Bobby Kogen, at the Center for American Progress, writes:
Long-term projections show that federal debt as a percentage of the U.S. economy is on a path to grow indefinitely… House Republican leaders have used this fact to call for spending cuts, but it does not address the true cause of rising debt: Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues. In fact, relative to earlier projections, spending is down, not up. But revenues are down significantly more. If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining.
It’s good that CAP and others have pulled together the data, but what they’re proving is very intuitive: Cutting revenues leads to increased debt.
Which is an unfortunate reality of our current political system, but also, a perfect opportunity for another “cycle” cartoon! I really love doing the cycle cartoons -When they work, they’re elegant and fun, and a nice change from my usual non-cyclic layouts.
The visual simplicity of this cartoon was a perfect opportunity for me to play around with a more illustrative style. In other words, I crosshatched the heck out of this one.
I don’t normally do this much cross-hatching because it’s time-consuming, but it’s also so much fun! We’ll see how it looks to me in a year, but right now, I’m very happy with how this cartoon looks. (Future Barry who is preparing the reprint book that includes this cartoon: Use this space to say if the cartoon still looks good to you.)
I actually completely colored the figures, and then I took the coloring away, because I think it looks better (and starker) as just black and white illustrations with some red spotting.
I even like looking at the cross-hatching without the lines:
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon is laid out in a circle, with each panel having an arrow leading the reader to the next panel. So in principle, any of these four panels could be panel one. But for purposes of this transcript, I’ll start out with the topmost panel.
Each panel shows the same powerful-looking middle-aged man, wearing a suit with a red striped tie.
In the middle of the cartoon is the title, printed in large friendly letters. The title i: THE GOP TAX POLICY CYCLE.
PANEL 1
The man – who I’ll just call GOP – is looking at a piece of paper he’s holding and jumping up with a horrified expression on his face.
GOP: HORRORS! The U.S. is running a DEFICIT!
PANEL 2
The man steeples his fingers in front of him and has a big smirk, as he closes his eyes. He looks very content.
GOP: We HAVE to make BIG cuts to social welfare programs!
PANEL 3
The man is now dancing in place, one foot kicked off the ground, arms raised, and has a big grin.
GOP: Then we’ll give rich people and corporations HUGE tax cuts!
PANEL 4
The man is now leaning against the side of the cartoon with one hand. The other hand holds a piece of paper, which he’s glaring at.
MAN: Mysteriously, those tax cuts were followed by less tax revenue, which means…
(Panel 4 is followed by an arrow leading back to panel 1.)
PANEL 1
The man – who I’ll just call GOP – is looking at a piece of paper he’s holding and jumping up with a horrified expression on his face.
GOP: HORRORS! The U.S. is running a DEFICIT!
Cutting revenues in and of itself does not necessarily lead to increased debt.
Cutting revenues without cutting expenses leads to increased debt.
Or increase revenues but either not increase expenses as fast, keeping them the same or actually decreasing them. Or – well, you can do the math. But decreasing social welfare spending gets attacked by the left and decreasing non-social welfare spending gets attacked by the right.
From the U.S. Treasury’s own web site here’s what the Federal gov’t spends money on:
22% Social Security
14% Health
14% Medicare
13% National Defense
13% Income Security
11% Net Interest
5% Veterans’ Benefits and Services
2% Transportation
2% Commerce and Housing Credit
1% Community and Regional Development
3% Other
“Income Security” = Federal employee retirement and disability (22.6%), food and nutrition assistance (22%), general retirement and disability (9%), housing assistance (8.5%), unemployment compensation (4.3%), and “Other Income Security” at 33.4% (from here).
Bascially, roughly 2/3 of Federal government spending goes towards social welfare spending. Of that. Social Security and Medicare are theoretically funded by the money paid in by wage earners, but expenditures currently outstrip income and that’s going to run out by the time most of the people reading this expect to be able to use it.
I don’t know what percentage of the American population is (between social benefits or a government salary) dependent for most to all of their income from a municipal, State or Federal government, but the American ideal was a population that used its liberty and freedom to become self-sufficient citizens, not to become government dependents. No nation will become great that way. Something has to change, and increasing the dependency of the population on government is not the way to go.
Clinton, Obama and Biden have all brought budget deficits down. So, save your lectures on how to balance the budget for your fellow Republicans, Ron.
Taking care of our elderly and disabled populations are large expensees not forseen by the founders. Their life expectancy was about 35.* Ours is 77. Even people who save responsibly can have their lives savings wiped out by one major illness. What exactly do you suggest we do with people too old or sick to work when their money runs out?
* Trying to find life expectancy at age 20 sent me down a super neat rabbit hole. Turns out, that men were really dying in their 30’s or 40’s, even if you track only people who reached age 20.
Kate, thanks for sharing your rabbit hole, that’s really interesting.
A question: When that passages says things like “had a life expectancy at age 20 of 40.4 years,” do they mean 40.4 additional years (i.e., age 60.4), or do they mean 40.4 years of age?
I’d be interested in knowing the answer to this, too.
Wait, so you see working for the government as “dependence”? Maybe we should worry about the percent of the population dependent on corporations. Shouldn’t they be self-sufficient rather than just being corporate dependents?
But if we want to talk about government dependence, let’s talk about cars. Roads are completely or nearly completely funded by various governments. Fuel is subsidized. Manufacturing is subsidized. Maybe we should let all citizens be free and independent and build their own roads. And refine their own oil or at least buy it at true market value. No more trying to dig it out of the government’s property either. National parks are not there to produce cheap gas for you. And no more “too big to fail” subsidies to corporations. Let them live or die on their own. No tax breaks, no free land, no rescue funds.
This is a really good point. Conflating “being a decent employer” with “giving handouts” seems to really exaggerate the level of spending that actually goes to social welfare.
Also, nobody is self-sufficient. Literally no one. We all rely on other people’s skills, resources, and labor, whether those people are growing our food, providing our medical care, or working in businesses we own.
If we really wanted to reduce government spending, police and prisons are massive expenses, and we spend far more on them than many other countries. How cost-effective is it to put someone in a cage for years for shoplifting diapers, when compared to just giving them the diapers? Or to keep someone in a cage for 30 or 50 years, regardless of the likelihood that they’re likely to, or even physically capable of, committing the violence or property damage they were originally jailed for.
Now that you mention it, I would guess probably the former. So, that would mean living into their 60’s. [edited to add – the most elite men living into their 60’s]
Oh, they DO think of us that way, too. I’ve overheard customers at work complaining that we’re all lazy because we get paid the same no matter how hard we work.* The only people they respect are the “job creators”. You know, the ones who sit around profiting off other people’s labor.
