So weird. Of all the important causes, all the things in this world to really genuinely be angry about, these lunatics are angry about public libraries - calm, quiet gentle places of peace and learning.
Absolute lunacy. If you are going to be a terrorist at least target something big and important.
If you are going to be a terrorist at least target something big and important.
In the security space this sort of attack is referred to as 'resilience targeting', as it impacts a community resource and each such episode (even when it's a hoax) imposes a not-insignificant economic cost - shutdown of the facility, use of police resources to cordon off, sweep, and investigate the hoax threat. It's hard to assess exactly how much but I'd imagine it runs into the tens of thousands of $ per incident.
In the U.S. there are at least two (colloquially known as the left/right uniparty), and several smaller radical unsupported parties, willing to burn books and delete websites.
I believe OP is implying that there is a political party aligned with burning books appealing to increasingly unhinged followers that could explain this.
It's possible, but searching for news about bomb threat arrests turns up lots of people, so I think it unlikely that all those directed at libraries come from a single individual. Terroristic threats are depressing common nowadays.
I mean, if George Soros or the Koch Brothers want to fund a chain of libraries, then perhaps they can be hubs and platforms for whatever flavor of social justice that their funding demands.
But municipal libraries are a public resource funded by taxpayers, and as such, all taxpayers deserve to benefit equally from such a resource, regardless of who they vote for, or who the librarians vote for.
Carrying extremely biased, social-justice oriented events and collections in a municipal library is an exclusionary practice. It repels and alienates those with different beliefs, and thus reduces community diversity by cleaving off a large portion of taxpayers who have no use for this resource that they're supporting, thereby causing an imbalance and inequity in access to information and community resources.
Hi, trans person here. My main concerns in life are having a job, a home, health, family, and friends. When I go out in public, I have the same hopes and fears as anyone else I know, except I also worry about being accosted on the street or in a public restroom while I'm minding my own business. Since you brought it up, at what point do you view transgender people's lives as becoming ideological?
I would like a world where this does not happen but I also think that none of the things you say are issues of politics/equal rights. While not nice, these things seem to be well within the rights of the other people and I don‘t think you should try to force to change their minds through political means/power. I actually think the US has quite a good way of dealing with this by allowing a lot of differences between the states. In that way you can go where you‘re treated best and the other people can go where they like the lifestyles of the others the best. Forcing a national average is a recipe for disaster/division.
> While not nice, these things seem to be well within the rights of the other people and I don‘t think you should try to force to change their minds through political means/power. I actually think the US has quite a good way of dealing with this by allowing a lot of differences between the states. In that way you can go where you‘re treated best and the other people can go where they like the lifestyles of the others the best.
What if that logic was applied to other disregards for human life and rights such as segregation or slavery ?
It's easy to say that someone should "go where you're treated best", but I have done that, and besides the cost and logistics, I still grieve that I don't feel safe in the city where I grew up, where friends and family still live, and that I still call home.
If I told the other people that they're the ones who need to move away, not me, they'd feel just as torn. We all have to figure out a way to live next to each other.
The ideological part is the basis behind changes to policy and law such that single-sex spaces become mixed-sex spaces.
For example, opening up women's locker rooms to men who say they are women. This is to the benefit of the men who desire such access, but to the detriment of women who want to keep their female-only safe spaces. Whether cases like this constitite a justifiable change in policy or not is where the ideological divides lie.
Hi! As a trans person, what is your take on the cancellation of JKR and when someone got fired for IIRC just using the term "woman" in UK? I'm not in US or UK but I see those issues as ideological.
The issues you listed are completely fair but some think trans people being safe, having a job and being generally equal can coexist with the concept of a woman, but some don't think so. I guess/hope the above comment referred to that.
I think that J.K. Rowling's public statements show that at the very least, she has a strawman conception of what most trans people are like and what our motives are, that a much greater proportion of us are dangerous predators than actually are, and that trans rights activism as a whole is in her words "offering cover to predators." She's also platformed a lot of people who use phrases like "reducing" the number of transgender people, which is ominous. I'm not familiar with the UK incident you mentioned (I'm in the US), but Rowling in particular is concerned about a lot more dire things than an abstract concept of who is and isn't a woman.
That being said, she is still rich, has movies and games in active production, and many of my friends consume that media without even being aware of her controversies, so cancellation is the wrong word for what's happening to and around her.
I thought said incident is how attacks on her began but it looks like the trigger was her sarcastic objection to phrase "people who menstruate".
Either way I can't really blame her if making a tweet about media allergy to word "woman" prompted death threats. Platforming, don't know enough to comment right now (though AFAIK people are not going out on protests against Joe Rogan like they did against her and we all know the characters Rogan is platforming...)
