You are detailing exactly what would reduce abortion. Republicans/conservatives would probably call you a socialist (while meaning it negatively)and say that you are encouraging teens to have sex by offering contraceptives and encouraging people to be lazy by offering free child care. These are the things that would really help. It feels to me like they don’t care about actually helping, just punishing people and creating wedge issues.
YourHuckleberry@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hot take: you shouldn’t subscribe to an ism.
You know what my political affiliation is? I’m an engineer. You want to solve a problem, you break it apart and fix the broken parts.
Abortion? Sure.
What’s the problem? Women are pregnant and they don’t wanna be.
Well how’d they get pregnant? They had unprotected sex, or they got raped(including all kinds here). Teach people how to use birth control and make it easy to get. Teach men about consent. Fund sex crime policing.
That takes care of the input side of the equation. What’s next? Oh yeah, they don’t wanna be pregnant. Why not? Because it could kill them, or wreck thier bodies. OK, well let’s fund research and support for maternal mortality issues (including post-partum). If a pregnancy is likely to kill a woman (like double the normal mortality rate) she should be allowed to abort, even if she’s not in immediate danger. You can’t force somebody to risk their life.
Any other reasons? Because the fetus is severely deformed and will die in pain if allowed to make it to full term? Abortion, no question. Honestly any other position on this one is fucked up. I’m sure of very little when it comes to God, but I’m sure it doesn’t want preventable suffering.
What else? Families can’t afford a kid? Free high quality childcare for everyone. Free healthcare for kids and post-partum mothers (probably for everyone but that’s a different topic).
What about adoption? Well, as they say, adoption is the answer to a different question. Just to cover all cases though, let’s fund high-quality adoption services, including counseling for the birth mother for as long as she needs.
How do we pay for it all? Taxes. Taxes are good for society. Shut the fuck up and pony up your fair share. If you use our stuff, eat our food, drink our clean water, taxes are what you owe.
These are just off the top of my head. The real answers are probably way more complicated, but it’s going to take work to figure it all out. This is how you fix a problem though. Lots of hard work to understand the whole thing, soup to nuts, and then you fix it all.
Does that make me a leftist?
dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Cistello@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Even Donald Duck doesnt subscribe to the abortion ban
SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s nothing wrong with what you’re saying on a vacuum. The problem is deciding what is actually a problem, and once it’s been decided, which one solution out of many possible ones we’re actually going to pick.
Is unequality a problem? If it is, up to which degree? Is it a problem that the richest person has four times as much wealth as the poorest person? Is it a problem that the richest person has x100000 times as much wealth as the poorest person? Are we going to solve that through redistribution? Through better public, accessible education? By empowering worker unions? By socializing the means of production in order to prevent capital accumulation?
Once you’re perfectly aware of what values you’re defending, you can find the most efficient way to let society advance forward according to them. But since not everyone shares the same values, even if everyone was perfectly rational and had access to all information, different people would still defend different solutions. Of course, people’s values evolve all the time and everyone is irrational up to some degree, even if we put effort into perfecting our epistemology and use the scientific method to approach as many issues as possibles (which we should nonetheless do), so even that ideal state of things is very, very far away.
YourHuckleberry@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Apply the scientifc method. Look at places and times with wide economic disparity. Were/are those good stable places with happy healthy populations, or was it bad. If you decide it’s a problem based on evidence, then look at solutions. If you don’t have examples, try things out and record the data. What worked and what didn’t. Don’t let your values bias you. I think that welath inequality is a problem, but I’m willing to listen to thoroughly researched, peer reviewed, data backed conclusions.
SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You have two distributions of populations:
Distribution A has 50% of the population scoring 10 happiness, and the remaining 50% scoring 0.
Distribution B has 100% of the population scoring 5 happiness.
Your research has shown that these two distributions are the two options that allow for maximization of happiness, and you can achieve any of them at the same cost with exactly the same externalities. This data is confirmed with perfect mathematical precision to a point currently unavailable to our scientific institutions for the sake of this thought experiment.
There is no objective reason to choose one over the other; if none is chosen, a suboptimal distribution will be chosen for you.
Piers@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The problem is deciding what is actually a problem, and once it’s been decided, which one solution out of many possible ones we’re actually going to pick.
I find that often once both sides have decided that there is a problem and it should be solved but start arguing about mutually exclusive solutions to that issue, one of the sides (and it does switch) is focusing on addressing the output of the problem and the other is focusing on addressing the cause of the problem!
“Ow, my foot hurts!”