*For the record, at the company I work at this isn’t true. If we meet or exceed yearly sales goals everyone who’s been with the company for over a year can get up to five weeks bonus.
Your original cross-hatch drawing looks MUCH more artistic than the final heavily outlined version.
I feel a kind of a John Tenniel vibe, specifically his “Tweedledum & Tweedledee” illustration. I love crosshatching.
It’s definitely prettier and more striking. I don’t think it’s better as cartooning, though.
I love Tenniel!
I love it when Amp’s characters lean on the side of the frame.
And a very merry un-birthday to everyone who didn’t bother to get born on October 29.
@nobody: Happy belated to those who found October 29th the perfect day to be born.
Thank you both! :-)
Kate @2:
I’m not a Republican. I’m registered to no party and have voted for both Democrats and Republicans. I absolutely agree that the GOP has failed to do what they have often promised to do. Their hands are not clean in the history that has led to our current situation.
They forsaw that the elderly and disabled needed to be take care of. They had been doing it for generations. But they expected that the families involved would have the primary responsibility. Where that failed, churches stepped in.
After that, local (especially County) and State governments stepped in. They certainly never forsaw that it would become the responsibility of the Federal government, which is why it’s not mentioned at all in the Constitution.
Whereas the Constitution specifically states that roads carrying mail are to be subsidized by the Federal goverment, and pretty much all roads do. Some carry more than others, so the subsidy for things like interstates are a lot higher than for local access roads.
Fuel is subsidized? I’d be curious what the total numbers would work out to if you balance any subsidy given to energy companies against the taxes they pay and those imposed directly and indirectly on fuel use by corporations and consumers. The left hand gives, the right hand takes away.
That’s where their paycheck comes from. People who work for government are predisposed towards maintaining or expanding the role of government in society. Which, in my opinion, is not a good thing.
Amp:
The crosshatching without the lines looks like a depiction of someone illuminated by and about to get vaporized by the shockwave of a nuclear blast.
Slave owners and Gilded Age industrialists should not be our model for how care for working populations as they age. I have no reason to believe that they provided for the basic needs of the elderly and disabled among their workers, much less treated them with the dignity and respect all human beings deserve. Hell, they generally didn’t do any of that for the people who were still making them money!
In any case, in the 20th century, as modern medical care became more expensive and lives longer, the federal government stepped in precisely because those systems you outline were proving to be too inadequate for even the middle class, which had previously been able to cope.
If the federal government steps out of this role, large, wealthy, liberal states like California, New York and Massachusetts would be able to fill in the breach for their citizens – they have economies the size of many countries. Elsewhere, millions of people will die prematurely.
Thank you. Now I will never be able to unsee that.
Just out of curiosity, Ron… When was the last time you voted for a Democrat? And would you refer to the Governor of your great state as “Democratic Governor JB Pritzker” or as “Democrat Governor JB Pritzker”?
She could have just as well said “So, save your lectures on how to balance the budget for your fellow conservatives, Ron.” Unless you deny being a conservative, too.
Neat! Who knows, maybe I can use that in a cartoon sometime.
JSO @ 19
2022.
I normally refer to him as “Our asshole Governor.”
Amp @ 20:
But she didn’t. I don’t know her reasons for doing so, but in my case my opinion is that many GOP elected officials are not all that particularly committed to what I consider conservative principles. As you might guess from my reply @16 from Kate @2, I don’t see “GOP” as automatically equal to “conservative”. And neither do 10’s of millions of people in this country, which is where the Tea Party Movement came from.
Before I accept a label from you, please tell me what you think it means. When you call someone a conservative, what does that mean to you? What social and political opinions do you thereby impute to them?
That’s not an answer to my question.
In general? Being against raising taxes on the rich (under the belief that the rich are already paying their fair share and more), being for increased abortion restrictions, being more inclined to support military spending than welfare spending, thinking that immigration at the border requires major tightening while being against making legal immigration significantly easier and available to many more people, cutting social welfare spending, being for a balanced budget (at least in theory), defending the continued existence of the electoral college, pro free markets (at least in theory), deregulating corporations, restricting labor unions, etc etc..
It’s not a “you must agree with every one of these things or you’re not a conservative” list – obviously, conservatives (like liberals) aren’t the Borg, and do not all agree on every last thing. It’s more like a general cluster of beliefs; the more of these things someone believes, the more likely they are to be taken for a conservative, including by conservatives themselves.
Amp, I think your list of traits that you consider to be conservative is fine. However, I’m noticing they appear to be mostly political/policy opinions, about what the government should be doing or about what laws should be.
(Not that anyone asked but) For me, I also tend to think that conservatives have a lot of cultural views that are indicative. Things like, “conservatives hate trans-inclusive terminology like ‘latinx’ or ‘pregnant people’ and regard them as harmful impositions,” or “conservatives believe that having to respect a trans person’s pronouns is a form of forced expression,” or “conservatives think that Disney movies depicting same sex couples is indoctrination of children,” or “conservatives believe that purely elective late-term abortions would be commonplace unless banned.”
These beliefs need not necessarily be tied to any particular policy. Consider the number of conservatives worried about Cancel Culture firings, but whose efforts are focused on yelling at Wokes online rather than ending at will employment or otherwise increasing job security through policy means.
It seems to me (imho) that there are lots of things that indicate conservatism that needn’t be intimately tied to policy, but which are more tied to culture, society and beliefs about the right ordering of the world. I’m curious what you think.
So getting a paycheck is a bad thing?
Maintaining, I can see, but expanding? Why? How? People who work in industry are often forced to try to expand their industry or be fired, but it doesn’t work that way in government. If anything, civil service workers have an incentive to not expand the role of government in society, since it means taking on more work without any certainty of getting more resources.
Also, why do you see it as a bad thing per se? Expansion of the role of the government in certain areas, for example, in personal healthcare decisions or decisions on what books kids can read, yeah, not a great thing. But expansion, in general, of any sort, from any base level of involvement? Condemning that seems rash.
Dianne, I can see how somebody who works for the EPA would be more aware of water pollution than the average person-on-the-street, so they would want the EPA to do more. But I wouldn’t expect them to be more inclined than anyone else to expand TSA or the military or the bureau of prisons. (Possibly less inclined, considering the competitive nature of the federal budget.)
When I was in grad school, I knew conservatives who worked for NASA and believed there should be a lot less government…except for NASA and NIST, and maybe the NSA.
Adrian, I think you’re absoltuely right. I’d be interested in whether Ron has any actual data to back up his theory.