I consider myself mostly left but I think the world should be big enough for both trans people and women-referred-to-as-women (who have their own long going battle for equality) to coexist. If it is wrong please let me know why. But for now if someone treats using word "woman" as equivalent to attacking trans people then I write that off as "ideological issue" since it's obviously not attacking trans people. Looks like Rowling couldn't write that off and needed to comment because she was personally attacked and also felt the need to defend women as she is one.
Hope that helps clarify how people can be completely pro trans equality and yet be frustrated with some of what's happening as ideological agenda pushing.
This comment clearly comes from a place of ignorance. This attitude is part of the problem too. You just need to listen to them and they can tell you all they ways that people have been bothering them. Just because you can’t conceptualize how life can be hard when you have an incongruity between your physical body and mental self, it doesn’t mean that you can hand wave away other people’s struggles with this attitude of “ahhh they’re fine no one’s bothering them”. Shift your perspective to see the problem
If you want moderate views to prevail, you need to be working for ranked choice voting. The system we have now rewards extreme candidates. All the internet does is supercharge that. If we don't adopt a voting system that enables voters to punish extreme candidates instead of having to choose between the least undesirable of them, we're just going to keep on having despairing comment threads about the state of politics.
At what point do outlets like Libs of TikTok become guilty of incitement? There's a documented history of that and other outlets turning the spotlight on a person, school, or hospital, consistently followed shortly after by bomb threats, doxxing, and other harassment. That would seem to meet the standard of "incitement to imminent lawless action" under US free speech law [0], especially since callouts-then-threats seems to have become a self-replicating meme in our society.
It fascinates me that the "censorship" of "kiwi farms" drew more than 400 outraged comments yesterday lamenting the loss of free speech, while stuff like this barely gets any attention here at all.
I've never had a trans person come up and tell me I'm wrong for being cisgender, or that I should change, or that cisgender people are just confused, or that they are barring cisgender people from using the bathroom. I have never had my cis life limited by a transgender person in my life, I am just allowed to get on with things with no harassment. Being cis is pretty chill.
Extending that same courtesy back to transgender people is not hard.
It's no surprise in the tech circle to pay more attention to Hurricane because we know how very, very easily such IP blocks can spread. KiwiFarms and 8chan today, blogspaces that happen to be critical of [insert political topic here] tomorrow.
But of course, this current topic is abhorrent and I hope the authorities throw the book at the instigators. There's way too many school shootings in the US to play this off as "trolling".
Simply calling attention to or criticizing people doesn't meet the standard for incitement to violence, and it only takes a moment's thought to understand why someone who isn't calling for violence cannot be held responsible for the actions of the violent fringe.
This is the same reason that people who criticized Brett Kavanaugh's appointment and jurisprudence are (rightly) not held responsible for the man who was arrested outside his home for attempting to assassinate him.
One difference here is that lots of people criticized Brett Kavanaugh while one individual undertook to commit violence against him (before turning himself in when he arrived at his destination; his case is still pending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_assassination_...).
In contrast, a Twitter account with a lot of followers that has a habit of calling out specific people/institutions for being 'woke' has a following that has yielded multiple different bomb threats over the last couple of years; I think this is the 9th or 10th such incident, with many more incidents of general harassment (about 60). If it's happening so frequently that it becomes predictable one wonders why the person in question hasn't made any effort to dissuade followers from engaging in such activity.
That's my core question, and I am honestly curious about it: Aside from whether someone is intending to incite action (although I think a lot of these accounts are), at what point are they obligated to limit their free speech because someone else will more-or-less-reliably be incited by it? Is there any US jurisprudence around that question already?
- "consistently followed shortly after by bomb threats, doxxing, and other harassment"
And what on Earth do you think the KKK was? The very case law you're citing [0] secured their rights to hold white-supremacy rallies. LibsOfTikTok (probably) doesn't meet that standard either, and that shouldn't be even slightly surprising. Glorifying, advocating, inspiring actualized violence — like both the KKK and these people have done — don't pass the Brandenburg bar. "Directed towards" and "imminent" are key tests. Those are not present (I'm not familiar with what these hate groups say; I'm drawing inference from the choice of phrasing you used to describe it, "turning the spotlight on". That is not Brandenburg incitement).
I figured the difference is that the KKK rally was "just" a rally with no other immediate actions associated to it, while in this case, there is a pattern of callout videos or tweets that immediately inspire someone to call in a threat.
I get the impression your own choice of phrase shows you believe this isn't direct incitement.
(What more is left to say? Incitement is a thing where substantial culpability falls on the speaker telling the hearer to do something. If it's the hearer's own idea, their inspiration, to break laws, the speaker is not culpable for that).
I wasn't trying to be cute or anything -- I wasn't sure whether incitement legally has to be a direct suggestion like "You should call in a bomb threat against this library", or whether something like "This library has groomer books and someone should do something" would count if the person saying it can reasonably expect it would lead to a bomb threat based on past behavior, and says it anyway.
I do still want to find out whether there is a separate legal concept for that kind of indirect encouragement or negligence (depending on the intent of saying it anyway).
