'Sanctuary city for unborn' ordinances take off in Texas despite pro-choice pushback." A report

[Elf01]

That’s generally true.

But I can make wearing a mask a requirement for entering my grocery store or my c-store or the local mass retailer I manage.

So you’re confronted with a choice and you get to choose.

Point conceded.

I’d still love to hear how a mothers opinion transforms her non person offspring into people. And what if she decides they aren’t people after they are born? Can she murder them then?

 

[Hume]

Point conceded.

Both an ability and a rational decision not often seen from your side. Kudos.

I’d still love to hear how a mothers opinion transforms her non person offspring into people.

Well, birth does that, not a mother’s opinion. It’s no longer a “tenant” in her biological “house”, subject to eviction if she so chooses. It is a completely separate person.

And what if she decides they aren’t people after they are born? Can she murder them then?

No, it’s been born. If she doesn’t want the baby after suffering the often permanent perils of pregnancy, then there are numerous places she can surrender the child.

 

[pnewton]

Because they choose to.

Choice. So be pro-choice.

This type of rhetoric avoids the indirect object. Everyone is pro-choice for where people should be allowed to live. No one is pro-choice for slavery or rape, because black people and women are still seen as people. The only question that should be asked is whether or not we know that a developing fetus is a human person, or not. If it is, then pro-choice for abortion makes no more sense that pro-choice for slavery. It is not, but just a lump of tissue, then abortion choice is as sensible as the right to have surgery or not.

The kicker is, what if we do not know? I would argue that in a situation that we do not know if an action is going to kill a human person or remove a lump of tissue, the law has a right to prohibit reckless endangerment, like shooting off a gun in a city, not knowing if the bullet will kill another person or not.

 

[Hume]

This type of rhetoric avoids the indirect object. Everyone is pro-choice for where people should be allowed to live. No one is pro-choice for slavery or rape, because black people and women are still seen as people.

And this type of rhetoric avoids the direct object - the woman.

The kicker is, what if we do not know?

You win the prize. We don’t.

So instead of hard and fast rules like “You must abort” or “You must gestate”, we give the woman a choice.

 

[Elf01]

That’s generally true.

Just to add I assume you wouldn’t support a law making mask wearing mandatory?

Well, birth does that, not a mother’s opinion.

For many, a fetus is only a “someone” if mom wants it to be.

Is what I was addressing. It seems thyr a mother wanting her fetus to be a person makes it a person. I would love to know more about how this works.

 

[blackforest]

So literally all an unwillingly pregnant woman has to do to circumvent this rebellion against the rule of law is drive to the next town over?

You’re aware that I don’t share your views on abortion itself, but I do agree with this. The whole “sanctuary city” thing is symbolic at best and seems like a game of whack-a-mole that will just increase abortion-related road trips.

You mentioned education and contraception. But one thing pro-lifers do - that I’ve yet to see pro-choicers lift a finger on - is to prevent the abortion after the woman is pregnant, namely by providing the financial, material, and emotional resources that women in desperate situations are seeking. It is my sincerest hope that these “sanctuary cities” do likewise.

 

[Pattylt]

It is my sincerest hope that these “sanctuary cities” do likewise.

This was my concern as well. I have a feeling that Texas won’t really consider doing that. They want to leave it to charities to cover these problems. I also think they never asked the various charities if they are capable of handling all the women that need further assistance? From what I understand, while they would love to be able to handle all that need help, they themselves acknowledge they can’t even get close. They aren’t set up nor have enough donations to expand their care. They are often at the bursting point already.

This is why a governmental agency is needed. It need not be at the federal level but to call yourself a sanctuary city yet no have in place needed help is cruel and unjust. Charities can’t help further and states won’t help further.

 

[Hume]

You mentioned education and contraception. But one thing pro-lifers do - that I’ve yet to see pro-choicers lift a finger on - is to prevent the abortion after the woman is pregnant, namely by providing the financial, material, and emotional resources that women in desperate situations are seeking. It is my sincerest hope that these “sanctuary cities” do likewise.

I think the already low rates of abortion would drop radically if women felt like they’d be materially supported if they kept it.

If paid maternity leave, insurance, and daycare for baby was assured, many women would have to drive a good distance to get one as so many would have closed due to lack of demand.

 

[blackforest]

This was my concern as well. I have a feeling that Texas won’t really consider doing that. They want to leave it to charities to cover these problems.

It’s a bit of a cop-out. I’m a huge fan of the tireless work that these pregnancy centers do, but I know people have more money than what they’re (not) donating to them. The money for these women has to come from somewhere. If the same people who whine about social programs are keeping their wallets tightly sealed, we’re not going to get far in stopping abortion.

 

[Servant31]

But your religious reasoning should apply only to those who voluntarily submit to it. If you want to make abortion illegal for all Catholic women, go for it.

Come to think, I’m certain your church has already done that, right?

And your secular reasoning, by your own logic, should apply only to those who submit to it. Unless they are unborn then they don’t have any rights… well unless it’s a father paying child support…well only after the mother has decided whether it’s a child or not…then it becomes a child if she wants it to be…if not then it becomes a child whenever whomever is the most outspoken runs out of arguments. In which case it becomes a child by default when the Supreme Court says it does because the Supreme Court hadn’t made any mistakes.

So rights arent really rights…they are conveniences bestowed on those whomever the majority Supreme Court opinion deems appropriate at any point in history. Which changes. Because what the constitution says isn’t really what it says…only justices graduated from “elite” law schools which scream “diversity” when it suits their fancy, but themselves are 90% one sided, have determined that the constitution is a “living document”. This just so happens to coincide with their personal opinions about…everything. It isn’t possible that their opinion couldn’t be fact? Even though it has changed throughout history.

