in America we live in a farce wherein our country fails to live up to its stated ideals and we all understand for the most part we dont actually live up to many of the promises of the limits of govt as outlined in the constitution.

for the record id love if we did, id love to have true presumption of innocence, every person equal under the law, and a separation of church and state, among others.

Agreed

this will probably not shock you, but you've completely lost me trying to make this a bothsidesism. the "fringe" (not really, when it comes to gop lawmakers) on the right is the one who has been undermining roe in red states for ages, effectively making abortions unavailable in large parts of the country already, and has abused deplorable political tactics, massive hypocrisy, and a shitty political opposition to fill the highest court of the country with christian fundamentalist activist judges, poised to overturn it, despite a solid majority of the population disagreeing.
how is the toothless and purely rhetorical "pushback" of the left responsible for giving bodily autonomy rights too much attention? if anything, it received too little attention how red states had silently taken away that right...

concerning your "dead center" stance, this is only true if you uncritically accept the anti-choice strawman about bloodthirsty baby haters, giddy about the thought of destroying precious human life, celebrating every abortion like a personal victory, being your average pro choicer.
in reality, what you describe is just a reasonably moderate pro-choice stance. maybe i misunderstood and you meant you're a "dead center" pro-choicer, not dead center on the issue as a whole?

Um... military service gets people killed? And kills people?

State violence is typically (advertised) as a method to reduce harm by serving justice to those who "earn" it.

We can use hospitals instead if you'd like.

Government requires every citizen to serve in the medical field to ensure the most number of people have the best chances of surviving.

Small sacrifice to ensure a stronger whole. Like taxes.

i think i can admit the issue is further pushed along by the fringe of the right, and i disagree with many of their deplorable state tactics as well as abortion being a state's rights issue at all, it should be federal across the board for better or worse. but i also think they tend to get the fuel for their movement by shining a spotlight on the fringe of the left and amplifying the "im proud of my 10 abortions" sign at a womans rally that even has most of the attendees cringing. id also add i think some pro choice people use the lack of semantic consistency of right wingers as an excuse to be inconsistent too, and vice versa. which is a spiral that has led to it being a more focused on issue than i think it deserves.

i'd also say i dont think ive encounter many people who are pro choice that have the level of disdain for abortion that i do nor are they willing to allocate the type of resources i am into programs that i am, and i think im a bit right of most on the restrictions id stomach for abortion. namely the last available date for an abortion, in which ive clashed with thor and others in pard for years on.

What direction do you think you're going here? What does any of this have to do with whether intentionally killing our fellow human beings is wrong?

You said



I'm just wondering if you actually believe this, because it's not a very libertarian view.

If you do, you would agree that things like taxes and universal healthcare although a force by government, increases the freedoms of the whole.

come to think of, i actually DO agree that democrats bear a good amount of responsibility for keeping abortion a controversial political issue, just probably not the way you originally meant: it's not the "fringe left", which as far as i can tell would be happy to just codify abortion law, making it a constitutional right, and be done with it. however, the aforementioned toothless and mainly rhetorical opposition by the democratic establishment is probably quite happy to keep it a hot button issue for electoral purposes, and has in fact been making more or less empty promises to protect women's rights for ages now, without ever really putting their foot down like republicans do when they are in power. in this case we're not even talking about shitty politics to protect and further the interests of the powerful few, which seems to be the GOP's main concern, but an issue democrats would have a solid popular majority, significantly exceeding their electoral base, in support of.

i still maintain that the silent undermining of roe in red states didn't receive nearly enough attention (maybe partly due to the fact that democrats didn't see electoral promise in properly addressing it) - the main responsibility is always with those attacking rights, not the shitty opposition too incompetent to protect them - and it's most definitely the political and religious right, which is the more active and vocal side, attacking landmark precedent through activist judges, eroding secular and democratic cornerstones.



that's the thing, you can never be a truly principled libertarian, it's a pick and choose "ideology", which quickly contradicts itself when applied to the real world or tasked with establishing a functioning state. it's basically an introductory thought experiment for political edgelords who want to justify their selfishness by giving it some kind of "intellectual" coat of paint. usually, intelligent people grow out of it towards the end of their teens, or whenever they start leading an adult life with all its responsibilities, but some people never grow out of it.

also, to be fair, it makes for some snazzy little quotes - if you don't make the mistake of thinking about them for more than five seconds...

This post was edited by fender on Dec 8 2021 01:02pm

What's not "very libertarian" about weighing all of one party's rights being permanently revoked (killing the unborn) against the lesser evil of "you have to carry that baby you made to term?"