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South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

washingtonpost.com

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Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#131

Post by lotsofpulp »

radford-neal wrote: post #105
lotsofpulp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems meepmorp is correct, because in this context, bill already means “proposed law”, so “bill would outlaw” is redundant.

Really? You can't see how the present tense is clearly intended to mislead the reader into believing that these websites are right now outlawed? Sure, it may fail to mislead some readers who are alert to the technical distinction between "bill" and "law". But they will succeed in misleading many readers.

It is my fault for not knowing a definition of a word.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#132

Post by jjulius »

user3939382 wrote: post #29

Quoted post unavailable.

>... I have a feeling the whole conversation would be a lot different if that's all we were discussing and having to take responsibility for our decisions wasn't part of the discussion.

I need to make sure that you understand that many organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, make education around contraceptives and the magnitude of one's sexual decisions a part of their program, right? These are conversations people want to be having with others, concepts people want to be teaching to kids or adults before they fuck up, but you'll find that many of the states that outlaw (or want to) abortion also prevent proper sex ed curriculum from being taught in the classroom.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#133

Post by softcactus »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #126
softcactus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Laws should be made based on reason, justice, and after due consideration and we'll reasoned discussion not empathy, emotion, or crises of the moment. Doing that will only lead to poorly conceived and implemented laws that fail at their purpose and give power to demogauges and the power hungry.

I never said laws should be based on empathy. I just said that OP had no empathy in order to make the point that taking an aloof legalist stance is stupid when it has actual real world negative impacts on others that they were incapable of considering.

My second paragraph expands upon the reason and justice aspect.

Also the current constitutional crisis we are in demolishes the legalist justification anyways. States being able to ban travel to other states for abortion, states allowing private citizens to sue others for getting abortions in other states. States limiting access to websites that are legal in other states and limiting the first amendment.

Because repealing Roe was done on an ideological basis it has caused a cascade of problems around how much power states should have, one that has been largely settled since the Civil War.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#135

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hotpotamus wrote: post #40
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are we using a 200+ year old document Because it’s worked. The alternative, opening up the entire system of government for debate, simultaneously, continuously, predictably tears itself apart in a generation. (That or you wind up with an unwritten Constitution only the elites can decipher.) The Constitution isn’t sacred. But it’s far from worthless as a basis of our society.

To listen to conservatives, we spent most of the 20th century creating violation after violation of the constitution. If they're correct, then to me that means that the constitution hasn't worked in about a century.

> to me that means that the constitution hasn't worked in about a century

The century that saw America exit WWII and the Cold War victorious while navigating a civil rights revolution? All amidst a series of peaceful transitions of powers, including the removal of a corrupt executive?

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#136

Post by 32163704 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #58
32163704 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first amendment doesn't have anything to say about the Internet, so it doesn't apply. Think I'm joking? This is the stated judicial philosophy of the majority of Supreme Court justices. There is no traditional deeply rooted in American tradition that says anything about the Internet, either.

> The first amendment doesn't have anything to say about the Internet, so it doesn't apply. Moreover, when taking that mode of interpretation, it doesn't say anything about the States, nor does the 14th Amendment say anything about some of the rights protected against federal intrusion by the Bill of Rights.

I believe the process you’re talking about is called incorporation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of...

The Court will rely on this precedent where convenient, I suspect.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#137

Post by softcactus »

linuxftw wrote: post #130
softcactus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't pretend to know what is best for everyone nor dictate my morals to them. So if SC thinks they should have a law to do whatever, that's their business. If the people living there don't like it, they should work to change the law, or start lynching politicians, whichever is easier, that's for the people of SC to decide. As for the people not in South Carolina, they should work to pass an amendment or secede fro…

> As for the people not in South Carolina, they should work to pass an amendment or secede from the union, those are the only legal options if you believe in how the federal government is supposed to work

It's not legal to secede from the US, we fought an entire war because it was not a right of the states. Most of what you say ignores the reality of our political system, voter suppression, who draw districts, filibuster, etc. Which makes it more difficult than "just vote". Which is why the Republicans went the route of Supreme Court justice appointment, so they could legislate via the court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#138

Post by ChrisLomont »

carbadtraingood wrote: post #116
ChrisLomont wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The world today is wildly different from the world of the 1970s, and yet we've made no changes to the constitution. No, it isn't. I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights is still a pretty good set of basic rights. Would you be willing to roll the dice on throwing a random out to get a new one? That is what can easily happen when you make changing it easy enough to be done quickly. Also, why would you want to change the r…

> No, it isn't. If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s, I don't know that we're going to agree on much. On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph, but the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity…

>On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph

Yet all of those were given protection based on Constitutional arguments, right? With no change needed to specifically add a new tiny rule to the Constitution for each single change in societal beliefs, right?

>If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s

People still work, buy houses, live by most of the same desires, needs, goals, interactions. Contract law is still useful. The Bill of Rights is still pretty useful.

In fact, I'd expect the vast majority of concepts in US law from the 1970s are still useful today. I think you overestimate the need to legislate every change in technology more than any country does.

>the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level

I seriously doubt that. Not a single issue you raised was not an issue in the 70s with a significant amount of people working on those issues. And fundamentally changed would mean things considered part of humanity in the 1970s are now gone, which I don't think is true at all. At best we've added some features and beliefs we now think are better. But we still care about people, about life, about dreams, about relationships, about dreams, about love, and death, and right to pursue happiness, and on and on.

If your system of laws is so weak as to been updating at a Constitutional level because someone invented a drone, then that system is fundamentally flawed, because it will break and never be able to be applied to life in any reasonable way. A good system has at a Constitutional level high level concepts that provide guidelines and boundaries that are refined by local, easier to change, and less system-breaking laws. That is the one we have.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#139

Post by giraffe_lady »

threatofrain wrote: post #123
AlexandrB wrote: post #13

> For the NRLC, which wrote the model legislation, limiting communication is a key part of the strategy to aggressively enforce laws restricting abortion. “The whole criminal enterprise needs to be dealt with to effectively prevent criminal activity,” Jim Bopp, the group’s general counsel, wrote in a July 4 memo, comparing the group’s efforts to fighting organized crime. This basically tells you everything you need t…

If we accept the premise that abortion is baby murder, then the moral implications are clear: (1) exceptions on rape are grotesque as we'd be condoning baby murder as a form of trauma relief, (2) cross-state or even cross-country baby murder is just as grotesque, (3) doctors and medical systems must have extreme culpability as they are part of an assembly line of baby murder. How does Constitutional case law factor i…

Even if you consider it murder-more-or-less, the hard dependence on another person's body puts it in a different category of transgression.

Consider:

You watch someone die in front of you while you hold in your hands the thing that could save their life, but refuse to give it. Is that murder? Maybe, possibly, there's an argument that it's something else but I'm comfortable with this. Should a person be allowed to do it? Again maybe, but I'm ok with no, that's a bad crime, they shouldn't be allowed to do it.

You watch someone die in front of you while the thing that could save them comes from your own body. A blood transfusion, say, or whatever, a fingernail clipping, it doesn't matter really. This is morally the same transgression as the first example. But in this case we have clearly and consistently decided that you are allowed to make this choice. It may be evil but it is not a crime.

If you don't allow the second choice, then you open the door to things like medical experiments on nonconsenting people and organ harvesting. The boundary around bodily autonomy needs to be firm or you permit atrocities.

Abortion may be murder! You can believe it is. But the fact that the life depends on the body of another person means they have the choice not to render aid.

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