> I assumed it was a decision relating to a woman's reproductive rights.
But, you realize it's largely a question of axioms, right? Two sides are talking past each other because they take their axioms for granted as self-evident.
It's simply a question of a woman's reproductive rights if you take it as axiomatic that a fetus isn't a person.
I don't take it as axiomatic that personhood begins at conception, but if I did, it would all of a sudden be a question of balancing the rights of two people instead of just the woman's reproductive rights. We don't have a clean scientific definition of personhood. The fetus is genetically distinct and is essentially a parasitic larval human. Scientifically, it's just tissue, but so am I. The real question is if it's a person, and that's a legal and moral question that is largely axiomatic.
The reality is that very few of us have a problem with aborting an unviable fetus or early abortion in cases of rape, very few of us support aborting a perfectly healthy fetus minutes before birth, and hard science doesn't provide us many clear lines somewhere in the middle.
I'd argue mostly emotional, us projecting our different emotional experiences on each other and wanting them to feel how we feel regarding the same things.
I also believe it has scientific and legal and axiomatic components, just feel quite confident it has to do more with the fear, anger, guilt, shame, and other emotions we feel and attach to things.
Lol I agree. I think people who take maximalist positions often speak the most distantly about how they feel, using a lot of second or third person pronouns and focusing on how people certainly are and not how they might feel.
Google cares about attracting and retaining smart people. Smart people generally respect reproductive rights. So I guess in some ways you are correct, but not in the way your response to the person you are responding to would imply.
What is interesting is that I guess the average google employee is in a good enough position in life to either afford birth control, get an abortion if they need one, or simply figure out how to make an unwanted pregnancy a good situation for their family. So I’m not really sure how this helps their employees other than making them look like they care about the most recent dramatic thing.
The split of pro/against is really close to 50/50. If you think that the smart people are only on one side or that only one side has "good" arguments, then you are living in a bubble. The argument over abortion was going on before Roe v Wade. Roe v Wade only prevented legislation from finding a solution.
Sorry, the one who is living in a bubble is you. I wouldn't be surprised if over 80% of Google employees support abortion rights. There are many ways to show that Google employees (or generally in the tech industry) are much more liberal than the average US citizen.
Depends what you mean really, as much as 60% are against abortion after a fetus can feel pain (debated: 7-28 weeks), with another 20% undecided and only 20% support abortion.
Most people just don’t know how to have an informed discussion.
What overturning Roe really does is allow states to set the threshold. Roe prescribed a method of determining whether an abortion was legal — “viability”.
Now you can have Colorado having after birth abortions (seriously legislated) and Texas banning abortions after heart beat and Alabama banning all abortions.
This is the thing that our "two sides to every argument" political discourse distorts. Many issues don't poll at 50/50, but perception is often that they are 50/50.
Even on the pro-choice side there is a lot of variance on when abortion should be restricted (similar to how Europe restricts abortions the closer to full gestation). Same on the pro-life side, views aren’t binary.
Considering most people don’t understand why Roe v Wade was overturned, I’m not sure opinions on whether it should have been mean much, since belief of what that means is all over the place.
Personal views of pro-life/pro-choice though can be separated from the question of "Does a woman have the fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy?", which seems to have much more support. Would a significant majority choose to do that themselves? Maybe not. But it seems the majority feel women DO have that right, and should be able to make that choice themselves.
It's 70/30 and you know it. Americans support abortion in some form or another at 70%. The MAGA base do not, and they want other things like gay marriage, gay sex, and birth control also declared illegal.
I've never met a person who thinks birth control should be illegal. I am sure they're out there, but this "they're coming for your morning after pill next" is scaremongering. Gay sex is probably the same. Gay marriage I think you're probably right.
> this "they're coming for your morning after pill next" is scaremongering. Gay sex is probably the same.
Justice Thomas's concurring opinion literally calls for reconsidering (ie, overturning) Griswold (contraception), Lawrence (same sex relationships), and Obergefell (same sex marriage).
It's perfectly clear that this is exactly what a not insignificant number of conservatives want to do. How is this scaremongering ?
Thomas mentioned all the cases that made those protected rights. The way those cases would be overturned is if a state passed a law to prohibit them. He is sending a very clear message to legislatures that he would be receptive to hearing those cases. This is not hysteria and you are making the same arguments made about Roe. We have the roadmap, and it is very clear.
After privacy rights, Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare are all next.
> The split of pro/against is really close to 50/50.
I’ve searched and I cannot find data that say half of America wants abortion made completely illegal (as it is in several states right now and will be in more shortly due to trigger laws).
Can you please share where you get your 50/50 split from?
> Roe v Wade only prevented legislation from finding a solution.
Roe only? Roe made safe abortions available to millions — it reshaped society.
If the argument against Roe is that fertilized embryos are killed, then we need to make sure in-vitro fertilization is stopped where abortion is as well.
As one anti-abortion politician said “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman.”
The argument around roe is quite simply that it was an overreach of constitutional authority by the federal government. Now individual states, the people of them, can decide how they want to govern themselves. That's all that's changed.
Yes, it's important for people to realize the split is closer to 50/50 nation wide, some people forget that, but in tech, it's definitely not 50/50 and that's relevant as well.
"As of March 2022, a broad majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade (61%) and just over one-third (36%) support it. Opposition is highest among Democrats (74%), including a majority (56%) who strongly oppose overturning Roe. Most independents (61%) also oppose a Roe overturn."
Those numbers are far closer to 50/50 than one would imagine in the bubble, but that's also reference to specifically overturning Roe v. Wade, not whether or not abortion should be legal, which is closer to 50/50.
Have a look at the second chart[1]
It's been 'mostly, roughly, steadily ~50/50 'ish' for about 20 years.
I think most self described progressives would be surprised by those numbers, and even the 64/36, as you brought up.
This is a 'big win' for 35% of the country, and another 15% are maybe ok with it, and a few others ambivalent.
That sentiment I think is at odds with the moral outrage felt by ~55% of the country, and it's hard to ingest.
Which makes this a big more difficult to navigate than I think we might normally assume.
I think Google's response is rational, but it's not as 'Black and White' an issue as our 'tech culture instincts' might have us believe.
There are a lot of numbers here. In short, while it has been 50/50-ish for a while, it wasn't in the 90s, and it's not right now. More people, when asked for an opinion, think abortion should be legal than not. And by about a 5-3 or 2-1 margin, more people think and have thought that Roe should be left alone, not overturned.
But, you realize it's largely a question of axioms, right? Two sides are talking past each other because they take their axioms for granted as self-evident.
It's simply a question of a woman's reproductive rights if you take it as axiomatic that a fetus isn't a person.
I don't take it as axiomatic that personhood begins at conception, but if I did, it would all of a sudden be a question of balancing the rights of two people instead of just the woman's reproductive rights. We don't have a clean scientific definition of personhood. The fetus is genetically distinct and is essentially a parasitic larval human. Scientifically, it's just tissue, but so am I. The real question is if it's a person, and that's a legal and moral question that is largely axiomatic.
The reality is that very few of us have a problem with aborting an unviable fetus or early abortion in cases of rape, very few of us support aborting a perfectly healthy fetus minutes before birth, and hard science doesn't provide us many clear lines somewhere in the middle.