Roe vs Wade / gun laws

[placewherewebelong]

I have been reading with horror as the case has unfolded. I personally struggle to see how people can claim to be pro life then subject children to be potential orphans, or in care, or to live with parents who didn't want them, or as the product of a rape, and be so PLEASED with themselves. It horrifies me.

That aside -

why on earth is a country that still has gun laws where children are shot dead and people are encouraged to carry arms deciding that the biggest problem is stopping women from making their own choice about their own child and their own body?

I don't understand :'(

It’s also a country where in 9 states there is no mini age to get married, and there is no federal law against child marriage. Not saying it’s a woman hating, child hating misogynistic country but I’m not not saying that either

I think we have to accept that, to some people, destruction of a foetus is destruction of a life and they fundamentally believe it’s murder. They’re never, never going to agree with a woman’s right to choose, no matter how many arguments we present. We just have to (in the UK) continue to outnumber them.

But people in America murder children with guns, yet.........

Yes, but their constitution resists action on that. I agree the situation with guns is insane but I don’t think it’s an argument against a person who believes a foetus is a person. We’re not going to convince them that way.

But that's the thing. They can believe a foetus is a person all they like, but so were the 7 year old children blasted recently. The irony is strong.

Yep. There is no sense in it.

It's not about being pro-life. It's about being anti-woman.

It's all completely clear and obvious.

I heard a vox pop on the radio of a young American woman rejoicing the Roe v Wade decision saying that 'they' (I think she meant just Americans) have an inalienable, (yes, inalienable) right to certain things. One of those was the right to life and the other was the right to bear arms.
Logical thinking is clearly un-American

I’m very sympathetic to American women today (I’m strongly pro choice) but I don’t think that’s a logical argument, sorry. The gun lobby isn’t suggesting shooting kids. They don’t say ‘shoot seven year olds but don’t have an abortion’. The position that Americans have a right to carry a gun for self-defence (as mad as I think it is) isn’t inconsistent with a view that abortion is taking a life.

Of course it's a logical argument. They continue to allow to people to carry guns when they know the consequence of this is children are murdered.

Yet these are the same people who are denying abortions on the grounds that someone could use this as contraception or murder.

Why do you think they think people should have a gun?

I find it abhorrent.

For you, or anyone else interested, if you look up Eva O'Connor, it shouldn't be this hard, on facebook - wow.

‘Of course it's a logical argument. They continue to allow to people to carry guns when they know the consequence of this is children are murdered.’

Well, I see your point but I don’t agree that that’s the same thing. For it to be directly contradictory, pro gun commentators would have to be arguing against the right to an abortion but arguing for the right to murder kids. They’re not. We don’t win by misrepresenting people’s positions, we just entrench them in them.

‘Why do you think they think people should have a gun?’

I think there are a number of reasons. But so they can murder people isn’t one of them, AFAIK.

I’ve just come across the argument online (not sure what I think of it) that the shift towards the right on this issue in the US is partly because there is a big group of moderate people who tolerated abortion when it was necessary, but saw it as a necessary evil, and they were being asked to celebrate it within discourses about ‘abortion pride’ and ‘shout your abortion’, and ultimately it made them more pro-life.

I’m seeing comments from people that amount to, I was prepared to accept it, but I wasn’t prepared to accept arguments for unlimited abortion (without mental health or physical grounds, or up to term). Or, I was prepared to tolerate it, but when people were boasting about it it made me feel more hostile. Or, when I saw people saying they’d had twenty abortions and wearing it on a t-shirt it changed my view.

I'm scared that there are peodophiles who want to take advantage when there will have to be a relaxation of adoption laws once juvenile care homes are overrun.

I hear what you're saying but we don't care that children are shot dead in schools but consider ourselves passionately 'pro-life' gets a big eyebrow raise from me.

I saw a quote somewhere this morning;

'Guns have more rights in the US than women do'.

Sums it up for me. It's abhorrent and a very scary step backwards, not only for the women of the US, but it's likely to cause a shift in attitudes worldwide.

Can anyone please assist with linking? Idk how but there was an incident in the US. A police officer in the state of Rhode Island attended an abortion rights rally as part of a counter protest group and punched a Black woman in the face twice after she spoke

The incident is even more relevant because he is also running for public office and so is she. His platform is opposition to gun control.

