The points you raise about ‘the deontological answer’ are discussed by Greene in his article. I had to do a lot of snipping to keep this article as short as it is, and it’s still pretty long. I can’t pre-respond to every possible objection. Perhaps you could raise the question and allow me to answer instead of assuming I haven’t considered the points you raise and am therefore worthy of your disappointment?
I am aware that it’s from a quote. It’s from a quote you chose, inserted into your article, and moved on from without caveat in a way characteristic of authors who wish to borrow positions in others’ words (as opposed to more critical uses of quotations). Yes, you identify the quotes as not belonging to you, but your article is structured in such a way as to claim them; I have just gone over it again and can’t find any place where you disclaim more than to the extent that you admit you didn’t write those bits.
Adding “characteristically” helps, but I have to wonder what your target audience is here. You could have written about what parts of the brain light up when people make deontological or consequentialistic judgments in a far more neutral style with less sniping if you’re only here to inform us about an interesting subsection of neuroscience. You’ve certainly failed to present a compelling and charitable enough case that a (representative?) deontologist in the audience is swayed. The consequentialists will be predisposed to believe the nice things you have to say about them; perhaps we have an especially good quality consequentialist here and they won’t be subject to that bias, but regardless you’re not going to change their views. What is your point?
Am I mistaken in thinking that anti-abortion activists do seek to make abortion illegal, and just don’t do it by charging women with crimes the scope of which does not legally apply? Usually? (I seem to remember a news story about some bill in the works that would make killing a pregnant woman a double homicide. That’s a reasonable step towards making abortion illegal as a form of murder where it currently is not.) Is there actually a precedent of charging people with nearby crimes when morally offended? Am I legally permitted to charge people with, say, littering, if they get near me while smelly (it’s like litter, in that it makes the environment unpleasant)? This would surprise me but if you have non-abortion examples of this happening I’ll buy it that anti-abortionists are behaving oddly by eschewing the tactic.
I am aware that it’s from a quote. It’s from a quote you chose
I enthusiastically agree that there should generally be much higher responsibility for content placed upon quoters.
deontologist...consequentialists...What is your point?
The unpersuaded middle? Those who had never considered the question? Error theorists?
Am I mistaken in thinking that anti-abortion activists do seek to make abortion illegal, and just don’t do it by charging women with crimes the scope of which does not legally apply? Usually?
IIRC I once saw a youtube video in which a journalist or filmmaker or whoever interviewed people picketing against a clinic of some kind. Many had never even considered what punishments there should be for doctors or women. One woman’s gut response to the question was to propose making abortion a special illegal category of murder without imposing any legal penalties, others had different initial responses but a great many hadn’t considered the question at all.
Less shocking was that those who had at least considered it had very superficial responses, not at a very deep level of thought by even their standards.
please do note that there is some subtlety here.
I do not think it matters how well one draws a boundary if one ultimately has to bite the bullet (?) and say that some things adjacent in idea space are categorically different from each other, which is a very important way for things to be different, while other things very distant in idea space do not differ from yet other things very far from them.
They weren’t lawyers or sociologists or anything. Of course they’re much better at figuring out what is wrong than how society should react to wrong things. They want fewer abortions to happen, and it’s completely legitimate that they’d hand over the problem to whoever can optimise for that (the state is a possibility, but so are doctors and pregnant people). They’re only working on setting it as a goal.
I would give a response similar to those of most of the people in the video if an important question had never occurred to me. If it had occurred to me and I was open to whatever answer was optimal, I would have “I don’t know” available. Possibly the guy at 2:20 is in the latter category, but its not clear.
Because of the reaction to evidence showing things such as that sex education would reduce abortions, I’m disinclined to think that the anti-abortion movement’s actions resemble a coordinated effort to reach a least bad end and am more inclined to think of it as a collection of local responses against anything they see as at all bad.
