Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 331 posts

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#211

Post by WkndTriathlete »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #87
xutopia wrote: post #48

Does anyone actually address how religion is a big factor at play here? It's skipped over every time but this is very much a religious war happening here. The Catholics in the Supreme Court are overturning human rights because it goes against the recent dogmas their faith prescribed them to believe.

Religion isn't enough to be the primary driver here and it's becoming less important with time. We've raised a 2-3 generation on popular dogma in which human life is the most sacred thing imaginable and now we have a society full of people do not generally posses the requisite mental faculties to have adult discussion about subjects that involve harm to people (or apparently fetuses). We're reaping what we sowed. You…

I get your point, but at the same time realize that "a little quantifiable harm to get to the better solution" is a _really_ steep, slippery slope. (I could make the argument that precise rationalization led to the Holocaust and World War 2.)

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#212

Post by hellojesus »

triceratops wrote: post #114
parkingrift wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this completely ignores the moral issues of later term abortions. I am an atheist, and I am disturbed by the idea of a voluntary abortion after 20 weeks. Voluntary meaning no medical necessity. I think Republicans have latched onto this issue and Christianity in America has adopted it, but there is far more at play here than just Christian nationalism.

How many abortions happen after 20 weeks? How many of them are due to medical reasons vs "don't want this baby anymore"? I'd wager that the vast majority of abortions post 20 weeks are performed with extreme reluctance and sadness, and only out of great necessity.

I'd wager than many are talked to abortion, specifically that late in the cycle, out of a desire for organ harvesting from newborns and not out of necessity.

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#213

Post by tablespoon »

kodah wrote: post #199
xutopia wrote: post #48

Does anyone actually address how religion is a big factor at play here? It's skipped over every time but this is very much a religious war happening here. The Catholics in the Supreme Court are overturning human rights because it goes against the recent dogmas their faith prescribed them to believe.

A link to the decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf (Everything I'm writing about is under Held ) Morality plays in some way. Basically, Roe tried to rewrite and ignore some history, according to the court, in order to establish an implicit privacy principle in the constitution. Where the morality comes in is that the court clearly fears things like hooking and drug use (which they me…

> They kept referring to this as "ordered liberty" which I took for morality.

I don't think that's what that meant. I think the meaning was more along the lines of "liberty, but not everything-goes liberty." It's defined in the dictionary as "freedom limited by the need for order in society" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/ordered%20liberty), and appears to be legal/political science jargon with some history behind it.

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#214

Post by hellojesus »

triceratops wrote: post #157
ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we see religiously-inspired laws everywhere. Any laws relating to alcohol sales is probably reflective of local religiosity, as is the state philosophy on criminal justice. These are not 1st amendment violations. Going deeper, religion created a culture which we have inherited: marriages, government holidays, even the official work week being seven days long. These do not violate the 1st Amendment.

> Any laws relating to alcohol sales is probably reflective of local religiosity, as is the state philosophy on criminal justice. My guess is these don't inconvenience people enough to make it to the Supreme Court. And there's also the fig leaf of "crime reduction". > as is the state philosophy on criminal justice Can you give some examples? I'm not familiar with this. > religion created a culture which we have inher…

The Constitution does not enumerate a federal power to govern alcohol. That is left to the states, and it is not a violation of an ammendment.

Though the federal government did coerce every state into moving their drinking age from 18 to 21 under threat of withholding federal highway funding to states that had drinking ages set lower than 21.

That case went to the Supreme Court and is also in dire need of overruling in my opinion.

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#215

Post by rayiner »

Tozen wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a divisive issue because it represents fundamentally different world views. As an asian, the idea that the government can’t regulate abortion, which is prevalent among a large minority of Democrats these days, is remarkable. Even if abortion was a moral issue, and not about preserving human life, nothing precludes states from legislating morality. It’s illustrative to compare to Japan or Germany, which have “lib…

> nothing precludes states from legislating morality You seem to be confused or at least "cloudy" about some things. The U.S. has the concept of separating religion from government ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state ). Government does and should regulate behavior. But, morality based on religious beliefs becomes a problem, when the beliefs of particular religious groups are imposed on othe…

Religion is a red herring in the abortion debate. Abortion is illegal in Poland (Catholic) and Bangladesh (Muslim), and is technically illegal (though available) in Japan (Shinto and Buddhist). Regulation of abortion is therefore not something specific to a particular religious tradition.

