Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Well, the joke I was going to put down was "If they could have gotten over their hard time swallowing, there would have been no need for an abortion, but, it's crass.

Apparently the "DC Madam" client list is online, ready to be revealed in a day or two. And "will affect the presidential race".

So Cruz will be on there? Or maybe Bernie? Or Hillary...

I just figured the two were one in the same.

Well, that wouldn't rock the elections. And he's Mormon, so isn't that OK?

It's making a huge difference on my ability to eat. Ugh.

Bill would be the obvious option here.

Might put a damper on GOP efforts to bring down Trump, was my thought. Cruz might even have to denounce him.

The "vs. improper usage" part is probably the catch.

You have a common form of birth control like the pill which might have to be taken about the same time every day to be fully effective. If a couple is having sex on a regular basis there's a reasonable likelihood that forgetting to take a pill, or taking one outside of the normal hours, will increase your chance of pregnancy. Now you have a couple in a relationship for ~20 years or so, with all of the various problems that can cause someone to forget about that little pill (sickness, family emergencies, just a long day, already existing kids, other various stressful events, etc.). Given the longer amount of time I'd argue that some kind of birth control failure (either human error or failure of the method itself) is probably inevitable.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean an abortion, of course (either inside or outside of a long term relationship), but a pregnancy which may or may not lead to one. All in all it's just a lot of time to go without screwing anything thing up. Anecdotally talking to other parents, it's kind of the open secret. Kids still aren't "planned" per-se, just with various birth control methods the failure rate (including human error) is just at the point now where a lot of people will "end-up" with 2-3ish kids spread over several years before doing something more permanent.

Well now that it's been put into that perspective, I whole-heatedly agree.

Edit: yay for censoring "screwing"

Edited, Apr 4th 2016 10:50am by someproteinguy

I'm a bit late to this party, but my assumption is that there was a bit of a telephone game that went on with this one. When Trump was giving his answer to Matthews, they were talking hypothetically about illegal abortion, and whether women should be punished for obtaining one. But the actual question asked dropped the word "illegal" (which I'm sure was just a total oversight on Matthews part, lol!). So if you read the transcript from the interview, it read fine, but if you played say just a clip showing the one question and the one answer, it sounded like Trump was saying that he would punish women for having an abortion, period. Legal or not. Which is how it was repeated in the media and especially on social media ("Trump wants to punish women who have an abortion!!").

Other Republicans were responding to that narrative, often without knowing the context either. So, when pressed to give an opinion on what Trump said (and knowing only the clip, and not the context), they condemned it. Didn't help that many of them will leap at the chance to bash Trump a bit, as well.

I don't know if there are many conservatives/republicans who would disagree that if a woman actively seeks out an illegal abortion, she should be punished. This was a case of thinking the issue was something other than it is.



This is actually one I agree with you on. And I've stated several times in the past myself. I've never liked, or even really understood the exception. Whatever point in a pregnancy you believe that the fetus/whatever is sufficiently developed to have a right to live that outweighs the woman's right to control her body, that's the point an abortion should be illegal in your opinion. How the baby was conceived shouldn't matter. Of course, it does from a political standpoint, because if you don't make such concessions, you'll get an endless stream of sad faced people bemoaning your lack of care about rape and incest victims.

Politics is not always logical. Hell. Just look at Trump.

Edited, Apr 6th 2016 1:32pm by gbaji

There are plenty of problems with punishing women for abortions beyond that the largely ignored fact that it doesn't reduce the abortion rate. Out of necessity every miscarriage must be investigated.

Edited, Apr 6th 2016 7:56am by Allegory

Hence my statement that politics is not always logical. The reasons listed in those links ranged from it being the equivalent of granting immunity for the accomplice so as to go after the more serious offender, to women being so lied to about abortion for generations that they think they're just having the equivalent of a cancer removed, to just plain recognizing that it doesn't sell well politically coming from a "side" of the issue already under attack for being anti-women. Perhaps I should channel Trump for a moment here (ewww!) and clarify my statement a bit more. If a woman knowingly seeks out an abortion, which she knows is illegal, and she knows is going to result in the murder of an otherwise healthy fetus, and she knows this is murder of a human life, then yes, she should be punished.

Should this be exceptionally rare? Absolutely. We get that most of the time, women seek abortions out of a combination of the factors mentioned in the articles you linked. But we also know that every once in a while a woman tosses her live infant in a trash bin to die, despite having options up to and including "drop it on a church doorstep" as alternatives. And in the cases where the abortion she seeks is the equivalent of that act, killing a human life when she knows there are other alternatives that could free her of the responsibility of parenting, then yes, I think she should be punished. Obviously, from a pro-life perspective, one would seek to make abortion illegal and then go after those who perform abortions, hoping to eliminate the industry at the source. But we don't live in a society that holds a pro-life stance on abortion. Which means we kinda should look at not just the act of seeking an abortion, but the specifics of that act, and the motivation behind it.

I guess my concern is that we might make the old "back alley abortion", which was largely a myth in the lead up to Roe v. Wade, into a reality. Let's imagine a scenario where we have made abortion illegal (or even just certain types, under certain conditions and time frames). And let's imagine we've done a great job enforcing this to the point where no licensed physician will perform any abortion that falls outside the law. Now let's imagine a woman who finds herself wanting one that is illegal. Maybe she waited too long, and it's now too late for an elective abortion. She's perfectly healthy. The fetus is perfectly healthy. But she wants it gone anyway. But no doctor will perform the procedures. You can't imagine a black market for this service emerging? Cause I certainly can. And in a world where after decades of going after drug dealers hasn't put a dent in that trade, I don't think laws that only punish the practitioner of the procedure will work. There'll be a long line of medical school drop outs, or just random people with little or no medical knowledge at all, willing to perform a high risk, highly illegal procedure on a woman, for sufficient cash.

Is the woman in this scenario also a victim? Yes, I suppose she is. She's wiling to risk her life (and pay for the privilege), to get rid of a burden. I'm not sure what kind of mental state or home situation one would have to be in to make that kind of decision, but again... babies in trash bins. It happens. And if the threat of legal punishment in addition to the other risks may tip that decision away from that choice, maybe it's worth doing? Dunno. I don't see a good outcome in any direction with this. But I don't want to blithely discount the possibility of an action taken with blatant disregard for life either.

According to a couple of your links, it was a crime for the woman in 20 states prior to the Roe v. Wade decision (and that's a decent percentage of the states that still banned abortion at the time anyway IIRC). They just practiced discretion in terms of enforcing it. Which I think is wise.