To put it simply - restricting a woman's right to birth control or abortion is restricting a woman's freedom. They can couch it in religious terms but that is the simplest way to demonstrate it.
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/nx-s1-5494710/trump-birth-con...
In states with the GOP controls both houses of legislature and governor, the restrictions against abortion in cases of incest or rape or the obscene combination of the two show exactly where the United States is headed federally.
The restrictions against abortion in case of something like rape, I think the thought is that the fetus's perceived right to life or perceived right to not be assaulted (chemically or physically) can't be deprived just because of a crime against the mother that was no fault of the fetus.
I actually find abortion with no exception for rape to be far more ideologically pure position than abortion with exceptions for rape.
The one that makes the least sense is restriction on abortion even in the case the fetus cannot survive. That one is far less defensible than not having a rape abortion exception as it can't be explained from the viewpoint of the rights of the mother nor from one of the rights of the fetus.
> That one is far less defensible than not having a rape abortion exception
It's defensible when you realize that forced pregnancy is viewed by many religious people as a punishment. "If you didn't want a baby, don't have sex" is very commonly heard in private conversations with religious people.
Because pregnancy is a holy punishment, the consequences, even death, are seen as moral.
This is also why the rape exception is more common than the medical exception. A mother dying because of an ectopic pregnancy or because she was too young to have a baby is god's will.
I've heard it as well, but after debating with a lot of people with anti-abortion views I think you've done yourself a huge disservice if you view that as the dominating argument against abortion.
I initially held your viewpoint but after engaging a lot of people I realized they often had pretty similar views on life and liberty as mine, they just were looking at it from the viewpoint of the fetus rather than the mother. From that perspective it just doesn't make sense at all to make an exception for rape.
There's a big difference in what people debate publicly and what they think/feel privately.
People will almost never take the "it's a punishment" position in a debate because that's not a popular position to hold and it's pretty weak morally at the end of the day. That's why the "life of the fetus" approach is most frequently taken even though it leads to absurd positions. For example, pro-life people will very often be put into a difficult position when the notion of IVF comes up.
That's what betrays their true views, IMO.
I've simply had a lot of private conversations with people on religion (I was mormon for a long time and served a mormon mission). That's where my opinion on the actual underlying anti-abortion attitude comes from. It's lots of private conversations in safe spaces. The fetus life, frankly, is almost never brought up as a reason.
And, as I pointed out, it pretty well explains why anti-abortion laws have weird boundaries if they were purely about the life of the fetus.
This duality occurs identically when people discuss legal required child support. "If you didn't want a child, don't have sex" is very commonly initial argument, but then it get changed into "well being of the child" approach, as it leads to the same conclusion. It not a punishment, its a childs's right to support by their biological parents.
Most nations still have social support and government responsibility as last resort, which equally can do the job of supporting children without willing parents, but then people return to the punishment/moral angle that if men don't want to pay for children then they should not have sex.
Look to how quickly people reaches for the morality position and we see how little friction anti-abortion policies has to overcome.
Both can be motivating factors even for the same person. But which dominates the motivation, I'd argue, can be seen by the end policies.
What I expect to see for those that view it as primarily punishment is little outside of child support for kids. Penalizing the "dead beat dad" as it were. I expect those governments to not provide child support, tax breaks for parents, or any sort of welfare/support/minimum standard of living for parents. That is to say, the answer to "how hard would it be to be a single parent" in those government would be "very hard".
For governments that are solely looking out for the welfare of the kid, I expect to see a large amount of support for kids, especially for poor families. I expect some help with childcare, housing, etc to make sure the kids are well cared for.
We already let rich people do eugenics in America. See Elon Musk with almost all male babies - this is astronomically against the odds if we assume 50/50 by chance.