- "I do still want to find out whether there is a separate legal concept for that kind of indirect encouragement or negligence (depending on the intent of saying it anyway)."
That's the main relevance of Brandenburg: that ruling decided that things that fall short of its test are constitutionally protected free speech. It holds [0] "speech advocating illegal conduct is protected under the First Amendment unless the speech is likely to incite “imminent lawless action.”". That's the answer to your "indirect encouragement or negligence" question: if it encourages violence, and if it falls short of Brandenburg's test, then it is lawful. Encouragement or advocacy of violence is generally lawful.
All absolutely correct, but the other poster has a point. It kinds depends on how one reads 'likely'. A rudimentary analysis from year suggested that that the probability of harassment (not all of which would be illegal) following tweets about specific institutions is in the 20-25% range: https://rpubs.com/TaskForceButler/984347
The probability of actual criminal threats is much lower, perhaps 3-5%. My understanding that LibsofTiktok has a little over 1m followers, but plenty of e-celebs have comparable followings without being associated to such problematic behavior.
Well, I understand it's "directed to... and likely to...", and that first test is necessary. Rhetoric that isn't directed towards causing lawlessness, but has a tendency to do so anyway, is protected.
If there's a history of such speech inciting imminent lawless action, then can't we say that such speech incites imminent lawless action?
So if you have a forum, where certain kinds of statements on that forum usually/often cause very quick lawless action, can't you say that such statements on that forum are not constitutionally protected free speech?
Or is that not a valid application of Brandenburg?
I have a feeling that part of the problem (i.e, why LoTT are allowed to continue doing their thing) is that there isn't any explicit incitement. It's just sort of implicitly understood by the audience that, if there's a post about some specific entity, that's an invitation to harass them. This isn't a situation which the law currently handles effectively.
There is no anti-memetics division... But lordy do we ever need one!
At some point containment & prosecution becomes necessary, yes. But I keep wanting some better civilizational defenses, some visible strategies to de-de-program. Advocacy for stability, concerted & highly visible cries against extremism.
It's such a difficult issue to deal with this propaganda because it's so eagerly received, is such a hyperreal system that's bought into & is so engrossing.
There's other points in history where dialectic broke down, where communication was impossible. I don't know a ton about the one, but the Know Nothing Party had similar characteristics: an inability to be engaged with, an unshakeable confidence by way of being utterly detached & non participatory.
I detest that so few people can hold the system in such terror, can have such outsized horrible impact on the world.
Then again, it's not always a small force. America has voted for a party that has promised again and again to do everything they can to outlaw abortion as broadly as possible. And now, in 2023, that age has come. At least it was heralded in with really great ads though! https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-twitter-bans-ad-201139304.h...
It's with great regret that I find it seem like civilization has to armor up, has to really defend it's tolerance & getting along against what feels like rabid anti-tolerant extremism. The fringe has just made itself so vocal, so petulant, and the question of how the world copes with these strident folks looms: it seems so confounding, so difficult. We dont have the spare capacity to be dealing with the worst, letting them suck up our energy & roadblock the governance & progress this world needs to be making some headway on.
>I detest that so few people can hold the system in such terror, can have such outsized horrible impact on the world.
People should remember this whenever they feel "voting doesn't work" or "government ignores us". Look at it in another light; these are government institutions and two seemingly normal people made a huge change by being persistent.
Now imagine if we had a dozen people that persistent defending that content. I know the ability to be that persistent is in itself a sign of priveledge (or simply age. being retired gives a lot of time to lobby), but it also suggests that a lot of people in a few meetings can fight back.
I could write pages and pages of all the dumb crap that progressives do, but I guess "not voting for their candidate because "they're not vegan enough" or "has a more centered position in some fringe topic" to be at the top items of the list
Not really. SCOTUS just ruled that constitution isn't responsible of enforcing that right, and noted that there's currently no federal law on the topic. But if congress passed a bill about guaranteeing abortion, it would become “federal concern”.
That statement ("abortion is not a federal concern. It just isn't something the Constitution gives power over") was factually incorrect last year and is still factually incorrect this year – insofar as one accepts SCOTUS as the ultimate authority on what the US Constitution says.
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 [0] is a federal law prohibiting certain abortion procedures. SCOTUS upheld its constitutionality in the 2007 case of Gonzales v. Carhart, holding that the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate abortion, and that the regulation in question was not contrary to Roe or Casey. Dobbs did nothing to overturn either the 2003 Act nor that 2007 decision, so abortion remains a federal concern, within Congress' power to regulate. (Thomas wrote a concurrence, joined by Scalia, casting doubt on whether such an expansive reading of the Commerce Clause is correct, but saying that this particular case was not the right vehicle for examining that issue.)
