ante natal care, trauma while in the womb (eg domestic violence). And of course children of women of colour, children with disabilities etc are much less likely to be adopted.

It also doesn’t consider the long term consequences for the woman who has continued an unwanted pregnancy, with all that entails, given birth to a child who is them adopted, and the potential for the child to seek out their birth family in future. It’s literally never over for her.

Evan if we could guarantee every child a safe, loving home it still doesn’t justify forced pregnancy and child birth.

When you consider the misery and suffering caused by the Magdalen Laundries in Ireland, this whole thing is just horrific.

I read something about that elsewhere, without references, and assumed it was one of those paranoid conspiracy theories.

Then I saw this... FFS!

BubblegumIceLollies

I believe life begins at conception.

@tabbycatstripy · 08/05/2022 16:05
BubblegumIceLollies

I believe life begins at conception.

I respect your view though I personally believe life begins then but the more human element is more a just a potential at that stage.

I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering, if you would be a pacifist in the event of a war?

Also, would you think all life of what ever kind is sacred as having been made equally by God/other?

Well, life begins ages before conception as the egg and sperm are definitely live cells. The sperm can even swim! Look at them go like little tadpoles. So life doesn’t begin at conception. Never understood that argument.

The supply and demand language is economic jargon, usually applied to some market where those who plan to buy are the demand side and those who plan to sell are the supply side.

Why that terminology was adopted is puzzling to me, unless the person creating it actually thinks that infants should be traded in a marketplace.

‘I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering, if you would be a pacifist in the event of a war?’

No. People have a right to self-defence.

‘Also, would you think all life of what ever kind is sacred as having been made equally by God/other?’

I didn’t say I thought life was sacred at all. I’m not sure if I believe that or not.

‘Well, life begins ages before conception as the egg and sperm are definitely live cells. The sperm can even swim! Look at them go like little tadpoles. So life doesn’t begin at conception. Never understood that argument.’

I believe a human life (the unique individual whose DNA doesn’t exist before the egg is fertilised) starts at conception. It’s not an anti-choice argument, it’s just where I come out when I think through the facts.

And there are two senses to ‘sacred’, as well, aren’t there? Religiously sacred (I’m not sure what I think) and sacred in the secular sense (untouchable but not holy). And that second one can’t tally, really, because if we regard the dependent foetus as sacred (in terms of society and our laws) that only works if we make the mother expendable.

Well yes.

Forcing non consenting women to carry and birth unwanted babies will feed a supply for adoption.

However, the impact on the foetus of being carried by a stressed, distressed woman who does not want to is not a neutral one, as anyone who works in child development will know. Or anyone who has worked with women who were pregnant in highly stressful situations.

And that's added to the risk factors pp have listed above.

It takes very little investigation into US states to realise that adoptive parents with children with reactive attachment challenges, mental health struggles, developmental disability, trauma, is a massive lottery, and there are plenty of these children already in the system. Many states have very limited support and families go bankrupt trying to get help for their child. And adoptions break down, and those cute and cuddly babies at this point not being so cute or cuddly but highly challenging and distressed children with complex needs, are very difficult to safely place and manage in schools and then in the fostercare system. And children with extreme needs are aging out in residential therapeutic centres (secure children's therapeutic homes) and many just move straight into the prison system because they are unable to live independently, to work and there is nothing else in terms of support for them.

It's already a huge mess. FAS is a big issue in the US, there are a hell of a lot of traumatised children and the system isn't there to support the ones they have.

As with surrogacy and all the rest of it, those passionately shouting about 'pro life' need to think past cute newborn to the reality of the life they are creating and the ability of the country to support them with any life worth having.

It would be needlessly cruel to force a woman to carry a child and give birth to it, possibly at the cost of her own health and income, all the while knowing that she can’t give it a home. In many cases the suffering of giving up the baby for adoption after the pregnancy would outweigh the suffering she might experience from a first trimester termination. Those advocating this have no empathy for women.

The whole thing is grotesque. It's a sort of economic blackmail for the poorest 'You can't afford this baby, you'll have to let someone else have it'.

And the better off are put in a position 'Don't want a baby? But you could provide for it couldn't you? So tough if this wasn't your plan, you've got a baby/another child'. It really is a way of keeping women down. Plus makes it more likely for employers to discriminate against women 'Well, if she gets pregnant she's going to have to have the baby whether she wants to or not'.