Also abortion for eugenics is inefficient and difficult for some women with physical and mental effects - only in the extenuating circumstances like China during one child period would it be viable. This is a side issue from the main point. Ethics in IVF and usage of abortion/Plan B (where it’s so early that it’s not practical for your eugenics idea) - a discussion we should have and have already skipped for IVF in the USA (where it’s more practical from theoretical standpoint for your eugenics point) but it's a distraction from the primary objective of conservative groups - to force women to have less power and choice in their lives. That is the question we see being answered once conservatives gain power to make legislation of their choice in states or via the Supreme Court in the USA.
IIRC that is not a safe assumption. 50/50 is a population-wide statistic, but it's pretty common for individuals to have a substantially skewed probability for one gender of offspring or the other.
Your only point is to defend Elon Musk and never addressed the key point instead which is IVF can be used in the USA for eugenics as the other poster suggested abortions hypothetically would be in their horror scenario. Not every clinic but it's available and is not explicitly outlawed - it's only ethically and professionally dubious for certain scenarios. It's also much more practical that trying to use abortions for the same usage in terms of the mother's health.
Are you saying that children's sex is heritable? I don't think there is any strong evidence for that (just weak evidence of tiny effects). Or are you just saying that for any 50/50 distribution, there will be some outliers that seem surprising, but are explained by simple statistics?
Based on the photos I’ve seen of the Epstein sexual trafficking case - he and everyone in his circle saw Lolita’s protagonist Humbert Humbert as a role model for behavior - they openly call the female kids they abused variations of terms of endearment used for Dolly, the twelve to thirteen year old victim in Lolita and use quotes from the book in captions and notes. It’s a very short book and possibly because it is entirely IIRC from the pedophile’s POV these fans project their own values onto it.
On the one hand I can understand a little of the admiration for The Culture since it’s a post scarcity humanity and since Musk doesn’t lack for anything he cannot understand how that is different from reality for most of us but the fluidity of gender and sex is so in your face in most of the Culture books he could not have read them and liked them so much.
It’s wild to me that (at least for now) Trump has publicly repudiated the second (or first if one swings that way) place vote getter in last election as unqualified even after she brown nosed Trump hard. He apparently needs a bigger sycophant in charge like his cabinet members https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-03/nobel-win...
Given there are companies on the verge of starting pilot projects, it’s definitely before, civilization collapse looks like maybe possible but not within the lifetime of middle aged folks and older who make up majority of voters.
Given the current governance structure of mining in international waters with poor countries incentives to sell their rights and look the other way, and past history of early mining practices, the obvious answer is no. We already know there are ecosystems of creatures evolved to survive on detritus of dead animals floating down there and colonies of living things no one would have imagined prior to discovery. One of the most promising sources for mining, modules of metal in vast fields provide opportunities for life to thrive but that won’t come up in a start up’s cost analysis, they can just bury the data, do it and ask for forgiveness later so to speak.
Even given that the sending finished products back to earth in same clean room conditions for next step seems challenging to make profitable. If it’s a proof of concept, okay, but to take it further the lithography step takes RV sized machines.
Most of the USA's refineries specialize in low grade oil. The best grade oil is often shipped out of the USA for refining. Shipping costs are so low on a grand scale that it's more profitable to ship the USA's high quality oil overseas than building new refineries in the USA just for that:
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/05/13/the-u-s-exports...
Not just the internet for the Chinese portion. First the USA made this happen in living memory of many of us when they supported bringing China into world trade without trying to buffer the effects, nicely summarized here: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/29/nx-s1-5660865/why-economists-...
Consumer goods got cheaper at the cost a few million decently paying jobs and manufacturing capacity directly and due to second order effects.
Maybe in alternate history we could have saved some of this onshore manufacturing capacity but we’ll never know now.
The scamming is pervasive in works of American fiction through the last century - Mark Twain’s works, The Jungle(more than just meat packing industry), Elmer Gantry and Steinbeck. Many of the described scams still take place on industrial scale.
It feels a bit darker that the US government is doing it now and being cheered on by their faithful voters in the name of religion and tax breaks for the wealthy and company leaders kowtowing and outright bribing in the open for favorable treatment.
reply