The constitution - or rather, judicial interpretation of the constitution - is constantly in flux. The kinda things that were seen as constitutionally valid by SCOTUS less than a century ago are completely off the wall compared to today. And today's views will likely be very different from a future court's interpretation.
In Germany, it’s 12 weeks for any reason, with counseling, which you can get from the churches or various secular organizations including a German equivalent of Planned Parenthood (ProFamilia).
But after that, birth defects (spotted thanks to the detailed ultrasound and testing everyone gets as part of free maternity care) and of course life/health of the pregnant person are grounds. No fear that getting medical treatment for a miscarriage might get you in legal trouble. No fear that your doctor won’t intervene immediately if your wanted pregnancy starts killing you. No fear that you’re going to be forced to give birth to a child just to watch it die.
A whole lot of women from Poland denied care at home receive it in Germany, which does not tell their oppressive home country on them.
Along with a whole lot of other mitigations, like inexpensive and ubiquitous birth control, free maternity care, a year of partially-paid parental leave, and subsidized daycare, as well as more reliable lifelong assistance for people with physical or intellectual disabilities.
Put more concretely: I was unafraid to go through with a surprise but long-wanted pregnancy at 40 in Germany, knowing that if I needed to end it, I’d be able to.
I take precautions not to be pregnant while visiting my home state because of a rise in maternal deaths and a reasonable hesitation of obstetricians to get involved in high-risk pregnancies (which includes any after 40).
That article mixes up the moral and legal principles of the abortion law, and access in practice. In terms of moral and legal principles, Roe was indeed an outlier. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly declined to find a “right” to abortion, leaving it to member nations legislatures. Most European countries don’t recognize abortion as a “right” either. (Indeed, German law recognizes a right to life and abortion is technically only decriminalized there.) Abortion law in Europe thus reflects a range of legislative choices. In that sense, Dobbs is consistent with the law in the US.
Moreover, only a small minority of countries allow elective abortions in the second trimester. Most draw the line for elective abortions at the end of the first trimester (at which point the baby has a face and looks like a baby).
What's deceptive about this comment (whether you intended that or not) is that later-term abortions are rare, expensive, and almost exclusively performed because of grave health concerns, most often because of detected fetal abnormality.
The term "elective" is slippery: in ordinary medical usage, "elective" means "not time sensitive" (as we all learned during COVID, when a wide variety of surgeries nobody realized were "elective" turned out to be). In the context of abortion, the term often (but not always) means "when not required to save the life of the mother".
At any rate: it is not the case that mainstream European abortion limitations prevent later-term abortions in cases of fetal abnormality (or, for that matter, to protect maternal health). But that's exactly what many of the restrictions you're defending in the US do.
You once wrote a post about how neither pole of US politics trusts the other to resolve hot-button political questions; gun control can't happen because Republicans don't trust Democrats not to grab all the guns, and an abortion compromise can't happen because Democrats don't trust Republicans to force women to carry gravely abnormal fetuses to term. That was a problem for you then, and isn't now.
At any rate, it is not acceptable to call in bomb threats to my local library (as happened a week or two ago) because of your culture-war concerns about abortion.
I'll add to my excellent sibling comment that you just composed a rebuttal that ignored the substance of my comment. You say "we should be able to agree to ban them like they do in civilized countries". But the point of my comment is they don't ban those abortions. To support your argument, you composed another deceptive comparison, between Denmark and Canada. Both allow the abortions we're discussing. But several US states do not.
I think it’s fairly clear from my post I’m using “elective abortions” to refer to abortions performed for reasons other than medical reasons (health of mother, fetal abnormality). As you note, Denmark does allow abortions for both of those conditions after 12 weeks, but generally prohibits abortions after 12 weeks for other reasons. It has a second+ trimester abortion rate of 4%. By contrast, Canada allows abortions after 12 weeks for non-health reasons. It has a second+ trimester abortion rate of 17%. Since both countries allow second trimester abortions for health reasons, it stands to reason that a large fraction of later abortions in Canada are for other reasons that don’t justify an abortion in Denmark.
Guttmacher acknowledges that “data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.“ (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4521013). That is consistent with the Denmark-Canada statistics above.
I haven’t mentioned any specific US abortion laws, so I’m not sure how you can say I’m “defending” them. I’m talking about the moral principle that’s accepted in Denmark and Germany and France that a second trimester fetus is sufficiently developed that it cannot be killed simply because the woman does not wish to be pregnant. That’s a principle that (1) American liberals aren’t willing to accept; and (2) which does not depend on the frequency of that outcome.
My post is expressly about “Roe” being an “outlier” in terms of requiring that abortion be available for non-medical reasons into the second trimester.
I’m not sure how you could interpret my post as being about the official “GOP” policy plank, since that’s long been a total ban which is obviously more restrictive than the laws in Europe. It that doesn’t change the fact that the European laws embody a meaningfully different moral judgment than does Roe about when the fetus is sufficiently developed that you shouldn’t be able to kill it without a heightened showing.