Working on sustainability in the private sector for nearly ten years, I have come to believe less in the possibility that problems like global warming and pollution can be handled without government action. The company I work for is doing great work, but they have to compete against others that are not making those investments. There is only so much we can do while still remaining competative.
Kohai @ 24, re whether right wing-reactive culture war fronts result in policy
Apologies for the bluntness, but have you heard of Florida or Florida governor/2024 GOP POTUS candidate Ron DeSantis? Or perhaps his second term as governor? He and the radical conservative wing of Florida’s state legislature have successfully implemented and weaponized much of this anti-gay, anti-trans sentiment and turned it into substantive policy. Given the intelligence and acumen of the average Republican Florida policymaker, sure, they aren’t the original authors of these legislative tactics, but the watered-down version of Heritage Foundation or Scalia doctrine doesn’t dampen the real world effects of these policies.
Sorry, this is similarly confusing. Advisors, boosters, donors, and possibly masters of the Republican party’s presidential frontrunner are at this very moment breathlessly gushing and effusively bragging to as many outlets of Our “Liberal” Media as exist about how, come January 2024, they’re going to purge the civil service, expel any policy experts they identify as partisan enemies, and install true believers to wind down/sabotage/dismantle what remains of the administrative state that keeps the trains running on time and issues the social security checks on schedule.
This is by no means the only viable threat we as the public are facing, but it’s about as stark and as visceral as you can get in terms of open, telegraphed promises to criminalize neutral actors not prepared to swear fealty to a (lard willing) term-limited executive branch, consequently depriving the public of a coherent and functioning bureaucracy we paid for on the grounds of ideological “cancellation,” and to succeed at permanently stunting meaningful regulation and oversight by multiple agencies tasked with, for example, enforcing the laws that protect consumers, safeguard civil rights, and ensure access to public goods like education free from the kind of free speech stifling one can find in Florida (adverse to the Gheys) and Texas (wary of the Blahs).
None of these public promises Republican candidates are happily making to their donors and voters count as policy plans designed to silence (librarians), persecute (teachers), deprive (students), and criminalize (parents) register as threats to protected speech and behavior to you?
Would a liberal arts campus-issued bánh mì help?
Saur,
Thanks for the detailed reply. :)
I don’t exactly disagree with anything you said, but I fear you may have read me as making a claim that I did not actually make.
That’s not what my comment was about. What I said was “These beliefs need not necessarily be tied to any particular policy,” not that they never lead to any policy conclusions.
So for the record, yes, I am fully aware of the actually existing Republican party, and the massive threats to free speech (and life and liberty) that it poses. (Very many) Republican voters support the GOP because they want things that only an authoritarian right wing government could give them. I regard the Republican party as an existential threat to liberal democracy in the U.S. (where I and all my friends live). I am not naive about the rot at the core of the American right.
When I wrote:
I had in mind a number of “reactionary centrist” types who posture as being moderate and non-MAGA, but who nonetheless launder far-right claims into the mainstream, and who engage in histrionics when people point this out. Like, check out the list of examples I gave. Every one of those is a RIDICULOUS concern. Somebody who believes things like that sounds pretty damn conservative to me, even if they’re otherwise a Never Trumper type who isn’t demanding government intervention. Nutty cultural fears, intolerance of any perceived disorder, a certainty that the kids these days are defecting from all of our cherished (liberal!!) values, and that our elite universities and corporations have already been subordinated to radical wokeism, all of these things are common as grass on the right, and even the buttoned-up ones are like this. I does not seem to me like pointing this out is in any way sanding off the rough edges of conservatism. I meant them as examples of how deep the rot goes, and how right wing nuttery pervades even spaces run by normie conservatives.
Kohai:
The thing is that there’s nothing inherent to conservatism that requires a lot of the positions that you listed, heck… A lot of those positions aren’t even conservative, per se. I think that opposition to these aren’t a far right stance, the use of them is an extreme left stance.
Take this for example:
“conservatives hate trans-inclusive terminology like ‘latinx’ […] and regard [it] as [a] harmful imposition”
Hispanics don’t like the term ‘latinx’. A 2021 poll by Democratic Hispanic outreach firm Bendixen & Amandi International found that only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background. In addition, 40 percent of those polled said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.
My impression is that this is similar to “birthing people” and women, or the aversion to the recently changed Washington Football team. Women don’t tend to like “birthing people”, the name “Washington Redskins” polled very high among native Americans. Think about that… You’re offending or bothering 40% of an ethnic group, far more people than any poll ever found Native Americans to be offended by “Redskins”, and listing opposition to that offense as a “far right” position.
My expectation is that you would want to try to create a distinction where conservative opposition to the term is rooted in anti-trans bigotry and Hispanic opposition to the term is rooted in something else.
I just don’t know if that actually happens to be true. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s
chronologically possible: LatinX as a term originated in the early 2000’s as part of an effort to remove gendered language from everything, but this was before nonbinary language was anything close to mainstream. I don’t think 2000’s era trans hispanics were looking for a non-gendered word so much as they were hoping to be -a’d or -o’d to their identified gender, and I’m not sure that 2000’s era conservatives would be able to identify their reasoning as a lack of trans acceptance.
Regardless, I can’t speak for all of conservatism, but I don’t find these impositions harmful in and of themselves, and I don’t oppose their use because of some deep seated hatred for trans people. I find them deeply annoying and consider them busywork made by people with no moral standing to suggest them because they’re more interested in signaling their virtue than anything productive. And if they ever wanted to convince me otherwise they could start by figuring out terms that weren’t clunky, awkward quasi-babble. I don’t see a reason to participate.
I mean, Latinx is probably the pre-eminent example: People who speak ESL Spanish have trouble enunciating x sounds. The simile would be like changing the word for white people to include a rolled R or a Khoisan click. I think white people would have a problem with that regardless of why it was suggested.
Which is a long way to say that these aren’t actually far right issues. I think that progressives perhaps think that they have a widespread mandate on these topics, when in reality the issue just doesn’t poll very high for you regardless of who you ask, and while conservatives are obviously more vocal about their opposition because they have no incentive not to, even most Democrats only tolerate it because they aren’t single issue voters on the subject.
it’s not the main point of anything except for the last comment, but:
1) Hispanic isn’t an esay-switch alternative term for Latino/Latina/etc, because a significant proportion of Latino/Latina people aren’t Spanish-speaking, for example, many of the people in Brazil, who speak Portuguese.