In other words, if the following is true:
They want fewer abortions to happen, and it’s completely legitimate that they’d hand over the problem to whoever can optimise for that
...why do so many oppose sex education and safe sex?
IIRC I once saw a youtube video in which a journalist or filmmaker or whoever interviewed people picketing against a clinic of some kind. Many had never even considered what punishments there should be for doctors or women. One woman’s gut response to the question was to propose making abortion a special illegal category of murder without imposing any legal penalties, others had different initial responses but a great many hadn’t considered the question at all.
IIRC I once saw a youtube video in which a journalist or filmmaker or whoever interviewed people picketing against a clinic of some kind. Many had never even considered what punishments there should be for doctors or women. One woman’s gut response to the question was to propose making abortion a special illegal category of murder without imposing any legal penalties, others had different initial responses but a great many hadn’t considered the question at all.
Interesting—I just watched the series Battlestar Galactica which has an issue on abortion, and it does the same kind of sidestep. The president decides to ban it on the (questionable[1]) grounds of need to repopulate the fleet, but in her speech announcing it only says that mother or medical practition would be subject to “criminal penalties” and nothing more specific.
Edit: I know, I know, “fictional evidence”. But it’s interesting in that it seems the writers must have had a hard time thinking up what penalties the president would find appropriate.
[1] I say “questionable” because can I think of about a thousand better policies to promote population growth than using “the stick” against women who don’t want the child they’re pregnant with.
I am aware that it’s from a quote. It’s from a quote you chose, inserted into your article, and moved on from without caveat in a way characteristic of authors who wish to borrow positions in others’ words (as opposed to more critical uses of quotations). Yes, you identify the quotes as not belonging to you, but your article is structured in such a way as to claim them; I have just gone over it again and can’t find any place where you disclaim more than to the extent that you admit you didn’t write those bits.
That’s not the issue for me. I do, basically, claim the same argument that Greene makes. I was only trying to say that I can’t add every qualification and clarification without the post ballooning to something like 40 pages. But I’m happy to respond to individual questions and objections outside the main body of the post, as I did above.
I have to wonder what your target audience is here. You could have written about [things] in a far more neutral style...
So now your objection is to my tone? That’s only DH2 on the disagreement heirarchy. I’ll take another look at my tone, but it’s not much of a disagreement if we’re disagreeing about tone.
Am I mistaken in thinking that anti-abortion activists do seek to make abortion illegal, and just don’t do it by charging women with crimes the scope of which does not legally apply? Usually?
I already responded to this in my last comment. The point isn’t that consistent pro-lifers would charge abortionists with murder even though the current laws don’t consider abortion to be murder. The point is that consistent pro-lifers who think abortion is murder would seek to change the laws so that abortion would legally be considered murder and abortionists could legitimately be charged with committing murder (or with paying a doctor to commit murder).
Edit: I did notice some confusing language in my fourth paragraph, which I’ve updated thanks to your comments.
Luke, I think you often come across as defensive. I think it is difficult to avoid since you write a lot and thus put yourself out there for people to criticize and people do often comment in an aggressive fashion, but I think you should be aware of it anyway. I think avoiding seeming defensive would be useful to you because seeming defensive seems to make discussions more adversarial.
The phrase that gives me that impression here is
So now your objection is to my tone? You’ve reached DH2 on the disagreement heirarchy. I’ll take another look at my tone, but it’s not much of a disagreement if we’re disagreeing about tone.
I am a neutral observer of this conversation; I’ve only read the last two comments.
I have established to my satisfaction that you will not engage with the criticisms I intended to present without at least one of us putting in more effort than we want to. Good day.
I think the downvotes to this comment are coming from people who are interpreting it to say “this discussion has convinced me that you are low status, and not worth engaging with anymore”. I believe the intended meaning is (Alicorn correct me if I’m wrong) closer to “we are not communicating effectively, and synchronizing our methods of communication would take too much effort given the low importance of the disagreement”, with much less (if any) implication of blame.