@Artichokeleaves
As with surrogacy and all the rest of it, those passionately shouting about 'pro life' need to think past cute newborn to the reality of the life they are creating and the ability of the country to support them with any life worth having

Very well said.
Whatever life there is at conception, it is as nothing to the lived life of a child with all its neural pathways formed during its actual life once born. Real “Pro” life should be about that.

It is ironic to see how, where women have many children, how cheaply actual lived life is valued when it comes down to it. How young people are virtual slaves, or cannon fodder.

As for going off to bomb other countries with impunity, not only must scores of foetuses have been killed with their mothers but also adult foetuses aka innocent humans of that country.

Plus makes it more likely for employers to discriminate against women 'Well, if she gets pregnant she's going to have to have the baby whether she wants to or not'.

Not to mention the number of women who post on MN because they are under heavy pressure to abort a pregnancy from a partner who does not want the oncoming financial responsibility and ties. And the associated dangers of domestic abuse and violence to women that increase so steeply once a woman is pregnant - hardly stellar services available for that, are there? Not in the police, not in support, not in refuges. Not to mention all the lifelong damage that can cause in the forming neural wiring of a foetus.

Artichokeleaves
Not to mention all the lifelong damage that can cause in the forming neural wiring of a foetus.

Yes, absolutely. People don’t seem to realise this much at all.

Pro-life/anti-abortion people do understand that developmental damage can happen, but to them it isn’t a fate worse than death. They really believe abortion is murder and so is far worse than any potential damage a fetus might suffer in the womb or as an unwanted child in poverty.

Discovereads · 09/05/2022 10:23
ScrollingLeaves

“Artichokeleaves
Not to mention all the lifelong damage that can cause in the forming neural wiring of a foetus.”

“Yes, absolutely. People don’t seem to realise this much at all.”

Pro-life/anti-abortion people do understand that developmental damage can happen, but to them it isn’t a fate worse than death. They really believe abortion is murder and so is far worse than any potential damage a fetus might suffer in the womb or as an unwanted child in poverty

Discovereads - Sorry, I should have made clear that when I said people don’t seem to realise this much at all [neural damage to the foetus when the mother is stressed] I was meaning people in general, not necessarily people with ‘pro-life’ views in particular.

I had been thinking of this in general given how pregnant women often have to work and live in very stressful conditions almost up until birth. It is expected. As discussed the US is especially bad pre and post birth. Could this, and pressure to put young babies under stress in nurseries, be causing the apparent rise in apparent adhd behaviour?

But of course a mother who is in a position to need an abortion, may be particularly stressed.

I had been thinking of this in general given how pregnant women often have to work and live in very stressful conditions almost up until birth. It is expected. As discussed the US is especially bad pre and post birth. Could this, and pressure to put young babies under stress in nurseries, be causing the apparent rise in apparent adhd behaviour?

I doubt there would be a causal link between stress in pregnancy and adhd or other LDs. Taking the US, for example, the stressors in pregnancy have been gradually reduced over the generations and yet ADHD rates have increased. ADHD is known to have significant genetic factors, such that it is likely an inheritable condition. I think it more likely that the increased awareness and assessment of children are behind the increased ADHD rates as adults being diagnosed with it now speak of being punished as “naughty and spoilt, or lazy and stupid” children depending on the type of ADHD they have…hyperactive vs inattentive.

There are certainly plenty of children with trauma which often leads to severely challenging and violent behaviour in schools, who experienced DV/DA through their mother in utero, and absorbed all her stress. Mother is usually the one dealing with all the very major stress of a very stressed child and an even more stressed school and nothing working (often including mother) about seven years later.

There has to be a realistic view of what 'pro life' means, where quality is a part of it, and what society is able to afford. Otherwise we're just creating mess through a kind of sentimental blindness to reality. Although goodness knows we're knee deep in sentimental solipsim at this point in history.

Dr Gabor Mate ( medical Dr) has written on ADHD and does find a relationship between maternal stress, and stress in an infant’s life, and greater likelihood of ADHD symptoms.

Sue Gerhardt well known psychologist writes of damage to infants’ brains through emotional neglect, or general neglect.

It is thought severe maternal stress can also make a child more likely to develop schizophrenia in adulthood.

Modern life is increasingly stressful for women who even though they have good jobs and may be a supportive partnership. So many can barely stop to have a baby at all, working as they must up to the last moment and soon after birth to even afford a place to live. And often they no longer have supportive community and family around. Look at the growing depression and eating distress among young women too.

Anyway, pro-life is contradictory as an idea imo unless it also includes promoting the well being of pregnant women and the actual life of children once they are out of the womb, where many are will grow up in adverse conditions.