2) it’s true that all sorts of people seem pretty disinclined to employ or enjoy the term Latinex. but you know what, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the use of the term is a far left issue. because I think at this point, in 2023, it’s not an issue anywhere (other than to the extent conservatives and/or reactionaries are bothered that it was a word used in some circles for some time). every large and small publication I read just uses the term Latine, and I haven’t seen any discourse about it.
everyone seems in agreement that being one half of a term with a slash in the middle isn’t great, and also that Latinx was somewhat awkward as a term, and figured something else out that meets most everyone’s needs
I lived in the DC area for a while, and the contortions people would put themselves through to try to make an argument that r******s was not a slur when used as a team name because context was both highly amusing and very sad. It doesn’t matter if the old name polled high among some Native Americans. The name was a slur, and should have been changed years ago. It is a shame that it had to be forced.
The Cleveland Guardians got it – Indians as a team name is somewhat less offensive, because the word itself is not a slur, but naming a sports team after a stereotype of a group that still experiences serious ongoing discrimination after centuries of horrible treatment is just not the way the team wanted to present itself. The link to racism remained even after getting rid of the offensive logo.
FWIW, in my experience when living in the DC area, the name controversy did not map onto the usual conservative-liberal divide. It could be different for people who did not live in the area.
@32
I mean, your mileage may vary, I’ve never heard Latine (or Latinx) in the wild unless someone was making fun of the terms. I was responding to the language being used here.
@33
I’m not sure we even disagree. I’m not commenting on whether or not the term was a slur or should have been changed, I’m commenting whether it was a left/right issue (and you’re right, it wasn’t), and on acceptance from the group it’s meant to describe. What percentage of a people have to tell you they don’t like being called something before you stop calling them that?
Corso, you didn’t mention that in the poll you cite, 57% said that the term didn’t bother or offend them.
The Pew poll found that of those who had even heard of the term Latinx (most had not), 33% said it should be used. In the Gallop poll, 57% said that it didn’t matter to them what term is used.
I think the majority view is most accurately described as “live and let live,” when it comes to what people call themselves.
I’ve heard both Latine and Latinx used “in the wild,” if by that you mean, used in regular conversation about something other than the words themselves. I think it probably depends a lot on who you happen to know.
Regarding Redskins, you’re referring to a newspaper poll, and the pollsters haven’t been willing to fully share their methodology with other researchers. A more recent, better-designed poll found very different results.
I don’t think that matters, particularly not with the point as I made it. My point was that 40% said they were offended or bothered. The obvious inverse is that some majority of people held views other than that. But… Is that enough?
To use your own tactic, you didn’t mention that 65% said it shouldn’t be.
Which still leaves room for a large minority to say that it does, and it should be something other than Latinx.
So two conversations that haven’t been had:
1) You seem to be right when you say that the majority aren’t bothered. Is a majority poll enough? 30% of respondents to the B&A poll said they felt strongly enough about the term that it would influence their vote.
Juxtapose that with the Fryberg study (thank you, was an interesting read); I disagree that this had better methodology. They probably did, but because WaPo didn’t post theirs, you can’t know that. And the demographic information was bizarre: 30% male and 75% college educated (page 10) isn’t representative of Native Americans. But regardless: Even so, they processed the results on a 7 point scale with 4 as a neutral response and the weighted result was 4.7 with a margin of error of 1.6. On page 21, when they converted that to the same three point scale that WaPo used, that came out to 49% finding the term some level of offensive, with the remaining 51% either indifferent or supportive.
While it seems that natives may have found Redskins more offensive than Hispanics find Latinx, it’s not some runaway thing… The difference is a net 8%. I don’t understand the incentive structure here…. If that many people are that bothered by it, what’s the incentive structure to insist on using it? And is it really good enough to say a plurality, or even an actual majority of the people being referred to aren’t bothered by it? Where is the line between something that is offensive and something that should be used?
2) My original point was that there’s nothing inherent to conservatism that requires someone to arrive at certain points of view, and as a result, that holding those views don’t necessarily make someone “far right”, or even “on the right”. The problem, I think, with the framing of this was that it painted conservatives into moustache twirling villains by assuming the motivation behind holding views held by sometimes fairly large bipartisan majorities, and attempted to portray holding those views as beyond the pale.
My point is that while sure, the further right you go, the more entrenched and ugly some of the opposition is, if you take away the assumption of motive, most of these aren’t far right views. Look at those polls: What distaste there was for “Latinx” crossed party lines. More Republicans than Democrats reported using it. Late term abortions aren’t even a majority opinion among Democrats. 52% of Democrats said that the stage of pregnancy should be a factor in the legality of an abortion, only 12% of Democrats said that it should not (Under the heading “Partisan differences in views of abortion”).
I think, respectfully, and I really do try to mean this gently, but I think that some of the commentators here are taking for granted that their positions have broad appeal. I think that before impugning bad motives on half of America and painting them as “far right”, it might pay to consider what an actual centrist view might be, and how far away from it you are.
Pulling out the strawman of elective late term abortions makes me think you aren’t arguing in good faith. Before Roe was overturned there were only three doctors in the U.S. who performed late term abortions. Late term abortions were always limited to conditions in which the life or health of the pregnant person was at risk and/or the fetus was not viable. Most women with catastrophic health conditions late in pregnancy were forced to go through full labor to give birth to dead fetuses despite the increased risk to their lives and furture fertility BEFORE Roe was overturned.
Now, we are talking about women left turn septic or bleed out during first trimeser miscarriages, and even ectopic pregnancies (which can never be viable) in some states. Nine year old rape victims forced to carry to term, even though their tiny bodies are not anywhere near ready.
My working definition of conservatives is – people with privledge on one or more axis – race, sex, wealth, sexuality, sexual orientation, religion, ability – who are fighting for the priveledged to get an even larger share of the power and wealth at the expense of the marginalized, who they think are “given” too much. Some people marginalized on one or more axis are conservatives, but they calculate that they are better off allying with the powerful and enjoying what “trickles down” to them.
Corey Robin give a great summary of core values and origins of the right wing in this discussion with Adam Conover.
I grew up with Corey. He was a year behind me. Given the young Republican vibes and ultra-competitiveness he had in high school and the conservative and ultra-competitive town we came from, we were all very surprised that he grew up to be a communist professor.
JSO, That’s really interesting. I’d never heard of him. I just thought he articulated my beliefs about conservatives and hierarchy much better than I did earlier in the thread.
Kate @ 37
It was literally one of the culturally indicative statements that Kohai used @24.
@38
I’d love for you to take a step back for a second and ask yourself if you actually believe that anyone thinks like that. And before you backpedal into saying that you think those people are behaving in that way subliminally, you used the word “calculate”. This is exactly the kind of attitude on attributing motive that I was talking about, and I think there might be a little bit of projection in it. I think that you’ve misdiagnosed a type of rugged self determinism (which is, generally, a conservative value, even if it’s hard to live up to or reconcile sometimes, particularly in America) through the progressive lens of power politics and come away with a really caricaturized view. At the same time, it does not surprise me that a progressive would take a value on self-reliance and turn it into a dependency issue.