Were there additional criticisms that you did not state already above? If so, I would appreciate at least knowing what they are (without necessarily engaging in a discussion about whether they are sound), so that I have an idea of where the strongest sources of doubt lie (in order to arrive at an appropriate level of confidence in the article’s thesis, which I am predisposed to believe).
My objections, summarized from my comments and made more direct, are:
It is unfair to impugn someone’s commitment to a moral position based on the fact that they do not attempt to prosecute violations as crimes, when the violations are not, legally, crimes.
There is not a simplistic “the deontological answer”. To suggest that there is (or to quote someone who does and move on without disclaimer) is to be uncharitable to deontologists.
Luke’s responses, summarized as I understand them:
His article was too long anyway and I should read the rest of the quoted author, rather than expecting that Luke would mention it or abridge his selected quotes differently if he was aware of the issues therewith and wished to disclaim them.
The mentioned simplistic deontology is “characteristic” of deontology, and it is reasonable to draw conclusions about it as a category therefrom.
Why aren’t anti-abortionists trying to press murder charges against abortionists and the women who hire them?
Me:
The way Luke presents quotes implies that he endorses them as they stand, and it is cheating to defer responsibility for their content when they were originally presented so plainly.
The article snipes at deontologists, and this appears to serve no purpose (does not present neuroscience more interestingly; does not convince deontologists; does not convince consequentialists more).
Aren’t anti-abortionists trying to make abortion illegal, just not through the silly method Luke proposes? Are there other cases of people using said silly method to make other things illegal?
Luke:
Yes, he does endorse his quotes, but they are complicated and he didn’t want his article to be too long, so he’s only responding to specific complaints about them rather than quoting more cautiously in the first place.
It is wrong of me to complain about his tone. (Introduction of the word “tone” is his.)
He “already responded to” the abortion thing. (No he didn’t.)
I’m pretty confused by how you’re interpreting my words. Three examples:
ONE
What i said, direct quote:
The point you raise about ‘the deontological answer’ is discussed by Greene in his article. I had to do a lot of cutting to keep this article as short as it is, and it’s still pretty long. I can’t pre-respond to every possible objection. Perhaps you could raise the issue and allow me to respond instead of assuming I haven’t considered the points you raise and am therefore worthy of your disappointment?
What you heard me say (disconnects from what I actually said, in italics):
His article was too long anyway and I should read the rest of the quoted author, rather than expecting that Luke would mention it or abridge his selected quotes differently if he was aware of the issues therewith and wished to disclaim them.
TWO
What I said, direct quote:
So now your objection is to my tone? That’s only DH2 on the disagreement heirarchy. I’ll take another look at my tone, but it’s not much of a disagreement if we’re disagreeing about tone.
What you heard me say (disconnects from what I actually said, in italics):
It is wrong of me to complain about his tone.
THREE
I’m similarly confused with the abortion thing. Here’s the play-by-play as I see it above:
You point out that one reason pro-lifers wouldn’t press charges against a woman who has an abortion is that it’s not illegal.
I ask:
Why not seek the murder charges in court so that abortions come to be considered murder? [...because of a court overruling the previous laws that make abortions not count as murder; was this the part that was unclear?] Why not seek to change the laws so that women who commit abortions will be convicted of murder, or at least for paying a doctor to commit murder?
You repeat the previous point about not “charging women with crimes the scope of which does not legally apply”, even though I had just moved the question to: “Why not change the laws so that the murder charge does apply to women who commit abortions (either via a courts victory or new laws passing)?”
I point out that I’ve already moved beyond the point that the ‘murder’ charge doesn’t apply (because abortion isn’t currently illegal or counted as murder) by asking instead why pro-lifers don’t seek to make abortion illegal (and murder).
You claim I still haven’t responded to your point.
...Is one or more of us just too tired to follow a conversation or something? Outside help wanna chip in?
