Saturday, June 25, 2022

The Tantruming of America

I know that no one is required to show up for every argument, but the rank ignorance of American civics and the deranged shrieking hysteria surrounding the recent Supreme Court ruling merits at least a passing comment. 

Let's get a couple of things straight: The court did not ban abortion, and it's not on a personal vendetta to destroy women. The court simply returned the right to regulate abortion to the states, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in a federal republic. The Tenth Amendment exists for a reason. 

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a bastion of women's rights and judicial liberalism if ever there was one, said that Roe went too far. Instead of addressing the most extreme state limits on abortion rights that existed at the time, the court overstepped its bounds and essentially wiped every state abortion law off the books in one fell swoop, inventing an implied national right to abortion in the Constitution as it did so. 

The problem is, the argument behind Roe was constitutionally weak, and therefore always susceptible to being overturned. Ginsburg, who argued that "measured motions" work better than "doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped," knew this to be true. States were already in the process of liberalizing their abortion laws when Roe was decided in 1973, but Ginsburg said that the ruling "invited no dialogue with legislators" and instead "seemed entirely to remove the ball from the legislators' court," while in Europe the abortion question was rightly being decided by legislators elected by the people and by public referendums, not by unelected judges. 

And that's how we ended up where we are today: An activist court used a flimsy legal argument to decide national abortion law by judicial fiat. This is always what happens when judges think they're legislators in robes, making law from the bench rather than simply interpreting and ruling on the laws already on the books.

Judges need to leave the legislating to the legislators. Abortion-rights activists have had half a century to push their lawmakers to draft legislation, either on a state or national level, which would have ended this debate that comes up in every election cycle. They also could have worked on a constitutional amendment. Instead, they relied on an instance of judicial overreach and now act shocked when one of their own judicial heroes warned them this day might come.

But let's also be candid here and admit that the reaction to the overturning of Roe speaks volumes about the degree to which raw emotion and uninformed opinion drive so much of our society today. If people think the answer to the overturning of a bad ruling is to kill Supreme Court justices, for example, then it's little wonder the same group of people also tend to argue so passionately for gun control: Because they lack the ability to control their own emotional impulses, they don't trust themselves not to go on a murderous rampage, so they assume everyone else would be the same. It's classic projection. And what we're seeing in reaction to the ruling is far more a call for actual insurrection than anything that happened at the 1/6 Capitol demonstration.

And let's be frank here. Look at the reactions in this compilation video, as in any many other videos floating around online. (This one is so raw, in fact, that YouTube has age-restricted it; you have to click through to YT to watch it.) If you're this lacking in impulse control, then it's no wonder you want abortion on demand. There is a correlation.

So forgive me if I lack sympathy when your position is "agree with me or I'll destroy you." Or, if you're a Supreme Court justice, "If you don't let me kill my baby, I'll kill you." Stop acting like a petulant child. I refuse to engage with you if you're incapable of acting like more than a 3-year-old who was told she can't have cookies for dinner. Grow up.

All you do is alienate people when you act like this. See, wanting the choice to abort is one thing, as is keeping abortion "safe, legal, and rare." But shouting your abortion like it's something to be proud of, akin to some kind of holy sacrament, only tells me how unhinged your mindset has become. It makes it really hard to warm up to you when you either want me dead or you cram your politics down my throat and demand my constant active vocal praise for every single thing you do and say. 

It also says a lot about how little these people value human life, given that they are, after all, engaging in screaming meltdowns over the fact that they think they no longer have the right to kill unborn humans. (Of course, they're not human until they're wanted, conveniently. Just as saying you're the opposite sex magically makes you the opposite sex now, saying you want the baby means that it magically ceases to be a "clump of cells" or a "product of conception.")

And let's not ignore that a lot of these people clamoring for what is essentially abortion on demand are also the ones who praise exposing little kids to sexualized drag-queen performances and actually get outraged when schoolteachers can no longer push sex-ed and gender ideology on Kindergartners

They always push too far and become their own worst enemies, alienating people who might otherwise find common ground with them. Just like this entire month, when we're practically ordered to bow down to the rainbow mafia and show our unwavering fealty to one of the seven deadly sins, pride. What started out as a sincere push for equal rights has metastasized into "praise me, you bigot," with the power of every major institution of power behind it. If you ever wondered what primitive Christian zealotry looked like, with its inquisitions, its attacks on science and logic, and its rigid puritanical intolerance, you're seeing it now, just with different dogmas being pushed and different holy symbols being foisted on you.   

Let's not also forget that if your state bans abortion as a result of the reversal of Roe, you can still drive to another state to terminate your pregnancy. And you can always petition your own state's legislators to change the laws. Do something instead of complaining, if you don't like the way things are.

And I know this comes as a surprise to a lot of people, but the primary purpose of sexual activity is reproduction. You are engaging in an act that carries the potential to create new life, because that's precisely what it's designed to do. If you don't want the responsibility of becoming a parent, it's exceedingly easy to avoid that result. You either abstain or you use contraception, which is cheap and easily available. It's not the government's fault if you get pregnant, or its responsibility to clean up your mess. Take responsibility for the consequences of your own actions. 

Look, I don't care if you want to terminate your pregnancy. That's on you. And at a minimum, I agree that there need to be allowances for pregnancies arising from nonconsensual sexual activity, and for cases of severe fetal abnormalities and a significant heath risk to the mother. But those abortions account for a small fraction of the whole. Most are performed as a method of birth control, which is unnecessary and irresponsible. But if you don't like what's happened with Roe, stop blaming a court for doing its job in throwing out a bad ruling. Stop screaming about it on social media. And get your legislators to do something about it. 

Sorry to say, you might even have to get a male legislator involved. But since men can get pregnant and no one can define what a woman is, that shouldn't be a problem, right?


And also, if you argued in favor of mask and vaccine mandates at any point over the past two years, then you have abandoned any moral right to now go around proclaiming "my body, my choice." Sorry, you can't have it both ways. 


Can we please stop acting like emotionally stunted children for a change? 

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