I don't mean to bird dog you on this (well that's not true, I totally do) but you keep making these arguments and not engaging when the facts. I've lost count of the number of times I've pasted these stats to you. But hey, I'll do it again!
Providing elective abortion access is crucial as so many things can go wrong--especially in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters [3]--and you really can't enumerate them all.
> If the rate were driven by medical reasons, it should be similar in Denmark and Canada.
But let's try! Why do people have second trimester abortions? Ironically, it's mostly an access issue [4], but there are other reasons [5] [6]:
- microcephaly and other fetal anomalies are typically only detectable in the 2nd trimester
- many people can't get the time off or can't get the funds (abortion is expensive for many people)
- waiting periods can force people into the 2nd trimester
- delayed recognition of pregnancy and delayed confirmation of pregnancy with a pregnancy test
- logistical delays occurred in arranging insurance to pay for the abortion
- problems locating a provider and time lost due to an inappropriate initial referral (abortion clinics are busy)
In truth, we already mostly have what Americans want [7]:
- 79.3% of abortions were performed at ≤9 weeks’ gestation
- nearly all (92.7%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation
And the other 7.3% aren't due to evil or cruelty, they're the result of the US' restrictive abortion regime and intense tragedy.
So we don't have to speculate about why people have 2nd trimester abortions; we know. And it turns out it's mostly just an access issue.
> There are over 60,000 abortions annually after the first trimester.
There are at least 3.5m pregnancies [8] annually in the US, plus between 650k-900k abortions [9], so this is < 2% of pregnancies. And again, there are lots of reasons for it.
Nothing you wrote addresses a “factual” disagreement between you and me. The distinction is a moral one: is a fetus that’s more than 12-14 weeks old sufficiently developed that it cannot be killed unless it has a developmental abnormality, or the pregnancy jeopardizes the health of the mother?
If you accept as true the premise that a healthy > 12 week fetus with a healthy mother is a human life that must be protected, it’s very difficult to say we should be able to kill it because the mother couldn’t afford the abortion earlier or couldn’t recognize the pregnancy earlier.
> If you accept as true the premise that a healthy > 12 week fetus with a healthy mother is a human life that must be protected
I'd be curious about your basis for that premise:
+ If the premise is axiomatic, then it seems to be purely a personal metaphysical- or religious belief, so it would seem hard to justify imposing that belief on others except from a might-makes-right worldview.
+ If the premise is based on the hypothesized mental capacity of such a fetus, do you hold the same belief about killing, say, already-born chimpanzees and other primates — whose mental capacity I would imagine is far superior to that of a >12-week fetus?
+ If the premise is based on the potential of a fetus, unlike a chimpanzee, to develop into a full-fledged human, then why not ban all abortions and post-fertilization contraceptives, e.g., Plan B and IUDs?
+ If (with a nod to Blackmun in Roe) the fetus's potential for further development must be balanced with the impact of pregnancy and motherhood on the mother, then why draw a one-size-fits-all line at 12 weeks, or for that matter any time before viability?
+ Finally: Before viability, it seems like the best idea to give the responsibility for making the decision to the mother who is "on the scene" — much as when a front-line squad leader in combat, not the general in the rear, must decide which of his- or her troops to send to attack a machine gun and likely be killed in the process. (I've long thought the "pro-choice" people should frame their arguments not as the woman's right to choose but as her terrible duty to choose.)
+ Relatedly, as a bad analogy that should strike a chord with you from your clerking stint: Appellate judges generally don't second-guess trial judges about how the latter run their cases except for abuse of discretion, on the theory that the trial judge is closest to the scene and in the best position to make judgment calls. Before viability, the same could be said about the mother.
> a healthy > 12 week fetus with a healthy mother is a human life that must be protected
I respect this position, though I don't myself hold it, because pregnancy is a huge risk and can change you forever, and it's not always your choice (assault, etc.)
> The distinction is a moral one: is a fetus that’s more than 12-14 weeks old sufficiently developed that it cannot be killed unless it has a developmental abnormality, or the pregnancy jeopardizes the health of the mother?
I think we do have a factual disagreement though, because this is really rare and is largely an access issue. Most people don't know how hard it is to get an abortion in the US, especially for girls or poor women. Here's some info from Planned Parenthood [0]:
- A 2005 survey of U.S. abortion providers found that among women who have non-hospital abortions, approximately 19 percent travel 50 to 100 miles for services, and an additional eight percent travel more than 100 miles
- As of 2011, 89 percent of U.S. counties had no known abortion provider; these counties are home to 38 percent of all women of reproductive age. (Jones and Jerman, 2014). Furthermore, in 2008, 97 percent of non-metropolitan counties have no abortion services, and 92 percent of non-metropolitan women live in these unserved counties.