Side A: “let’s give you some painkillers to stop the pain” Side B: “forget about the painkillers, stop standing on their feet!” Side A: “I’ve already stood on their foot, there’s nothing I can do to undo it. Do you want me to rewind time or something? Why don’t you care about treating their pain‽” Side B: “If you keep standing on their feet they’re going to stay in pain no matter what!” Side A: “how can I get this person painkillers for their pain without standing here? Why are you so blind to this person’s suffering‽”
Etc etc forever while we achieve nothing and let everything turn to rust and ashes to the backdrop of everyone silently screaming inside of their heads.
Not sure I agree that an engineering mindset wouldn’t be an improvement on that tbh. There really aren’t normally multiple equally valid solutions to big problems. Just people with a more or less complete understanding of the issue arguing that their understanding and subsequent solution is the best rather that just fucking listening and thinking competently to arrive at the right answers together.
ohlaph@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Problem solving should be every politician’s goal. The only difference is what “problems” they are trying to solve. That’s what separates left and right, the problems. And frankly, they are radically different problems to the same situations.
Skanky@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Would you mind clarifying your standpoint on what should be done in case a woman is raped and becomes pregnant? You kind of glossed over that part of it. I understand that you want to prevent the number of pregnancies due to rape, but what exactly do you propose when that happens? Same for pregnancies due to incest.
It seems you already know most of what will actually help this issue, and it does include social programs. Does this make you a leftist? No, it makes you a realist. That is, unless you ask this question to most conservatives who will instantly label you as one. How dare you actually suggest something progressive!
Piers@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Does this make you a leftist? No, it makes you a realist. That is, unless you ask this question to most conservatives who will instantly label you as one.
Reality has a left-wing bias.
YourHuckleberry@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A person’s body is their own. From the skin in, it’s yours to do with as you please. You can’t make somebody wreck their body or risk their lives to satisfy your morality. I’m willing to debate this issue with someone who has done everything I’m their power to mitigate the risk of unwanted pregnancy. If not, I assume they’re just trying to control women’s bodies in order to secure their place in heaven, because the rest of christianity is hard.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
In that case, as well as the medical one, abortion counts as self-defence.
Now you might be saying “but the baby isn’t at fault, self-defence is only valid against the assailant” but, well:
Assume you and some other guy are kidnapped by a psychopath, who puts you two into a contraption that forces the both of you to either kill the other to survive, or both die after say half a day. Is morally and legally justified to kill that random stranger who did you no wrong to save your own life?
See it’s much easier in that case where the stakes are higher and, yes, in any (sane) legal system self-defence is valid also against people who did you no wrong: You do not have to tolerate suffering an (any) injustice just because the assailant is being creative.
morelikepinniped@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What is your answer to a scenario in which a woman using birth control properly in a loving monogamous relationship becomes pregnant when neither party wants a child? The most common form of birth control (the pill), when taken properly only has a 97% effective rate. Pair that with a second form of birth control (i.e. the pullout method) and it will go up but it will never be 100% effective.
YourHuckleberry@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And she doesn’t want to put the child up for adoption? That’s valid. Pregnancy has long term negative health impacts. Morally, I’m not opposed to abortion. I know some people are. I feel like I’m unwilling to debate the morality while all the practical steps to mitigate the risk haven’t been taken.
I would add, free, easily accessible sterilization should be the norm. I don’t want more kids, so I got sterilized.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I feel like I’m unwilling to debate the morality while all the practical steps to mitigate the risk haven’t been taken.
That might actually be a very very good strategy to take in US politics. The “we can talk morality when you stopped being a bigot and support sex ed and child welfare” kind of line.
Coach@lemmy.world 1 year ago
stAhp tUrLIng mE wAt tUr dOO!
CalvinCopyright@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They don’t care if you’re a leftist or not, they care that you’re telling them what to do, precisely because they don’t want to be told what to do, even if it’s good for them, because if they’re being told what to do, it means they aren’t in power, and they want power at any cost. In the pursuit of the ‘right’ people telling the ‘wrong’ people what to do, and in the pursuit of keeping the ‘wrong’ people from telling the ‘right’ people what to do, anything goes. Hypocrisy, lies, crime, election fraud, subverting courts, coups, false patriotism, false piety, terrorism, even outright murder… anything goes.
Know the enemy, spread the word to your friends and family (and maybe further).
rhino_hornbill@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Reforms are great, but ultimately a doomed bandaid over real problems. Quoth Lenin:
“Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.
The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled.
And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle.”
YourHuckleberry@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Karl Marx was an idiot. Let me explain…no there’s too much. Let me sum up. Replacing a whole system just because some parts of it don’t work is stupid. How do you know the system you put in as a replacement won’t also be broken.
