I strongly recommend the linked article. It's long, and crafted to pull at your sympathies, but it's very well written, and does a good job of describing the cumulative effect of different state regulations (and how stressful and challenging it is to navigate under time and emotional pressure).

I strongly recommend the linked article. It's long, and crafted to pull at your sympathies, but it's very well written, and does a good job of describing the cumulative effect of different state regulations (and how stressful and challenging it is to navigate under time and emotional pressure).

I haven't read the New Yorker story, and I've only looked at the top of this one from the Washington Post, but I thought I'd drop a link in here.

Kind of bummed to talk to a middle-of-the road lawyer friend in the DC area who was not upset about the ruling, she said she was basically a textualist and always thought the right to privacy was BS. She thought freedom of association would make a better argument for pro-choice folks! As a Jain she was basically pro life.

I really don't know how to engage her. She's definitely not going to vote for Trump or most Republicans, but she's also not going to push for pro choice policies.

Ooof. The link in 3 is a great counterpart to the OP. One teenager gets the abortion, another one doesn't.

How do you get from freedom of association to abortion rights? You're allowed to hang out in the same room as a doctor, and their performing an abortion is inseparable from that hang?

(If so, I feel like that would incidentally make it impossible to ban conversion therapy as many states have...)

she said she was basically a textualist and always thought the right to privacy was BS

IANAL, but I've never heard a satisfactory answer from a textualist for the question: What do you do with the Ninth Amendment? (I'd be curious to know if the sensible people of this blog have ever heard a reasonable explanation.)

Anyway, if someone supports pro-abortion legislators and judges, they are fellow travelers even if they are otherwise dopes on the subject of abortion.

Having now read the Post piece, it's really terrific.

It also makes me despair for the utility of objective journalism. I guess this sort of thing improves readers' minds, but I don't suppose it will change minds.

It's tricky to talk about abortion once the babies exist. The post piece does it pretty well, but that's part of why it's not going to change as many minds as the OP article might.

A novel take isn't always the best take, though. We don't need new insight on the topic of Republican destruction. The dull, repetitive take is sometimes the most accurate.
+1000 Unfortunately also an approach almost guaranteed to kill an academic research career on any topic other than Republican destruction

6: I thought it was BS, and I think she was kind of joking, but the claim she was making was something like "the freedom not to associate with the fetus."

7: she doesn't support them. She lives in either DC or Maryland and votes for Democrats. She sends her kids to the same liberal private school that Ketanji Jackson does. But she's not going to go to a Pro Choice rally or write letters about the importance of protecting abortion rights. She's also not going to support Repubs because they are objectionable for a bizzilion other reasons.

IA still NAL, but I think the contraception decision - Griswold - established a "freedom of intimate association" that some lawyers argue should have been directly extended to abortion. (But now I'm waaaay out of my depth and subject to correction by people who know what they are talking about.)

11.2: By "support" I meant "vote for."

12.1: yeah, a I think she thought that was BS too.

12.2: she won't vote for Republicans. She always bites the right way, so she's not doing any active harm, but she's not advocating for abortion rights either.

I think pressing someone who will not vote Republican to try to get them to be active on an issue where they don't agree with the Democrats on is more likely to do harm than good.

14: With stuff like this, I refuse to take efficacy calculations into account. BG expresses an honest and reasonable disdain for this friend's position. I am also trying to be honest and reasonable when I say that I consider this person to be on my side of the key issue.

Nobody knows what works, and the sad truth is that probably nothing works. In any event, we aren't mini-political consultants. Our obligations are to decency and honesty, not spin.

(I've said this here lately in a variety of different ways, and I'm going to keep working on it until I get it right. I'm still not quite satisfied.)

14: Well yeah, and that's why we changed the subject to how working for the government was the best job she'd ever had (now works for a firm) and the fact that soy cheese has gotten so much better that she might be able to switch to being a Vegan which is mor consistent with Jainism, but for now she's just vegetarian.

I couldn't not eat cheese either.

BG: I have a friend who sometimes utters what I think are ... somewhat not-so-great statements regarding structural racism and such. And I've even pushed back a little on them, e.g. during a discussion about how I gave up on America and Americans, as a moral statement, b/c of the cumulative blood-drenched orgy we've endured these last few years. Et. Cetera.

But here's the thing I always come back to: there are two ways in which his "high-order bit" is set right: he always votes for Dems and wants to burn the GrOPers to the ground. Salt the earth. Etc. And secondly, in his relations with all actual living humans, he's a kind and decent person, and never does the sort of creepy, or racist, or misogynist, things that some people do.

So sure, I'd like for him to feel (and say) that Black Lives Matter, and it's a matter of *urgency* the way I feel it. But I'm OK with him not saying it, and even sometimes expressing that he thinks the George Floyd protests were misguided. I can say "whatevs" because he *never* supports the bastards. Never.

I'm OK with that.

Yeah, that's where my parents are. I berate them a little here and there when they need it, but even without the berating, they're never going to vote wrong.

What I worry about isn't that people I know spouting wrong or counterproductive bullshit are ultimately going to vote wrong, but that the quantity of wrong and counterproductive bullshit floating around, unrebutted, overwhelms other enough people to tip the balance in elections the wrong way. It's sort of like Wickard v Filburn, a theory of interstate bullshit that makes all of it relevant, even when you can show certain individuals living in isolated information silos.

I am 100% on board with calculating how much berating to do in one's life, I'm just less satisfied that the conclusion that individual X is likely not to vote their 'convictions' means that no harm has come from them.