- In 2000, the average cost of a first-trimester, in-clinic, non-hospital abortion with local anesthesia was $372 (Henshaw & Finer, 2003). In 2009 this cost was $451. The median cost of medication abortion, which can be done in the first 63 days of pregnancy, was $490 (Jones and Kooistra, 2011). For low-income and younger women, gathering the necessary funds for the procedure often causes delays. A recent study found that women at or under 100 percent of the federal poverty level were more likely than women at higher income levels to have second-trimester abortions (Jones and Finer, 2012). Compounding the problem is the fact that the cost of abortion rises with gestational age: in 2009, non- hospital facilities charged an average of $1,500 for abortion at 20 weeks (Jones and Kooistra, 2011). Most women are forced to pay for abortions out-of-pocket.
- Causing additional delays are state laws that mandate parental consent, notification, or court-authorized bypass for minors, and laws that impose required waiting periods. For example, after Mississippi passed a parental consent requirement, the ratio of minors to adults obtaining abortions after 12 weeks increased by 19 percent.
- Adolescents are more likely than older women to obtain abortions later in pregnancy... [c]ommon reasons why adolescents delay abortion until after the first trimester include fear of parents’ reaction, denial of pregnancy, and prolonged fantasies that having a baby will result in a stable relationship with their partners (Paul et al., 2009). In addition, adolescents may have irregular periods (Friedman et al., 1998), making it difficult for them to detect pregnancy.
This is why women's health organizations are pushing so hard for telemedicine and medication abortions, because various pro-life policies have tragically upped the rate of abortions after the 1st trimester. If the pro-life community really wanted to push down that last 7.3%, they should campaign for more funding for abortion clinics, medicaid coverage of abortions, repeal of parental consent and waiting period laws, more access to mifepristone, and so on.
Whenever I find myself in conversation with members of the pro-life community I'm just depressed by the amount of misinformation they labor under, in particular the prevailing belief that there are significant numbers of women having abortions in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters "for no good reason". You're even trying to show here that it is the case by pointing out a discrepancy between Canada and Denmark and inferring, but we have clear evidence it isn't. It just isn't true. This is our factual disagreement.
IME there are two major parts of the pro-life community: those who are fine w/ 1st trimester abortions and those who aren't. The 2nd group is thrilled with Dobbs and is actively pushing for state and national abortion bans. The 1st group is having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that we actually had the regime we wanted pre-Dobbs: 92.7% of abortions occur in the 1st trimester, and the overwhelming majority of those that don't are for "good" reasons. They hear these bonkers stories of teen girls forced to give birth or receiving jail time for trying to get mifepristone, or women forced to go septic before they're allowed to have an abortion, and they can't square it with what they were told by the pro-life movement. My hope is that they realize they were led down the garden path by a craven political party's compulsive demagoguery, and they continue to make the GOP pay at the ballot box.
> I think we do have a factual disagreement though, because this is really rare and is largely an access issue.
No, it’s a moral dispute because the factual issue is immaterial under the other side’s moral view. The fact that it’s hard or expensive to get an abortion doesn’t justify killing a fetus that has a face and can feel pain. Likewise, it doesn’t matter how rare it is. Infanticide in general is rare, that’s not a reason to legalize it at the discretion of the mother.
When it comes to ending human life, we just don’t entertain the kinds of arguments you’re making about “access.” It doesn’t matter. So the crux of the dispute is what you think about the act of killing a fetus at different stages of development. The weight of any reasons for doing so looks completely different depending on that starting point.
> Whenever I find myself in conversation with members of the pro-life community I'm just depressed by the amount of misinformation they labor under
I find myself in the same position when talking with pro-abortion people who think a fetus is a “clump of cells.” I was floored when my wife got pregnant with our first child and I realized how many weeks there were between when the fetus looks human and when Roe allowed states to stop doctors from killing it. Growing up in a pro-abortion area I had never been taught that information.
> in particular the prevailing belief that there are significant numbers of women having abortions in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters "for no good reason".
No, the fundamental issue is that we disagree about what constitutes a “good reason” for a killing a fetus at an advanced stage of development.
> You're even trying to show here that it is the case by pointing out a discrepancy between Canada and Denmark and inferring, but we have clear evidence it isn't.
If you think that the only “good reason” to kill a fetus in the second or third trimester is that the mother’s health is in jeopardy, or that the baby will not live, then the comparison of Denmark and Canada is extremely illuminating. Both countries have widespread abortion access in the first trimester, and both countries allow abortions after 12 weeks for medical reasons. But Canada allows abortions after the first trimester because the woman no longer wishes to be pregnant, while Denmark does not. Canada this has 17% of abortions occurring after the first trimester, while in Denmark it’s just 4%. From the perspective of Danish law, most of the second and third trimester abortions in Canada are not happening for “good reasons” (assuming the probability of later stage medical issues is similar in both countries).