Some people tried to replace capitalism with a totally different system and it went real bad real fast. This wasn’t an isolated incident. They tried it in a bunch of places and in none of them did it work. Marxism has been debunked in the field.
Marxism is the idea that you can fix problems with an ism. Got poor people? Try communism or socialism or half-cocked-ism. If your solution to a problem can fit on a bumper sticker it’s wrong.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
You’re an engineer. There are absolutely scenarios where so much of a system is broken that you have to redesign the whole system. You can’t turn a steam engine into an electric motor piece by piece.
40% of the population is one missed paycheck away from poverty while a handful of people have rocket ships and megayachts and buy-a-few-politicians money. That is not a bug, that is the central operating principle, the Carnot cycle of capitalism. If you’re one of the millions who are in the “wage labor” part of the cycle instead of the “extract profit” part of the cycle, capitalism has already gotten real bad.
You’re an engineer. Don’t be so reductionist. You sound like a kid who invented a perpetual motion machine with an overbalanced wheel and magnets. You should know better.
Platomus@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Some people tried to replace capitalism with a totally different system and it went real bad real fast. This wasn’t an isolated incident. They tried it in a bunch of places and in none of them did it work.
What examples are you thinking of?
MelonTheMan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Your being downvoted because you straw manned, not sure if intentionally or not.
If your solution to a problem can fit on a bumper sticker it’s wrong.
Like…really? Do you think that this community, or anyone worth talking to, thinks that it’s that easy?
irmoz@reddthat.com 1 year ago
The communist manifesto doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, and even that’s just an introduction to his theories
jerdle_lemmy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nobody cares what Lenin had to say. You’re not just talking to the lemmygrad lot.
rhino_hornbill@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Lol, if I like you to an author you don’t recognize will you be able to engage with the argument? Let’s try: www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/…/ch05.htm
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
You missed one thing: Some women just want to abort regardless, and also have all through history, including prehistory. All those policies you listed there are in place in Germany as the constitutional court ruled that the state has a duty to protect life (also the unborn) and thus has to take steps to minimise the number of abortions, and social means are to be preferred over prison sentences because a) more effective and b) proportionality, but: You don’t catch every case with those social means.
Now, if you penalise abortions that fall through those cracks you get backstreet abortions – which you have no control over. You can’t convince people at the last moment, you can’t drown them in flyers explaining all the social services they’re going to receive and smother them with support. That’s why at-will abortion in Germany is decriminalised if you’re willing to sit through what’s called pregnancy conflict counselling, there’s no notes taken or result given in those you get a piece of paper that says that you were there, then there’s a three-day cooldown and you can bring the notice to a doctor who now can perform the abortion legally. If you’re poor, the state is going to cover the costs (not your health insurance because pregnancy is not an illness).
In a nutshell: For the state to be maximally effective at minimising the number of abortions it has to tolerate abortions being carried out legally, and even pay for them to be performed.
And this, btw, to many an American’s surprise, comes from a rather firm “human dignity starts with insemination, the right to live starts with nidation as that’s when nature decides to bring a particular life to fruit” type of doctrine. (The human dignity stuff comes into play e.g. during preimplantation diagnostics: You can be tossed out of the pool for carrying a genetic disease, but not for your sex, hair colour, or whatnot).
escaped_cruzader@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You also just listed all the reasons that rape is allowed in most countries (rape, death risk, severe deformation, etc). You didn’t touch on the “abort for any reason at any time” issue which is the flagship of leftist movement
You are not a leftist, just a centrist living in the US
A2PKXG@feddit.de 1 year ago
I like your thinking.
I think unwanted children are the worst. lets put aside that the family won’t be happy. It’s these children that will cause trouble, populate prisons. They’ll be an absolute drag on society. It’s not even they’re fault. Growing up without love is tough
stappern@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Does that make me a leftist?
yes
kescusay@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You just described steps that would actually reduce abortion by quite a lot, without making it illegal at all. The sex ed and contraception stuff is basically exactly how it’s done in other western countries that don’t have nearly the issue with teen pregnancies we do. What you’re proposing is practical and effective.
And in the eyes of the MAGA crowd, you’re not just a leftist, you’re a baby-murdering, Satan-worshipping communist America-hater.
A2PKXG@feddit.de 1 year ago
I’m European. Do you think the American teens getting pregnant are actually surprised? That just seems inconceivable (pun not intended) to me.
kescusay@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Without comprehensive sex ed? Yeah. I think they are. A lot of them believe myths about getting pregnant, and no one - either at school or in their religiously restrictive homes - will tell them the truth. So they find out the hard way.