On the third matter, one problem is that you seem to display confusion about the structure of (U.S.) law:
Why not seek the murder charges in court so that abortions come to be considered murder? [...because of a court overruling the previous laws that make abortions not count as murder; was this the part that was unclear?] Why not seek to change the laws so that women who commit abortions will be convicted of murder, or at least for paying a doctor to commit murder?
Laws are not created in courts by means of attempted prosecutions being successful; they are created by a vote in a legislative body (and then sometimes struck down by courts as violating a meta-law). Currently, there is no law against abortion, so a prosecution could not be brought (not just that it wouldn’t be successful). Furthermore, there is also currently a meta-law against making abortion illegal—so it would be futile for pro-lifers to simply petition their legislatures to do so. What they would have to do is first attempt to get the meta-law reversed, and if you follow American politics at all, you will be aware that there has indeed been an active movement to do this for a number of decades now.
Having said all that, I consider your basic point to stand in light of this.
This response, while not uninformative about your thinking, suggests to me that you merely skimmed my comment rather than reading it carefully and integrating the detailed information it provided.
If I had to identify the source of this impression, it would be your apparent failure to recognize that the Supreme Court had been specifically referenced (albeit not by name) -- as was the fact (seemingly not as familiar to you as I would have expected) that pro-lifers have indeed been actively seeking a decision in their favor (this is the primary reason that judicial nominations are usually controversial in contemporary America).
I don’t mean to be critical (I much appreciated the post), but I just hate it when people underestimate the information content of my words.
Having grown up a midwestern evangelical Christian, I assure you I’m familiar with the decades-long attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, and indeed once signed a petition in support of such an overturn. What I’m saying is that overturning Roe v. Wade with a new Supreme Court decision wouldn’t be the same as an even greater overreaching Supreme Court decision that set a precedent for considering abortion to be murder, with those committing abortion being subject to the usual punishments for murder.
Having grown up a midwestern evangelical Christian, I assure you I’m familiar with the decades-long attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade,
That’s what I would have thought! Thanks for the clarification. However, you did seem to be wondering why pro-lifers don’t try to pursue their goals in court; and seeking to overturn Roe is the only way they can do that.
an even greater overreaching Supreme Court decision that set a precedent for considering abortion to be murder
Well, the Supreme Court could use the “murder” rationale to reverse Roe, if it wanted to do so; and were the decision to be reconsidered in a new case, do you have any doubt that pro-life groups would file amicus briefs urging them to do just that?
the Supreme Court could use the “murder” rationale to reverse Roe, if it wanted to do so; and were the decision to be reconsidered in a new case, do you have any doubt that pro-life groups would file amicus briefs urging them to do just that?
Yes, I doubt they would do this, given the fact that I haven’t found anyone yet who actually wants women who abort fetuses to be punished on a par with, shall we say, ‘other kinds of murderers’; multiple decades of imprisonment, or life imprisonment, or death.
I have heard people talk of punishing abortion on par with other kinds of murder. This view point has the real potential to alienate people. It makes sense that people with that view point and realize this are not shouting it to the world or filing court cases. Instead they judge small changes are the best way to get what they want in the long term and fight those intermediary battles instead of taking it straight on.
For the people down who would down vote this, is it better if she did not respond to lukeprog’s post at all? Acknowledging someone when they attempt to communicate to you is considered polite. It often serves the purpose communicating a lack of spite and/or hard feels even as you insist on ending the current conversation.
Sure. See the two chapters—in MSv3 - immediately following Greene’s article, and see Greene’s response to them (in the next chapter after that). They are not easily summarized.
I am aware that it’s from a quote. It’s from a quote you chose, inserted into your article, and moved on from without caveat in a way characteristic of authors who wish to borrow positions in others’ words (as opposed to more critical uses of quotations). Yes, you identify the quotes as not belonging to you, but your article is structured in such a way as to claim them; I have just gone over it again and can’t find any place where you disclaim more than to the extent that you admit you didn’t write those bits.