And the “compulsive demagoguery” comment is just bizarre. The scientific fact is that each human individual starts out as a cell that has a good chance of being spontaneously aborted, and develops into a baby that everyone agrees is entitled to all the protections of any other human. Drawing a line where it’s okay to kill an alive, biologically human organism is fraught and is the subject of disputes all over the world. Even countries that have legal abortion don’t agree on the reasons (individual rights in the west, population control in Asia). In my home country it’s illegal except to save the life of the mother. But it’s tacitly accepted as population control for poor people up to 10 weeks. An effort to legalize it for population control reasons failed in 1976. It’s not something the GOP ginned up to get votes FFS.
> It’s not something the GOP ginned up to get votes FFS.
You're wrong on this one. The GOP is unbelievably craven and corrupt. Paul Weyrich (founder of the super successful conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation) explicitly demagogued the abortion issue to activate evangelical voters and create a large conservative voting bloc (with the ultimate end of creating segregated Christian schools) [0]. He wrote about it himself; he's proud of it.
You're saying it's immoral to abort a fetus after the 1st trimester outside of the typical exceptions (assault, life of the birthing person, etc.). I'm saying that almost never happens, and you're saying even so it should still be illegal.
I think what you're missing is that it's probably impossible to craft such a prohibition bill that still protects the birthing person, because again the cases where abortions occur after the 1st trimester are innumerable. You can say you don't care, or that you value the fetus more than the birthing person, but I don't think it's useful to equate it with "infanticide... at the discretion of the mother". That's wildly out of bounds here. It's an extremely high stakes, complex issue and both sides deserve respect.
I think you need to think through exactly what that regime would look like because, and I'll say it again, we already had it. For some reason you really want there to be a law, but that law wouldn't change the numbers, and it wouldn't have many important exceptions. As a result, women would still seek abortions in unexempted cases (both "good" and "bad"), the same number of overall abortions would happen, all that would change is that more desperate women/girls and caregivers would go to prison, and more desperate women/girls would hurt themselves seeking unsafe abortions.
> When it comes to ending human life, we just don’t entertain the kinds of arguments you’re making about “access.”
You're missing my point. If you're serious about your position ("we want as many abortions as possible to happen only in the 1st trimester") then you need to dramatically increase the access to abortion in the 1st trimester. That's what you should be all over HN posting about. A draconian abortion ban won't do what you want.
> From the perspective of Danish law, most of the second and third trimester abortions in Canada are not happening for “good reasons”
Again you're not responding to the facts I've laid out for you. There are lots of other potential reasons for this (access, primarily), and your only evidence for this is your inference, which is no evidence at all. This is a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which you're stubbornly making even in the face of other more parsimonious explanations. I don't know why you insist on believing there's a significant population of women out there that are doing this, but you've yet to show any evidence for it.
Privacy and bodily autonomy are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. The "penumbra of privacy" is a judicially created notion and the aforementioned rights are not explicitly enumerated. They were created out of thin air by the Warren Court.
This is largely incorrect. Not even worth pointing out specifics, just search for the actual info if you want to know the actual restrictions in different countries.
> That’s consistent with the popular vote from the 2022 election where these issues were all aired.
The only people who thought "drag shows in public libraries" was a major issue in 2022 were lunatics who believe everything they see on TV.
If you ask specifically about that issue, most Americans don't support restrictions on drag shows[1]. Why? Because drag shows are an incredibly niche issue that only a small group of people on Twitter care about. Most Americans (correctly) believe that the government's opinion on them should be "live and let live".
Out of all the things kids are exposed to and can access at a library or online, drag shows are basically a non-issue for two reasons: 1) they are, again, a very small niche that parents don't have to try very hard to avoid; 2) not teaching kids anything about conformity.
But taking your position in good faith, what else should we ban from public. Do clowns teach kids non-conformity? A kid in my elementary school wore a clown wig and cape to school every day for some reason, and kids bullied him.
What about Donald Trump? He repeatedly cheated on his wives, talks about how sexy his daughter is, got involved in fraudulent businesses, and then was elected president. Should we ban him from speaking publicly? That's a lot of non-conformity for kids to learn!
Actually, the anti-trans candidates have lost most of the recent elections where they made trans rights the main focus, and most people polled either do not care or object to restricting those rights.
Drag is a form of self expression, while gender identity conforming presentation is a medical treatment. Completely different (and frankly offensive to suggest the two are related).
I find that the people who want to restrict one usually want to restrict the other, and more or less conflate them. Regardless, the articles I referenced above, and the campaigns and polling they discuss, cover the gamut from drag to books to sports to medical treatments, so they do pertain to your original comment.