I ask you to regard this incident because it illustrates the paradigm between pro lifers who also adamantly oppose gun control. It shows you what we are up against as women. Not only the political oppression but also the personal violence.

Could you imagine a police officer also running as a Conservative MP punching a woman at Speakers Corner for delivering a speech they disagree with?

The thing really makes no sense is that they care very little about these children once they are in the world and the right to bear arms is part of this. They don’t have statutory maternity leave, they don’t have easily accessible/affordable health care and they won’t place some form of logical control on guns to stop them being take into Schools and killing innocent children. Oh and there’s the death penalty too often course. Right to life is absolute bullshit it’s about the right to control and punish, rooted primarily in white suprematist Christian fundamentalism. Yesterday was a ver sad day for America.

Murder is actually illegal in the US. Allowing gun ownership is not precisely the same as saying it's ok to murder people. There are lots of things allowed that can potentially harm people if used in an illegal manner, but that does not automatically equate to banning those things.

Gun ownership is protected by the constitutions in the US, largely due to their history. It's quite different from the UK but if you think about weapon ownership in terms of class hierarchy in the UK and Europe, and also the fact that there was real wilderness much more recently in the US where regular citizens hunted for their food regularly - something often not permitted to regular people in Europe - it maybe is easier to see that firearms have a very different place in the national consciousness. The idea of the state disarming the citizens has really different connotations.

There are other points people will make, probably the most significant one being that most gun crime is not related to legal guns, and states with strict laws don't have better outcomes. They tend to think the idea that cutting of legal gun ownership will prevent illegal acts is pretty questionable.

I would also say that in recent years the Democrats have lost a lot of moral authority on crime and violence issues. "Defund the police and take away citizens legal guns" doesn't sound like a great combination if you are in a place like San Francisco these days.

Roe v Wade is quite different - it was struck down mainly because it was always a shaky legal ruling.- this was admitted by the justices who made it at the time. It's not a law - as in a piece of legislation - as some people seem to think. As much as pro-choice activists at the moment want to say this has happened only because there are not more conservative chief justices, you could equally argue it only stood as long as it did because of the way the court was weighted before. If you want federal legislation it needs to come from the federal congress which is what pro-choice activists should have been pushing for, it's not like their hasn't been time.

There are similarities between the two in that conservatives are more likely to argue with both that legislation is properly made at the state level rather than the federal level, for reasons completely apart from their views on either abortion or guns.

I would say that it's true the way this has been played has not won over hearts and minds. I'm not sure there has been a strong shift to the right on abortion specifically though. It has been the case for many years that most Americans are moderates, and that they are pretty equally split as far as people who consider themselves pro-choice or pro-life. The line moves a little but not a lot. The more conservative populations are Catholics and evangelical Christians, but also Hispanic, black, and female voters are more likely to lean pro-life. So I suppose it's possible demographic change could play a part.

But as far as people getting turned off, I think that's true. Most Americans are moderate on abortion. They tend to think something like the abortion laws in the UK or the Netherlands are a good approach. Most of them do not believe killing a third trimester fetus is morally indifferent.

Pro-choice activists in the US are prone to some pretty strong performative stuff, and they tend to very vocally take the view that abortion at any stage is morally neutral.

Strategically the whole thing is a bit weird - at times it seems like they don't actually want to convince people. I've wondered if that isn't behind their failure to push for legislation, it would involve trying to convince people and possibly political compromise.

We haven't failed to push for protective legislation. Legislation to protect the right to abortion has been passed in some states but not in others and has failed at the national level because many politicians will not support it and some actively oppose.

This is oppression

You cannot blame women because they are oppressed

Well yes, not everyone will just do what you want. In a democracy you need to convince people.

On a very controversial topic where people are split about half and half, with views that many consider extreme dominating the ends and the discourse, political leaders are unlikely to see much benefit in proposing legislation that will bring lots of criticisms and in all likelihood, very few plaudits.

I just don't really know where this idea that liberal democracy doesn't involve convincing others or making compromises comes from.

The United States is not a strict democracy.

Majority rule rule does not protect the interests of the minority.

In a democracy, how do you convince people to listen to your side when police officers running for public office, on a platform advocating for no gun control, punch women speaking in support of abortion rights in the face?