| HN Mirror

That's not what an ad-hominem is. An ad-hominem means attacking the person instead of the issue. If I'm saying Trump's economic policies are bad because he's a clown who paints his face orange, that's an ad-hominem and you'd be right to dismiss the argument.

What I did was exactly the opposite: I mentioned specific positions and actions that show that they're not sincere about their stated reasons. But it comes from their own stated actions and positions. And the fact that these have recently become enshrined in law, with quite horrifying consequences, makes this all the more visible and relevant.

> Also, most people who feel strongly about the issue (i.e. not politicians) do either believe that unborn babies have human rights (most often that they are able to feel pain, respond etc. therefore they have rights) or that fetuses are just clumps of cells. I am not saying there are no exceptions, but there is a very strong correlation between these beliefs and their stance on abortion.

Oh, there are many exceptions. In fact, I'm pretty certain the vast majority of people are in between, and almost nobody believes either of those extremes. What people call "clumps of cells" are not fetuses but embryos.

And almost nobody really believes that unborn fetus have the same rights as living persons, because if they did, graveyards would be filled with gravestones of the many embryos and fetuses who died in miscarriages. Miscarriages are still incredibly common, and nobody names them or holds funerals for them. They're not officially recorded as people in any official register. Historically, legally, morally and biblically, personhood has always, always started at birth.

Of course that doesn't mean that people don't care about fetuses at all; obviously they do. Nobody has an abortion just for the heck of it. Even the most ardent pro-choice supporters do care about unborn life, and most do want to reduce the number of abortions. They just don't think the rights of unborn life trumps the rights of living people. They believe people, even women, should have the right to control their own bodies.

The simple fact of the matter is that some anti-abortion laws force women to risk their own lives, and sometimes even force them to die, even when there is no viable fetus anymore. Women have been denied life-saving medical care, have been denied the right to travel while pregnant, and women have died needlessly because of these laws.

And explaining these facts has not helped. The only reasonable conclusion is that the supporters of these laws just want women to suffer. And there is plenty of evidence outside the abortion issue that also supports that.

> it is striking that anglophone western countries (where the demonising of those who disagree is trongest) tend to either not allowing abortion at all, or having very late term limits (even up to birth)

Abortion of a healthy pregnancy during the third trimester is extremely rare. Nobody carries a healthy fetus for half a year and suddenly decides to get rid of it. This is a caricature that's often used to justify the kind of inhuman full abortion bans that kill women, but it's a situation that either doesn't happen or is extremely rare. The issue is that it should be possible to abort a pregnancy that's gone bad, and that women shouldn't go to prison for having a miscarriage. (Almost?) nowhere in Europe will a woman be forced to carry a dead fetus to term, but that has happened in the US.

> Given the current state of the world that sounds like they were right!

Not if there's nothing to sensibly spend it on. There's tons of waste and corruption in the US military, and yet that's the one part of government that seems to be completely exempt from Musk's chainsaw.