Truth is the "traditional american values" people are totally scared of some people in costumes, they're so afraid of everything they can't even go to starbucks without a gun
Now, teaching kids violence is all fine and great it seems
Classic Hannah Arendt, on Origins of Totalitarianism here:
> totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within
These are intolerant views. They don't actually hurt anyone, but the population lets itself be gripped by a mania, let's itself become polarized by a pointless absurd fear, that causes a huge rift. People become dominated by these symbols, let themselves be controlled; these absurd acting outs against books we don't like, against people that don't look like us, against people who believe other things are a terror we let fester within, are a wrerched dad weakness.
There's just no viable long term course for such sad intolerance. We have to be able to tolerate each other.
> I suspect a history book will show me that nearly every society in history,
Don't suspect, read a book (unless your local library has been burnt to the ground or blown up by hyper ventilating pearl clutchers).
You do realise (I hope) that significant chunks of western theatre history (ie. popular entertainmant, including for children) has been rife with men in drag playing the part of ladies?
Quick, go check your history books, subsection theatre.
While you're there look up Onnagata in Kubuki theatre in Japan for a bit of Eastern cultural history .. and for goodness sake don't look up Bugis culture in Sulawesi as they've recognised five genders for centuries.
You have some pretty blinkered preconceptions. Home school?
Do either of those examples convey to kids that it’s okay for them to transgress social expectations and norms? Or are they practical responses to exclusion of women from theater professions?
> You have some pretty blinkered preconceptions. Home school.
Nope, just a normal person (very liberal by global standards).
> Glorifying gun violence in front of children and making children follow active shooter drills seems curiously fine with you
Banning violent performances in public libraries is fine with me.
> Why is society obligated to tolerate right-wingers throwing a fit and causing moral panic about every minor progressive issue?
What state institutions sanction with their imprimatur of authority to children is no minor issue.
> Why is society obligated to tolerate the alleged "christian morality" (which is anything but) being pushed by right wingers?
To be clear, it’s not limited to “Christians” or “right-wingers.” Public institutions sanctioning flagrant violation of that society’s gender norms would be extremely controversial in most of the world. In fact, of the 7 billion people in the world, the people who think drag shows in libraries are mostly in Christian or formerly Christian countries.
It's fascinating that you consider promoting drag shows as "fringe" behavior, considering that drag has been a well known form of entertainment for decades. It seems you've missed the memo that drag has entered cultural mainstream. Your perspective is either shockingly outdated or deliberately disingenuous.
I'm trying to remember the quote about burning the library of Alexandria. I am sure it's a modern(ish) invention, probably the enlightenment or even later. Romanticising what people said as they torched the scrolls has a fine quality to it.
(I think it's "if its not in the Koran its a lie, and if it is in the Koran it's superfluous")
The ancient Library of Alexandria was lost to fire in the 3rd century BC.
The the even-more-ancient Library of Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BC was not lost and was in fact found with over 30,000 texts. The irony being that it was preserved because it was burned, and most of the writings were clay tablets, thus were preserved even better in the fire.
Jean-Yves Empereur discusses the archaeological evidence in "The destruction of the Library of Alexandria: An archaeological viewpoint" in the edited volume What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria? (2008).
In that same volume, Qassem Abdou Qassem and Bernard Lewis each discuss the origin of the quote mentioned above and dispute its authenticity.
The quote is disputed, and historical accuracy is important. Additionally, it's worth noting that attributing the burning of the Library of Alexandria solely to Muslims oversimplifies a complex historical event. It's important to consider the broader historical context and the contributions of Muslim scholars, such as the establishment of the Grand Library of Baghdad, which reflects a different aspect of their relationship with knowledge.
The 415 AD murder of Hypatia of Alexandria, the first well-known female mathematician, was a 100% Christian operation... likely inspired by a political smear campaign put on by the Bishop of Alexandria who was trying to consolidate secular power.
I've seen quotes like that in other contexts, but in relation to the Library of Alexandria, it's surely apocryphal. The Library declined over several centuries, so gradually in fact, that it's impossible to say exactly when it ceased to be a major research center.
Bomb threats are wrong, but is someone really going to bomb a library? And if they are really going to go through all the trouble to plant a bomb are they really going to phone ahead with a warning?
Probably not, but planting real bombs and communicating threats has a long history as an asymmetric strategy. While bombings are somewhat unusual* in the US, they have occurred in the past, and politically motivated shooting attacks are so common as to be sadly normal. A neo-nazi went on a mini rampage in Florida last week, and also last week some guy in Southern California shot a clothing store owner because he disapproved of an LGBT pride flag displayed at the business.
* But not that unusual. Here's a report outlining two overlapping bombing campaigns in California last year - one by an unstable tech worker, the other by a group of meth dealers in Fresno.
> His stated motive was an opposition to "the ideals of global socialism" and to "abortion on demand," both of which he claimed were condoned by the United States government.
> At age 29, Rudolph perpetrated the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which occurred on July 27, 1996, during the 1996 Summer Olympics. He made two anonymous 911 calls, warning about the bomb before it detonated.
Absolute lunacy. If you are going to be a terrorist at least target something big and important.