Adding “characteristically” helps, but I have to wonder what your target audience is here. You could have written about what parts of the brain light up when people make deontological or consequentialistic judgments in a far more neutral style with less sniping if you’re only here to inform us about an interesting subsection of neuroscience. You’ve certainly failed to present a compelling and charitable enough case that a (representative?) deontologist in the audience is swayed. The consequentialists will be predisposed to believe the nice things you have to say about them; perhaps we have an especially good quality consequentialist here and they won’t be subject to that bias, but regardless you’re not going to change their views. What is your point?
Am I mistaken in thinking that anti-abortion activists do seek to make abortion illegal, and just don’t do it by charging women with crimes the scope of which does not legally apply? Usually? (I seem to remember a news story about some bill in the works that would make killing a pregnant woman a double homicide. That’s a reasonable step towards making abortion illegal as a form of murder where it currently is not.) Is there actually a precedent of charging people with nearby crimes when morally offended? Am I legally permitted to charge people with, say, littering, if they get near me while smelly (it’s like litter, in that it makes the environment unpleasant)? This would surprise me but if you have non-abortion examples of this happening I’ll buy it that anti-abortionists are behaving oddly by eschewing the tactic.
I enthusiastically agree that there should generally be much higher responsibility for content placed upon quoters.
The unpersuaded middle? Those who had never considered the question? Error theorists?
IIRC I once saw a youtube video in which a journalist or filmmaker or whoever interviewed people picketing against a clinic of some kind. Many had never even considered what punishments there should be for doctors or women. One woman’s gut response to the question was to propose making abortion a special illegal category of murder without imposing any legal penalties, others had different initial responses but a great many hadn’t considered the question at all.
Less shocking was that those who had at least considered it had very superficial responses, not at a very deep level of thought by even their standards.
I do not think it matters how well one draws a boundary if one ultimately has to bite the bullet (?) and say that some things adjacent in idea space are categorically different from each other, which is a very important way for things to be different, while other things very distant in idea space do not differ from yet other things very far from them.
They weren’t lawyers or sociologists or anything. Of course they’re much better at figuring out what is wrong than how society should react to wrong things. They want fewer abortions to happen, and it’s completely legitimate that they’d hand over the problem to whoever can optimise for that (the state is a possibility, but so are doctors and pregnant people). They’re only working on setting it as a goal.
I would give a response similar to those of most of the people in the video if an important question had never occurred to me. If it had occurred to me and I was open to whatever answer was optimal, I would have “I don’t know” available. Possibly the guy at 2:20 is in the latter category, but its not clear.
Because of the reaction to evidence showing things such as that sex education would reduce abortions, I’m disinclined to think that the anti-abortion movement’s actions resemble a coordinated effort to reach a least bad end and am more inclined to think of it as a collection of local responses against anything they see as at all bad.
In other words, if the following is true:
...why do so many oppose sex education and safe sex?
Video.
Also added this to the original post; thanks for reminding me of it! Obviously highly relevant.
Interesting—I just watched the series Battlestar Galactica which has an issue on abortion, and it does the same kind of sidestep. The president decides to ban it on the (questionable[1]) grounds of need to repopulate the fleet, but in her speech announcing it only says that mother or medical practition would be subject to “criminal penalties” and nothing more specific.
Edit: I know, I know, “fictional evidence”. But it’s interesting in that it seems the writers must have had a hard time thinking up what penalties the president would find appropriate.
[1] I say “questionable” because can I think of about a thousand better policies to promote population growth than using “the stick” against women who don’t want the child they’re pregnant with.
That’s not the issue for me. I do, basically, claim the same argument that Greene makes. I was only trying to say that I can’t add every qualification and clarification without the post ballooning to something like 40 pages. But I’m happy to respond to individual questions and objections outside the main body of the post, as I did above.
So now your objection is to my tone? That’s only DH2 on the disagreement heirarchy. I’ll take another look at my tone, but it’s not much of a disagreement if we’re disagreeing about tone.