@39
Thanks for the link, I’ve watched it. I had a couple of thoughts.
-“You have to do the basic respect of taking them seriously if you want to fight back against them” is a great quote, and I think that everyone should put a little more effort into it, myself included sometimes.
-Robin asserts that the right wing was born out of the French Revolution (1800) as a way for the powerful to preserve power. The point was made that from conception, conservatism was an international movement. Then he never mentioned the politics of a country aside from America again, which I think demonstrates the main failing of his point of view: It’s very localized, and as you broaden out, it starts to break down. It really only functions in America, and it only functions in America because of a very unique and rigid constitutional design that’s has basically been static since it was devised in 1787. Outside of America, conservatism is on the rise, and conservative parties outside of America don’t seem to have the same problem with the popular vote or finding majorities that America’s right wing is having. Canada’s conservatives are polling at 42% in a six party system. I haven’t seen a number that high in decades.
-The point that I pushed back against earlier (in regards to @38) was a point that Robin didn’t say and that he didn’t mention or address: If the right wing, if conservatism, is a belief that there is a certain class of people who ought to be in power, and the entire point of the exercise is to learn from past mistakes in order to return those people to that power…. How does one reconcile that against some of the most unprivileged people supporting that ideology? This might actually describe some high-echelon members of the right wing, but when you look at even the average Congressman, Senator or Governor, does it really look like a ruling elite to anyone?
-How does one reconcile some of the very unpopular conservative positions to this view? If the entire point of the movement is to appeal to a majority in order to put the correct people in power, you would expect to see political opinions change in the wind alongside popular opinions. Frankly, That almost perfectly describes mainstream Democrats over the last 30 years.
@Corso: What does rugged self-determinism mean? That is, what values and behaviors are associated with it? In particular, what would a person following these values do if they are in need of help?
I hope I don’t sound snarky. I don’t mean to be snarky. I’m trying to wrap my head around what the conservative ideal is.
They think (correctly or not) that if they try hard enough, they might become one of the people who “should” be in power and be part of it when the “correct” people get into power. They think that they are already part of the class of people who “should” be in charge. They’re trying to go along with those who are in power in order to minimize the damage to themselves. They want to keep the power they have over other unprivileged people (i.e. white women supporting segregation, minority men supporting abortion restrictions or laws making it difficult to prosecute rape). Their families taught them conservative positions and they never broke free of that teaching. They believe the propaganda being spewed at them and are convinced that anyone even slightly to the left of the people making the propaganda are communists or child abusers or whatever other accusations are being tossed around.
Maybe they’re deluding themselves that their position is popular. Maybe they think that other positions of theirs will outweigh the unpopular ones. Maybe the views are popular with their base or donors and that outweighs the views of the average voter in their minds. Maybe they think they can damage the reputation of their opposition enough that the voters will accept their unpopular opinions.
Note that the Republican position for years, if not decades, has been to support policies that make it more difficult to vote, especially for people they think less likely to support them. That suggests that ultimately, they plan to deal with the lack of popularity of their positions by making sure that the majority have no say in the government and therefore the lack of popularity of their positions is of no consequence. If you look at the trend in the US’s score on the Economist Democracy Index, they appear to be succeeding in that goal.
What Kohl wrote was:
That is actually culturally indicative of conservative viewpoints on abortion. I think most conservatives would agree that it is an accurate summary of their position.
You wrote…
…missing the point entirely. Before the overturning of Roe, elective late term abortions were not legal, and there was no movement to change laws to make them legal. Almost everyone on the left was satisfied with late term abortions being restricted to cases in which the health of the pregnant person was in danger and/or the fetus was not viable. We want these medical decisions to be made by doctors, not lawyers and legislators. But you quote support for our position as if it is some kind of “gotcha”, because most people don’t want this unpopular thing which….the vast majority of us do not want either. That is a strawman.
I think Diane had some great responses to your other points, so I won’t pile on.
@43
This is going to mean different things to different people, but I think that the idea of rugged self determinism condenses to a belief that it is better, not perfect, but better, to be slightly less well off if it means being slightly more self reliant. That an individual can be enough. That an individual can have power. That we, to some extent, can control and shape the world around us. And that all of that comes with a responsibility to at least make an attempt to do that.
I have to say, personally, that there is something incredibly righteous (and I’m not a religious person, but I love that word in this context) in attaining success in the face of adversity. The idea of bootstraps, when not being used to beat someone down, is aspirational. I feel like people are being constantly robbed of the best moments of their lives by safetyism, by not being challenged with adversity that they can handle, or from being to risk-adverse to make the attempt if they are. Again… This doesn’t always work. This doesn’t always reconcile with reality, but ideals often don’t.
I hope that made sense?
And I’d still be cautious, because while I think that this is *an* ideal that correlates well with conservatism, your mileage may vary, and there’s still more to it.
I’m genuinely struggling here… I don’t think this is true. I think that everyone daydreams about being fabulously wealthy, but I’m not sure that many people, if any, are deluded to the point where they’d base their political outlook on the possibility that they might win the lottery. But I believe that you at least think it’s likely. So I don’t know if this is an Americanism, or if I’m too bubbled, or if you’re too bubbled. I honestly don’t know.
What I’d suggest is that I think there’s something deeper, and it stems from a kind of… What’s the word? Je ne sais quoi… It’s a kind of ataraxis or tranquility. Serenity? It’s like the opposite of envy. Regardless, I would like to suggest that they know that they will never be fabulously rich, but they don’t see that as a problem. Maybe their kids will be. They’re ok. They’re enough. They have enough (even if they don’t). I know that I won’t ever be fabulously rich. I don’t see a problem with that. I don’t think my life would become better if we tore down all the billionaires. I could make a cogent argument of how it could be worse.
I won’t pretend this isn’t an issue. But it’s a particularly American issue. And I’m even going to go so far as to say that I think that it’s one of the reasons why American conservatism’s popularity is slipping: They need a message that people can rally behind, and instead you get this garbage kind of rules-lawyery technicality play.
The one pushback I’d muster is that while Republicans are, by far, worse at this, Democrats also do this kind of game in a way that would not be accepted in any of the countries I’ve lived in. Your parties are in a running gun gerrymander battle, where they’re both good enough at it that their efforts generally offset eachother. America is special that way, and it’s not good.
