71–80 of 98 posts
So much fuss about privacy, data collection, facebook, and police. The real issue here is someone tried to abort a 28 week old fetus? Only Americans find this acceptable. It's a fringe and extreme position in all of the developed world to abort a viable fetus on-demand. I continue to be shocked at the permissiveness of American abortion law. I hope this ends in conviction of those responsible.
So much fuss about privacy, data collection, facebook, and police. The real issue here is someone tried to abort a 28 week old fetus? Only Americans find this acceptable. It's a fringe and extreme position in all of the developed world to abort a viable fetus on-demand. I continue to be shocked at the permissiveness of American abortion law. I hope this ends in conviction of those responsible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, personally, I believe that human pregnancy is unusual. Most mammalian mothers can self terminate pregnancy if desired, by cutting off the flow of resources to their fetus. Humans are somewhat unique in that they can't. Our fetuses are parasitic, and attempt to force the mother to carry them to term through endocrinological trucks. Except... We can now disrupt that parasitism and join every other mammalian spe…
Setting aside that thinking of pregnancy as a "parasitic relationship" is a somewhat deranged perspective that very few people likely share, we have a rather robust toolkit for dealing with this problem that doesn't have to tread on moral gray areas: contraception, plan b, pregnancy tests. I'm also not saying pregnancies shouldn't be terminable by choice, to be clear. I'm inquiring about how we justify placing the li…
I think this is the first issue to address.
Contraception is for the woman to learn about, pay for and take, same for plan b, pregnancy tests and even abortions.
Pregnancy costs are for the mother to pay, for the mother to learn what to do about it, how to handle. Raising a child is for the mother to do. Shame related to all this is for the woman to endure.
I think any argument for forcing a woman to X, Y or Z would be much stronger if some equivalent contribution was provided to them for the service which they would be obligated to provide.
If all this education was provided properly and for free, access to all these paid for and readily available, if society or father's had to provide adequate in-full financial compensations without lengthy court battles, if father's were forced to be there at various step of the pregnancy, donate their own blood or organs if needed due to medical complications, take care of the child fully if the mother doesn't want it, etc. If women were given full pregnancy work leaves at no reduced salary, etc.
If you had that, you could posture to make abortion illegal, maybe minus certain medical related complications and maybe a few other scenarios like incestual rapes and all that.
Minus all that, I think it's hard to have a discussion about forcing someone to do something against their will, which will incur health repercussions, lifestyle changes, lifelong time and money commitments, and physical and mental pain.
We don't force people to give a hungry man some food. We don't force people to share their property with others. We don't force people to care for the elderly. We don't force people to pay for others medical expenses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is the European angle suddenly in every abortion discussion? I'm fascinated by how these kind of talking points emerge and then are suddenly everywhere, must be some kind of influencer coordination. (I'll probably get down voted for this because whenever I bring this kind of thing up people seem to get personally offended. Even though it's not your talking point, you picked up somewhere recently)
Because it's incredibly annoying to hear Europeans to complain about the oppression of US abortion laws which are actually more permissive than the ones in their own country.
I think what most Europeans find difficult to understand is quite how partisan the US system is and how little support is available for those caught up in legal difficulties of this kind.
Just my impression of course, but impression seems to be what a lot of it is about.
To repeat my comment on the earlier now-buried post: Companies definitely should disobey the law by refusing to comply with a valid search warrant in cases where someone is being prosecuted for having an abortion. Obeying the law in this case is clearly immoral! This does not entail that obeying the law is always immoral, or even that breaking it is always moral. You can come to the conclusion that it is okay for com…
> Companies definitely should disobey the law by refusing to comply with a valid search warrant in cases where someone is being prosecuted for having an abortion. Obeying the law in this case is clearly immoral! I like living in a country where it's illegal to kill babies on a whim, thank you very much. So no, while you might disagree with this law, it's not at all "clear". > Of course talking about encryption always…
You might want to consider that the kind of inflammatory language you're using tends to make productive argument much less likely.
> Facebook employees who refused to comply with a warrant would absolutely be thrown in jail
I think it is very unusual for employees to end up in jail because their corporate employer was found guilty of contempt of court. In particular, I don't think any ProtonMail employee has ever been thrown in jail. We know about cases where companies have successfully refused to introduce cryptographic backdoors into their software; even in the case of the unnamed climate activist https://www.techdirt.com/2021/09/10/protonmail-turned-over-f... ProtonMail was only ordered to provide his IP address, not inject backdoored encryption into his browser to steal his email.
We also know about cases, for example in Germany, where police have injected malware into customers' devices, and as I understand it, companies are required to assist in this. This is not the established law in Nebraska, although it is surely happening covertly in the US in some cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Setting aside that thinking of pregnancy as a "parasitic relationship" is a somewhat deranged perspective that very few people likely share, we have a rather robust toolkit for dealing with this problem that doesn't have to tread on moral gray areas: contraception, plan b, pregnancy tests. I'm also not saying pregnancies shouldn't be terminable by choice, to be clear. I'm inquiring about how we justify placing the li…
Anyway you cut it, all options being discussed or proposed puts the burden on women. I think this is the first issue to address. Contraception is for the woman to learn about, pay for and take, same for plan b, pregnancy tests and even abortions. Pregnancy costs are for the mother to pay, for the mother to learn what to do about it, how to handle. Raising a child is for the mother to do. Shame related to all this is…
To repeat my comment on the earlier now-buried post: Companies definitely should disobey the law by refusing to comply with a valid search warrant in cases where someone is being prosecuted for having an abortion. Obeying the law in this case is clearly immoral! This does not entail that obeying the law is always immoral, or even that breaking it is always moral. You can come to the conclusion that it is okay for com…
Why can't we draw a line somewhere before 28 weeks and say that if you want an abortion, you have to decide before 7 months have gone by?
I can't imagine thinking that it should be legal to kill a full term fetus as it's being delivered solely because it hasn't been born yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no good way to draw a line. Morally, arguments are just as strong in terms of the fetus putting the mother at risk, or the obligations on society to force the mother to behave in ways that care for the fetus and later for the child itself, with limited support or assistance. Similarly, you can claim that life is life even if it obligates others to sacrifices of their own. Both arguments also have their equal…
> fetus putting the mother at risk I have absolutely no qualms with abortion in the event of life-threatening complications experienced by the mother at any stage of pregnancy. That seems perfectly reasonable. In fact, I think most supposedly 'pro life' states carve out such exceptions? > or the obligations on society to force the mother to behave in ways that care for the fetus and later for the child itself, with l…
Maybe some genetic test results came back indicating severe problems, or the mother got a diagnosis herself, or the father has backed out of support. It's hard to judge without intimidate knowledge of the circumstances.
Some points that folks on this thread are missing: 1. This is not a story about when a pregnancy can/should be terminated. 2. The person in this story is a child - 17 years old. Many times, what seems like normal weight gain ends up being a pregnancy. This is especially true for younger/skinnier folks. 3. Remove the hot-button issue - abortion - from this story and consider the implications. Two people were having wh…
Plenty of criminals think they are having a private conversation, when in fact, the government is listening in.
What they did was a crime in Nebraska. It has been a crime in Nebraska for decades (centuries?).
The government used due process to get a subpoeona for information to investigate a crime.
Yes, the wounded parties here will feel like their privacy was violated, but from the information we have in the article, it seems justified.
The privacy and social implications have been the same for decades: your communications can be intercepted or retrieved by law enforcement, so if there is probable cause that you committed a crime, someone might go looking.