The constitution saying, “inalienable rights endowed by their Creator” means what then?

Edit: and forgive me I don’t mean to be pessimistic. What I’m getting at is that if rights aren’t rights, if they are only bestowed by men, then they aren’t rights. And that isn’t what this country was founded upon.

 

[Hume]

And your secular reasoning, by your own logic, should apply only to those who submit to it.

Done deal!

well only after the mother has decided whether it’s a child or not

That’s not what happens.

What the mother decides is whether she’s going to allow it to reside in her body, which she has absolute dominion over.

Which changes.

Right. The tide of progressivism never, ever stops. Progressives overthrew the kings. Progressives overthrew religious tyranny. Conservatism serves only as the braking force so that societal change isn’t overly rapid, thereby fragmenting it.

The constitution saying, “inalienable rights endowed by their Creator” means what then?

God of the Philosophers, which no man speaks for.

It’s a philosophical idea to make the reality seem more transcendent. It’s why Oz the Great and Powerful had the whole smoke and mirror show rather than just walking up to court guests in person and said “Hi, I’m Oz”.

The reality is that rights are bestowed by men.

Some are fairly universal in that you don’t need any particular abstract belief in order to rationally defend them.
Some are less universal, like the right to force a woman to have a baby against her will.

 

[AlbMagno]

The reality is that rights are bestowed by men.

That is a prerogative the rest of the posters here wouldn’t agree to. I thinks it’s useless to debate with you if we start from that base point.

 

[Rau]

That is a prerogative the rest of the posters here wouldn’t agree to. I thinks it’s useless to debate with you if we start from that base point.

For an atheist, I should think there is no other starting point?

But putting that aside, there are allowances regularly called rights which are simply asserted by men and backed up by laws.

 

[blackforest]

The reality is that rights are bestowed by men.

Is there such a thing as fundamental rights, or just legal ones?

 

[AlbMagno]

Obviously, some rights are exclusive to civil law and are made by social “consensus”. But the rights pertaining to the discussion (the right to life, the primacy of human life over disconfort) are a mirror of Divine Law, and that’s where Hume doesn’t agree.

Hume has said that the personhood of an embryo depends on the mind of the mother; that the consequences of giving birth (which aren’t universal, BTW) can override the right of the embryo to grow and live; and (as I’ve said) that all rights are bestowed by human (which would be an obvious conclussion as he is a non-theist).

With such conditions, it’s impossible to continue further the discussion.

As it often happens, most pro-choice persons first have to be convinced that we are not just a brain but a soul and body, and that moral isn’t relative but absolute and determined by God.

 

[Hume]

Hume:

The reality is that rights are bestowed by men.

Is there such a thing as fundamental rights, or just legal ones?

Ultimately the only rights you actually have are those that some other can be convinced to help you defend.

As mentioned above, it’s easier to convince others that some rights exist. The arguments for them enjoy much more universal appeal.

It’s more difficult to convince them that other rights exist. The appeal for those is much less universal.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Sorry, but WHOEVER raises that child after birth makes plenty of sacrifices - physical, emotional and financial. I would maintain that these sacrifices are almost if not actually as great as what a woman goes through in pregnancy and labour. Plenty of doctors, nurses and carers have fallen arches, and “everything shifts down” as you get older regardless of pregnancy or not, hate to tell you. Some carers have given body parts and even their lives for the sake of the child they are raising.

We all make plenty of sacrifices for our fellow human being every day. These include paying taxes that support things like education and social programs. These include obeying laws that were designed to protect other people from avoidable damage. There is no “bodily autonomy” argument that lets us off the hook for our responsibilities, even when these curtail some of our freedoms.

The fact is that most women who have an abortion regret it at some point. Many are pressured into the decison by economic constraints, lack of support from family etc etc, and of course all this pays into the hands of people like Planned Parenthood who make millions out of killing babies and are thus not one bit interested in addressing the root causes. If you want to have that discussion, you need to be having it with them, not with us.

How much money has PP donated to schools and kindergartens, to social programs for abortion survivors?

And how much money have they donated to politicians who support murdering babies.

So if you follow the money you see where their priorities lie.

Are you, Hume, genuinely inacapable of seeing the problem here? Or are you trolling us?

 

[Elf01]

Ultimately the only rights you actually have are those that some other can be convinced to help you defend.

There was no moral problem with the holocaust or slavery then?

 

[Servant31]

Done deal!

My friend, please forgive me for cutting or being terse in my arguments, I get frustrated at times as anyone.

But in truth this isn’t a done deal. The child is the one who suffers. And the mother can suffer too, but often in silence. Saying that the mother has dominion over her body doesn’t recognize the rights of the child. The argument exists in a vacuum.

Edit: sorry Alb this was supposed to be in response to @Hume

 

[Jimbo]

I would think it depends on how it is done. A blatant ‘we ban abortions’ would be impossible to uphold. And it’s not like the ‘sanctuary cities’ for illegal immigrants in that for those cities they are simply refusing to use their resources to uphold Federal law, which if I recall correctly is within their rights. It’s the same reason you saw some Sheriff’s department balking at enforcing some State’s lockdown orders. For an cities ban on abortions they’d have to actively try to prosecute abortion doctors; and State and Federal courts could block that, I believe.

However, you could have a ‘sanctuary city’ in a very legal way by simply zoning the clinics out of existence. Cities are under no compunction to allow whatever someone else wants to be there. They could use zoning to push head shops out of their areas of control as well.