@ 44
I don’t believe this. I don’t know anyone that does. I think you need to talk to more conservatives. Perhaps some off of social media. I don’t think that “most” conservatives actually believe that, but on the off chance that I’m out to lunch and they do, I’d call that an education problem. And if that were the case, I don’t think that it would change the base opposition though, because I think it’s more likely that conservatives may hyperfocus on late term elective abortions because they seem so egregious. And again… That’s an opinion shared by a majority of Democrats.
They absolutely were, and still are. There were five states (Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Vermont), DC, and Guam without any restriction on abortion before Dobbs. And because Roe protected a right to abortion under certain circumstances but did not limit abortions to those circumstances, states that did not have state laws more strict than Roe standards were not effected by Dobbs.
This is basically my point rephrased back at me: *I’m* satisfied with late term abortions being restricted to health and viability concerns, most Democrats agree with me.
The issue I have is with the minority who don’t. And they exist: Ballot measures to expand abortion rights past that have been had in New York and California in almost every election cycle for the past decade. They are hardly alone. The measures that try to expand past 24 weeks for reasons other than health or viability inevitably fail, which signals that we agree: Those positions aren’t mainstream. Still, those ballot measures get written, they get written by someone, and have enough support to make the ballot, and some fraction of the population votes for it.
My point is that your position isn’t that far off what a mainstream Republican position is. Sure: There are religious fundamentalists who want to ban all elective abortion. They’re mostly on the right. There’s probably more of them than there are people who want to unrestricted all abortion. They aren’t a majority either. And there’s nothing inherent to conservatism that requires that point of view.
I’m going to take the radical position and say that no legal restrictions beyond those imposed on any medical procedure should be applied to abortion. Because none are needed and adding them just adds unnecessary complications to an emergency situation.
Who carries a pregnancy for 25 weeks and then gets an abortion for no particular reason? I won’t say no such person exists–there are 8 billion people in the world and that is a lot of opportunities for someone to think just about anything is a good idea*–but I will say that they’re vanishingly rare. Pregnancy is physically hard, uncomfortable, and dangerous. There’s no reason to continue a pregnancy for 25 weeks unless you want a baby.
So why add the complication of having to justify the abortion as being due to the pregnancy being life or health threatening or the fetus not viable when it’s clear that in 99.99%+ cases one of those will be true.
But let’s assume that it’s not true. That person X has decided to get an abortion at 30 weeks because they feel like it. Does there need to be a law to stop it? Wouldn’t their doctor just say, “Inducing labor is the fastest and safest way for you to become not pregnant”? Why does a lawyer or legislator need to say it as well?
The conservative position on abortion seems entirely inconsistent with the rugged individualism of conservatism. It’s a nanny** state move to restrict personal freedom. So do conservatives believe in personal freedom or only in those freedoms that they approve of?
* There are people who present to surgeons asking for perfectly healthy limbs to be removed. However, despite the lack of laws requiring 24 hour waiting periods before limb removal, permission of a judge to remove a limb, or other legal restrictions to keep surgeons from removing healthy limbs, somehow we don’t have a large number of people lacking body parts because of vanity surgeries. So why would we expect a vast number of abortions in the third trimester for no good reason?
**I’d fire any nanny who acted in that poor of judgement, but that’s a different issue.
I mean… This is kind of far afield from my point, but if we want to get into the weeds; At the point we’re talking about (25 weeks and more), we’re generally talking about viable infants. Insert whatever euphemism you’d prefer. That’s the point where more than 70% of infants survive being delivered prematurely. At that point, like you said, their doctor should say “Inducing labor is the fastest and safest way for you to become not pregnant” not only because it happens to be true, but also because barring a maternal health or a viability concern or something equally serious, we’re in an area that could arguably be considered actual murder.
And again…. I accept and understand that we might disagree on that, but I really do believe that if rubber hit the road and people were asked the question in a clear manner, that position is a significantly accepted one, even among Democrats. They might balk at the word “murder”, but polling consistently finds that fewer than half of Democrats think that it, whatever we call it, should be legal.
Because even if your number is correct, and for the record: I don’t think it is, 0.01% of the 600,000~ abortions performed annually would be 60~. I agree that that’s rare, but can you think of another class of murder we wouldn’t legislate against? Why shouldn’t that be illegal?
I specifically didn’t use “individualism” because I think that has special baggage in America, but I find it interesting that you would know to associate the terms.
Regardless, the question is bad. Even using the most Hooverian of interpretations, no one ever suggested that rugged self determinism was a belief in anarchism. There was always going to be a state, that state was always going to have some area of responsibility, and while reasonable people could have a discussion about where those interventions should be, as a general rule, I’d assume laws against unjustifiable killings would be near universal.
Wrong group.
The group we’re talking about isn’t (A) “all fetuses 25 weeks and more,” it’s (B) “fetuses 25 weeks or more whose parent is seeking to have an abortion.” (B), as a group, is far more likely to have severe health problems (to the fetus, the mother, or both) and far less likely to be viable than (A).
You can’t reasonably make generalizations about (B) based on what’s true for (A).
Dianne was talking about late-term abortions, not all abortions. There are around 6000 late-term abortions a year in the US; .01% of 6000 is less than one.
Even if you term that one case a murder, I don’t think it’s worth forcing the other ~5999 cases to go through with a pregnancy that could harm or kill them, and which might not even involve a viable fetus, in order to make sure that one possible murder is illegal.
What it comes down to, for me, is that I think that pregnant people and their doctors are much more qualified, and in a much better position, to determine when a pregnancy is too risky to continue than Republican politicians are.
Corso, imagine that there’s a pregnant person, X. She’s got a late-term pregnancy. Her doctors say that her health is endangered and her best chance is to abort the pregnancy. She’s gone over everything her doctors have told her, researched it as well as she’s able, and she thinks her doctors may be right. A Republican politician, who has never met her and isn’t a doctor, says she can and should continue the pregnancy until natural childbirth.
You don’t know X, but you get to choose who makes the decision: X and her doctors, or the Republican politician. Which do you choose?
I mean… If that’s what she was talking about, and if those are correct figures, that is the math. I was aware that less than 1% of abortions are third trimester so the 6000 number tracks, but I’m not sure that we have tracking on how many of those are elective. I mean, I would point out that because elective third trimester abortion is illegal in all but five states, DC and Guam, it would be very unsurprising that the number would be low, but do you actually have a source that says less than one a year? 60 hit me as high, but even with the action being illegal for 95% of America, I assumed there’d be at least whole numbers involved.
Frankly, if it is actually less than one a year: Great. But if the possibility of elective third trimester abortion was opened up to the other 45 states (representing 95% of America’s population), even assuming a current rate of half an elective third trimester abortion a year, that would scale up to 10 a year. Would 10 murders a year be enough to legislate against? Again… Can you name a class of murder that isn’t legislated against?