I already responded to this in my last comment. The point isn’t that consistent pro-lifers would charge abortionists with murder even though the current laws don’t consider abortion to be murder. The point is that consistent pro-lifers who think abortion is murder would seek to change the laws so that abortion would legally be considered murder and abortionists could legitimately be charged with committing murder (or with paying a doctor to commit murder).
Edit: I did notice some confusing language in my fourth paragraph, which I’ve updated thanks to your comments.
Luke, I think you often come across as defensive. I think it is difficult to avoid since you write a lot and thus put yourself out there for people to criticize and people do often comment in an aggressive fashion, but I think you should be aware of it anyway. I think avoiding seeming defensive would be useful to you because seeming defensive seems to make discussions more adversarial.
The phrase that gives me that impression here is
I am a neutral observer of this conversation; I’ve only read the last two comments.
Thanks for your feedback. For whatever reason, this turned out to be one of the most impacting comments I’ve received this year.
Glad to be of service :)
I have established to my satisfaction that you will not engage with the criticisms I intended to present without at least one of us putting in more effort than we want to. Good day.
I think the downvotes to this comment are coming from people who are interpreting it to say “this discussion has convinced me that you are low status, and not worth engaging with anymore”. I believe the intended meaning is (Alicorn correct me if I’m wrong) closer to “we are not communicating effectively, and synchronizing our methods of communication would take too much effort given the low importance of the disagreement”, with much less (if any) implication of blame.
Your interpretation is correct.
Huh? Each time, I quoted each of your objections separately and responded to them directly. I also updated my post twice in response to your comments.
Were there additional criticisms that you did not state already above? If so, I would appreciate at least knowing what they are (without necessarily engaging in a discussion about whether they are sound), so that I have an idea of where the strongest sources of doubt lie (in order to arrive at an appropriate level of confidence in the article’s thesis, which I am predisposed to believe).
My objections, summarized from my comments and made more direct, are:
It is unfair to impugn someone’s commitment to a moral position based on the fact that they do not attempt to prosecute violations as crimes, when the violations are not, legally, crimes.
There is not a simplistic “the deontological answer”. To suggest that there is (or to quote someone who does and move on without disclaimer) is to be uncharitable to deontologists.
Luke’s responses, summarized as I understand them:
His article was too long anyway and I should read the rest of the quoted author, rather than expecting that Luke would mention it or abridge his selected quotes differently if he was aware of the issues therewith and wished to disclaim them.
The mentioned simplistic deontology is “characteristic” of deontology, and it is reasonable to draw conclusions about it as a category therefrom.
Why aren’t anti-abortionists trying to press murder charges against abortionists and the women who hire them?
Me:
The way Luke presents quotes implies that he endorses them as they stand, and it is cheating to defer responsibility for their content when they were originally presented so plainly.
The article snipes at deontologists, and this appears to serve no purpose (does not present neuroscience more interestingly; does not convince deontologists; does not convince consequentialists more).
Aren’t anti-abortionists trying to make abortion illegal, just not through the silly method Luke proposes? Are there other cases of people using said silly method to make other things illegal?
Luke:
Yes, he does endorse his quotes, but they are complicated and he didn’t want his article to be too long, so he’s only responding to specific complaints about them rather than quoting more cautiously in the first place.
It is wrong of me to complain about his tone. (Introduction of the word “tone” is his.)
He “already responded to” the abortion thing. (No he didn’t.)
Alicorn,
I’m pretty confused by how you’re interpreting my words. Three examples:
ONE
What i said, direct quote:
What you heard me say (disconnects from what I actually said, in italics):
TWO
What I said, direct quote:
What you heard me say (disconnects from what I actually said, in italics):
THREE
I’m similarly confused with the abortion thing. Here’s the play-by-play as I see it above:
You point out that one reason pro-lifers wouldn’t press charges against a woman who has an abortion is that it’s not illegal.