In the U.S. specifically, moreover, abortion is best described as an internecine conflict between different branches of Christianity. The pro-choice movement is an outgrowth of mainline Protestantism, with its focus on individual self determination. The notion that the morality of extinguishing a fetal life "is between a woman and her doctor" and society has no say is uniquely Protestant. It's quite alien even to other societies that permit abortions, which tend to do so on utilitarian grounds like overpopulation.

And all that is fine, because "separation of church and state" does not mean that the government cannot regulate behavior "based on religious beliefs." The U.S. does not have French-style secularism, where there is a separate body of secular philosophy animating government and religious belief is actively excluded. It doesn't matter what people's reasons are for voting a particular way, as long as the end result is otherwise permissible.

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#216

Post by hellojesus »

Spoom wrote: post #61

I bet these places will start to threaten folks now that their state likely lets them. "Well, now that we have your data, we'll track you since births are public knowledge. If we don't see a birth, we'll turn it over to the police, and make your identity public (no private medical data needed, just that we have reason to believe you had an abortion) so that anyone in a state with a Texas-style law can sue you for $10…

Regardless, Texas cannot hold you liable for an abortion that you get performed in another state.

So Texas can try all they want, but they have no jurisdiction over what happens in California, so they will never be able to write legislation that makes it illegal to travel to another state for an abortion.

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#217

Post by antiterra »

finfinfin wrote: post #142
jonhohle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly do not purport to be an abortion clinic. They are a crisis pregnancy clinic. They give advice, support, and resources to mothers.

Being pregnant does not make you a mother.

This kind of semantic argument does absolutely nothing to help anyone. Mother in place of 'mother-to-be' is extremely common in use.

If you were arguing that a pregnant person can identify as a father/father-to-be then you should probably have stated that.

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#218

Post by tablespoon »

nullfield wrote: post #132
weberer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a conspiracy theory. Even atheists and pro-abortion people have been complaining that the ruling in Roe vs Wade was a huge stretch. At the end of the day, its not a constitutional issue. So either amend the constitution or leave the decision up to the states.

The thing that the "progressive left" doesn't want to admit is that Roe can be bad law AND that the right to be secure in/have control over your body needs to exist.

> The thing that the "progressive left" doesn't want to admit is that Roe can be bad law AND that the right to be secure in/have control over your body needs to exist.

Yeah. The rhetoric on this is so overheated that I'm convinced that some people actually believe Roe v. Wade is the Third Amendment [1] or something like that. IHMO, this debate would be a lot better if people could distinguish between policy and the law/legal reasoning as separate things.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#219

Post by dragonwriter »

hellojesus wrote: post #216
Spoom wrote: post #61

I bet these places will start to threaten folks now that their state likely lets them. "Well, now that we have your data, we'll track you since births are public knowledge. If we don't see a birth, we'll turn it over to the police, and make your identity public (no private medical data needed, just that we have reason to believe you had an abortion) so that anyone in a state with a Texas-style law can sue you for $10…

Regardless, Texas cannot hold you liable for an abortion that you get performed in another state. So Texas can try all they want, but they have no jurisdiction over what happens in California, so they will never be able to write legislation that makes it illegal to travel to another state for an abortion.

> Regardless, Texas cannot hold you liable for an abortion that you get performed in another state.

Texas can do whatever the US Supreme Court allows them to do, and if you think well-established Constitutional precedent is a firm guide on that...how do you think they have the ability to ban abortion in Texas in the first place?

But even under established precedent, I don't think it's at all clear that they cannot punish you for anything you do while in Texas with the intent of getting an abortion, even if the actual abortion is performed outside of Texas.

And even if they can't (based on what the courts will eventually decide) punish you, they can arrest you, charge you, try you, convict you, sentence you, and send you to prison, possibly awaiting execution, before your case is even ripe for appeal.

Re: Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

#220

Post by snikeris »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #201
snikeris wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just say that it is murder/abortion of 6 fertilized eggs. However, many people are fine with such murder, as they are with the murder of lettuce leaves. It seems the issue is always what is being murdered. The more human-like the thing being murdered is, the more outrageous it is. Plan B, not so outrageous because it's just a few cells. 20+ weeks, people are getting outraged. A dog? Pretty human-like, people do…

Plan B is not an abortifacient. It prevents fertilization from ever taking place. Anyone against Plan B is entirely making an argument about casual sex.

I think it’s irrelevant to the discussion, but it seems like it’s not settled:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4313438/

Post reply on HN