And again… The rarity of an event isn’t really the determinant of whether something should be legal. To use an example that might hit differently for you: Last year America executed 18 death row inmates. The year previously there were 11. Does the low frequency of death row executions invalidate opposition to the death penalty?
To be very clear: The point I’m making does not require that. No one here has said this.
In fact, the point I’m making, that the majority of Democrats are making, and a majority of Republicans are making is that exceptions for maternal health and viability should be permissible. And that those same groups all have varying degrees of opposition for elective third term abortions. If there aren’t any elective third trimester abortions, then most people actually agree on this and the extremists are fighting on the margins.
And that was my point: There is nothing inherent to conservatism that requires an extremist position against abortion. That’s literally all I started off by saying.
X and her doctors. I really do have to ask: Did you think that would be hard for me to say? What do you think you’re responding to?
Things that are not murder:
1. Refusing to donate blood, bone marrow, a kidney, or any other body part, even if you are the only one who can do so and someone will die if you do not.
2. Killing someone who invades your home (in the US at least). Some states require you to retreat if possible. It’s not possible to retreat from an unwanted presence in your uterus.
3. Killing someone who is invading your body.
3. Making a premature infant comfort care only, even if they will die without aggressive care.
I’ll probably think up some more examples later, but for now I’d say that there is a clear legal precedent that people are not required to give up their body or even their property to the use of others. That’s known as “slavery”. You may wish to use another word, but that’s what it is.
Another point entirely is that a fetus is not the same as a baby. No, not even if it’s a fetus of 40 weeks gestation and the contractions are two minutes apart. There are multiple physiological differences between a fetus and a newborn, the most significant of which is that the fetus has never experienced normal oxygenation. The cerebral cortex doesn’t work without a reasonably high level of oxygen, much higher than the fetus gets. The brain basically hasn’t been turned on yet. This is not particularly to the point since it is possible to murder someone in a persistent vegetative state, but just to point out that the “it’s a baby, you’re just denying it” argument is untrue.
Incidentally, is it illegal to kick someone out of your house (that they entered without your permission) in Canada? What if you’re in the Yukon, 100 miles from the nearest (other) shelter, and there’s a blizzard outside? This isn’t a gotcha question, I genuinely have no idea.
I’ll continue to point out that you’re fighting strawmen for as long as you’d like to fight them. The point, which other commenters seemed to understand, of a viability standard is that you can induce pregnancy and give the child a very good chance of making it. My understanding is that inducing pregnancy even has the benefit of usually being the safest method of abortion at that point. No one here is talking about forcing mothers to carry to term or sex slavery.
No one cares. What you’ve described is not a standard for anyone. You want to talk about “clear legal precedents”? Most states, including California, have some version of a criminal standard for causing the unwanted death of an unborn child. Federally, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act was enacted in 2004. In California, Penal Code section 187, subsection A, defines murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought. This means that if you kill a pregnant mother with premeditation, you can be charged with two murders.
I’m not going to pretend that these laws apply to mothers (although some of the more draconian ones do), but I’m also not going to let you devise some kind of legal fiction around oxygenation or cortex activity.
I… don’t know. I have the feeling there would be situations where it would be. Maybe charges for child endangerment if a minor was involved? Maybe a negligent homicide charge if someone died? Every winter there are stories about people who die from exposure… But I can’t think of a story with the right fact pattern, the element of intent is always missing.
When I was growing up, there was a case where I lived involving underage drinking. A girl was dropped off at her home by an adult after a party, he left before making sure she was able to get in, she had lost her keys and was too out of it to solution going to a neighbor’s or breaking a window. She froze to death. I remember a lot of community outrage pointed towards the adult and his family, but if I recall correctly, he wasn’t even charged with supplying alcohol to a minor. I worked with her mother for a couple of summers, and I remember how bitter she was that he never served time.
Well, no one in the pro-enslavement movement cares. They are in general uninterested in biology. Too reality based. And yet, there it is: the reality is that a fetus is not a baby and won’t be until it’s born.
Sigh. McFall v Shimp.
Yes. The unwanted death. It’s a crime against the pregnant person. And yes, the pro-slavery movement likes to add verbiage to make it easier for them to further their enslavement campaign, thank you for pointing it out.
Another point that the people presenting themselves as “pro-life” never want to talk about is the (maybe) unintended, but entirely predictable, consequences of restricting abortion.
Suppose you have a law that restricts abortion after a certain point in the pregnancy to risk to the pregnant woman’s life or fetal anomaly.
Person X loves being pregnant but frankly can’t stand babies. She gets pregnant because she enjoys the attention and always getting a seat on the subway. Then around 35 weeks she realizes “crap, there’s going to be a baby!” She asks for an abortion and gets refused. Five weeks later she gives birth and hits on the obvious solution of putting the baby up for adoption, because that’s what anyone with the least sense would do. Yay, the law worked and saved the baby!
Person Y develops gestational diabetes during pregnancy. Usually, that’s not too big a deal, but occasionally it gets out of hand. By week 20, it’s clear that she isn’t going to make it out without major organ damage. A judge refuses to allow an abortion because she is only at risk of dialysis, blindness, and cardiac failure, not immediate death. She develops diabetic nephropathy and dies of complications two years later.
Person Z presents at 26 weeks gestation with a twin pregnancy with fetal demise of twin A. They are refused an abortion because the judge believes there is no risk. they die of sepsis, along with the surviving twin, two weeks later.
Person A presents to the ER at 21 weeks, bleeding profusely but with a fetal heartbeat. The judge eventually allows the abortion, but she’s bled to death by then because it takes time to find the judge on call, wake them up, and give them the information. Yes, she was transfused, but DIC set in and it all went to heck in a handbasket.
Person B, a transman, is in denial until far too late in his pregnancy. He is denied an abortion because his pregnancy is not life threatening. He is murdered by “friends” when his pregnancy becomes obvious.
Person C finds out very late in pregnancy that the fetus will have Tay-Sachs. Since this is not fatal at birth, they are denied an abortion. The baby is born and dies screaming in horrible pain two years later.
The only one of these scenarios that I made up entirely out of whole cloth is the first one.
ETA: On reflection, I think I’m getting too intense. I’m going to back away and not answer further comments for a while.
I didn’t think that would be hard to say at all. I was sure you’d agree that, push comes to shove, X and her doctors should decide.
But you have more than once made an argument I’d paraphrase as such: “You lefties here are all so out of touch, you don’t realize how extreme and unpopular your views are.” I wanted to highlight that on late-term abortion, on the most crucial question of all – who decides – my view is actually well within the mainstream [*], and one you’d agree with.