I ask:
You repeat the previous point about not “charging women with crimes the scope of which does not legally apply”, even though I had just moved the question to: “Why not change the laws so that the murder charge does apply to women who commit abortions (either via a courts victory or new laws passing)?”
I point out that I’ve already moved beyond the point that the ‘murder’ charge doesn’t apply (because abortion isn’t currently illegal or counted as murder) by asking instead why pro-lifers don’t seek to make abortion illegal (and murder).
You claim I still haven’t responded to your point.
...Is one or more of us just too tired to follow a conversation or something? Outside help wanna chip in?
On the third matter, one problem is that you seem to display confusion about the structure of (U.S.) law:
Laws are not created in courts by means of attempted prosecutions being successful; they are created by a vote in a legislative body (and then sometimes struck down by courts as violating a meta-law). Currently, there is no law against abortion, so a prosecution could not be brought (not just that it wouldn’t be successful). Furthermore, there is also currently a meta-law against making abortion illegal—so it would be futile for pro-lifers to simply petition their legislatures to do so. What they would have to do is first attempt to get the meta-law reversed, and if you follow American politics at all, you will be aware that there has indeed been an active movement to do this for a number of decades now.
Having said all that, I consider your basic point to stand in light of this.
I’m thinking of an (overreaching) Supreme Court decision.
This response, while not uninformative about your thinking, suggests to me that you merely skimmed my comment rather than reading it carefully and integrating the detailed information it provided.
If I had to identify the source of this impression, it would be your apparent failure to recognize that the Supreme Court had been specifically referenced (albeit not by name) -- as was the fact (seemingly not as familiar to you as I would have expected) that pro-lifers have indeed been actively seeking a decision in their favor (this is the primary reason that judicial nominations are usually controversial in contemporary America).
I don’t mean to be critical (I much appreciated the post), but I just hate it when people underestimate the information content of my words.
Having grown up a midwestern evangelical Christian, I assure you I’m familiar with the decades-long attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, and indeed once signed a petition in support of such an overturn. What I’m saying is that overturning Roe v. Wade with a new Supreme Court decision wouldn’t be the same as an even greater overreaching Supreme Court decision that set a precedent for considering abortion to be murder, with those committing abortion being subject to the usual punishments for murder.
That’s what I would have thought! Thanks for the clarification. However, you did seem to be wondering why pro-lifers don’t try to pursue their goals in court; and seeking to overturn Roe is the only way they can do that.
Well, the Supreme Court could use the “murder” rationale to reverse Roe, if it wanted to do so; and were the decision to be reconsidered in a new case, do you have any doubt that pro-life groups would file amicus briefs urging them to do just that?
Yes, I doubt they would do this, given the fact that I haven’t found anyone yet who actually wants women who abort fetuses to be punished on a par with, shall we say, ‘other kinds of murderers’; multiple decades of imprisonment, or life imprisonment, or death.
I have heard people talk of punishing abortion on par with other kinds of murder. This view point has the real potential to alienate people. It makes sense that people with that view point and realize this are not shouting it to the world or filing court cases. Instead they judge small changes are the best way to get what they want in the long term and fight those intermediary battles instead of taking it straight on.
Interesting. You may be right, at least about the most mainstream groups (though the fringe would also participate, surely).
I won’t trouble you further on this, since I have an attack to fend off over in Discussion. :-)
Thanks for replying to me and others.
I’ve stated that I don’t want to continue having this conversation with you. The summary in the grandparent was for komponisto.
For the people down who would down vote this, is it better if she did not respond to lukeprog’s post at all? Acknowledging someone when they attempt to communicate to you is considered polite. It often serves the purpose communicating a lack of spite and/or hard feels even as you insist on ending the current conversation.
Sure. See the two chapters—in MSv3 - immediately following Greene’s article, and see Greene’s response to them (in the next chapter after that). They are not easily summarized.
At no time was my primary point to critique your skills at summary.