[*] Although it’s one of several views that are commonplace enough that I’d call it in the mainstream, not the only view.
Absolutely.
Diane’s isn’t. And she’s so busy fighting strawmen that I don’t think she’ll ever realize that she is exemplifying the point I was actually making.
This is fair. What I will say is that I think I’m pretty good at putting qualifying language into my generalizations (not perfect, but I try), and so when I say things like: “I think that some of the commentators here are taking for granted that their positions have broad appeal. I think that before impugning bad motives on half of America and painting them as “far right”, it might pay to consider what an actual centrist view might be, and how far away from it you are.” I would hope that most people could either do the exercise (or just reject it outright) and say: “He’s not talking about me” and move on, but it seems like there is a subsection here bound and determined to think that I’m talking about them, regardless of the position or topic, and I’m not sure whether it’s reflexive or a self-report.
That’s not true. What passes for “moderate” in Republican legislation now is bans after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother that are so vague as to be inapplicable.
> Most states, including California, have some version of a criminal standard for causing the unwanted death of an unborn child.
Funnily enough, this is one of the oldest laws in the world. The Code of Hammurabi states
>209. If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose her unborn
child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss.
>210. If the woman die, his daughter shall be put to death.
Hammurabi goes on to state lesser penalties for forcibly inducing abortions in lower-ranking women, with the consistent pattern that forcing someone to have an abortion is considered an attack on the person who is forced to have it, and a less severe crime than killing the pregnant woman herself.
Under an originalist interpretation of the Code of Hammurabi, fetuses are not people.
The problem with this is that, in the context of modern U.S. politics, there is no radical left with any power comparable to that of the authoritarian right. Since we’ve been talking about abortion, let’s go with that. The far-right position is not only no abortion at all, but redefining common forms of contraception as abortion and banning those as well. Globally/historically the far-left position is China’s one child policy. Thank God, no one in the U.S. with any power is advocating for that. However, once we recognize that our view is dramatically skewed because the American Overton window is so dangerously far to the right, we can see that all pro-choice positions are centrist.
The same goes more generally. The far right in the U.S. is looking to Orban’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia for models. This includes enough Republicans with power to block aid to Ukraine.
When the left looks to foreign models, it is moderate, left of center Democratic counties, like Sweden, Finland, and France. No one with any power in the U.S. is looking to leftist authoritarian regimes like North Korea, China, Cuba or Venezuela for models. That is a good thing. But, if we don’t fight this “both-sides” framing the far right will contiue to amass more and more power as they shift discourse ever further to the right.
Kate @ 60
Only because you don’t recognize it as such. I don’t think you actually know what foreign models say. The examples you used: Sweden, Finland, France. On the topic of abortion, and from Wikipedia:
Sweden:
The current Abortion Act (SFS 1974:595 with later amendments in 1995 and 2007) entered into force on 1 January 1975. It permits abortion on the request of the pregnant woman until the 18th week, and thereafter only in cases of severe indications of medical risk.
Finland:
On 26 October 2022 the Finnish Parliament voted by 125–41 to reform the 1970 abortion law. The reform was initiated by a citizens’ initiative which collected the required 50,000 signatures in 2020 for the issue to be dealt with by lawmakers. The law was modified so that abortion shall be available upon request with no restrictions up until the end of the 12th week of pregnancy. After the gestational limit of the first 12 weeks, the bill allows pregnancy to be terminated at the pregnant woman’s request if continuing the pregnancy or giving birth would endanger her health or life, for example because of illness or disability.
France:
Several reforms took place in the 21st century, further liberalizing access to abortion. The ten-week limit was extended to the twelfth week in 2001,[6] and it was extended to fourteen weeks in 2022.
Those horrible, right-wing bastions of misogyny…. Sweden, Finland, and France. Your mileage may vary by state, but America has some of the loosest abortion laws on Earth. And this disconnect between what places progressives like to hold up as bastions of progressive success actually have on policies and the policies they actually hold are myriad: None of those nations are socialist, although they have some socialist systems. None of them offer free post secondary education. All of them have immigration laws. All of them require ID to vote.
America is used to thinking of itself as right of center, but again: I wonder where the center actually is.
Here’s a question: You can march out the righty monsters: Orban’s Turkey, Putin’s Russia. I can march out the lefty monsters: Xi’s China, Kim Jong’s Korea. Those are the extremes… Although even that doesn’t really seem balanced.
Regardless, let’s journey to the center: What’s a moderate Right Wing country? What does that look like?
Yes, countries with free or heavily subsidsed heathcare, including easy access to contraception and early abortion often restrict later abortions to life and health exemptions. In the U.S., people often need to save up for the cost of the procedure and arrange to travel significant distances for care. Also, if my understanding is correct, when those exceptions are relevant is determined by doctors, not courts. I don’t think any of the heath exceptions in the countires you cited are so narrow as to exclude a 10-year-old rape victim (Ohio) or woman carrying a fetus with trisomy 18 (Texas). If those cases didn’t qualify for health exemptions, such exemptions are meaningless.
That’s a good question. On Abortion, El Salvador? Maybe Irleand before legalization? On the whole, making contraception and early abortion difficult to access for many people (which, even if it is legal, is the inevitable result of a for-profit healthcare system) and banning later abortions unless a woman is literally about to die leads to higher infant and maternal mortality rates. Whatever issue you have with the abortion policies of the left in the U.S., it isn’t authoritarian.
More broadly…in the U.S. and Europe at least, there seems to be a trend of right leaning movements going authoritarian, like they did in the 1930’s. However, unlike the 1930’s, the left, whatever its faults may be, seems to be dedicated to democracy. As long as democracy is intact the popoulation can choose to change course. Once democracy has been dismantled, you’re locked into a particular political philosophy until that government is overthrown or collapses somehow.
Especially since Dianne’s already said she’s backing off from this thread, I wish you’d think twice before re-escalating. Just saying “I think Dianne’s views aren’t in the mainstream” without the stuff about strawmen would have been better.
ETA: On second thought, I should have said: Dianne has already begun de-escalating. I wish you had gone along with, or added, to her de-escalation.
The Myth That America’s Abortion Laws Are More Permissive Than Europe’s – The Atlantic
Essentially, even though the on-paper gestational limits in Europe can be stricter, in practice exceptions are relatively easily available. And, as Kate said, the higher level of support makes a difference.
Plus, of course, some red states are setting really strict rules – rules that actually harsher in practice than they are on paper, as we’ve seen in Texas this month. The situation in Texas – the government trying to force a woman with a nonviable pregnancy to continue through childbirth – would not be permitted in France. (Or so I’ve been told.)