US Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs Wade

No. The user was distinguishing between two things the anti choice brigade try to conflate and obfuscate. Which is at 34 weeks we do not terminate a fetus/baby. We terminate a pregnancy. Meaning, quite simply, we prematurely deliver a living baby and keep it healthy to the best of our ability.

So the user asked you, and you deflected and dodged, "Who said killing 34 week old babies is ok?". The reason you deflected and dodged is clear. No one said that. So you have no answer to give.

And I object to the use of language intended to humanise a fetus before it's due. And during our own referendum here every single anti choice poster I confronted on this issue essentially ran away.

It seems the reason people say "baby" is not the objection you claim, but in fact that the word is more evocative and emotive and so is an attempt to emotionally invest the electorate in the development of the fetus to a degree far beyond what is warranted. The result of the referendum suggests this tactic failed however.

Having listened to anti choice campaigners speak on the abortion issue for nearly 30 years now... I am well used to this. Their entire approach to the discussion appears to be to conflate biological life and human personhood as much as possible, almost exclusively through rhetorical moves and linguistic distortions of this kind. Clinging to words like "baby" and "life" and "human being" in lieu of any actual substantive arguments on the matter.

Actual moral and ethical arguments against aborting, say, a 12 week old fetus appear thin on the ground. Though I have sought them, and continue to seek them, as I said for nearly 30 years now. But the failure of their rhetoric and their failure in the referendum appears not to have sparked any motivation to go back to the drawing board here.

I think the difference between "fetus" and "baby" is actually entirely irrelevant except as a rhetorical emotive move. Mainly because I do not ascribe moral and ethical concern to anything based on the label it is given, so much as based on the ATTRIBUTES it has. I can think of no attribute a 12 week old fetus has which warrants any moral or ethical concern.

To answer your rhetorical question however, when we treat women for the emotional trauma of losing a pregnancy we in fact do distinguish with them the difference between having lost a baby and having lost a pregnancy. Precisely because it is "just" a fetus. I have written on this fact extensively in the past. I can do so again if required.

But humans are a narrative driven species. So much so that one writer even half jokingly suggested we should not be called "Homo Sapien" (Wise Ape) so much as "Pans Narrans" (Storytelling Chimpanzee). People can become emotionally invested in a fetus, and the baby and child they intend for it to become. So much so that this child becomes real to them early in the process. And so it's loss hits them equally emotionally. And this is the simple answer to your question about things like "Compassionate Leave". Though there is also a functional aspect to this as well as losing a pregnancy is not a trivial event medically either and as such temporary leave is justifiable for that reason too.

All that said however, the fact that some people become emotionally invested in the process is irrelevant to the discussion of abortion. Simply because one persons unwarranted emotional concerns is not something the rest of us should be held accountable to. Their emotional investment in the process, as beautiful as that may be in and of itself, does not hold us to any moral or ethical concerns that are relevant to the issue of elective abortion.

"Your definition mentions abortions usually take place within 28 weeks of pregnancy."

Which is a little misleading as definitions go as the statistics I found over the years show that the near totality of elective abortions happen in or before week 12 and certainly by week 16. The near totality of abortions AFTER this period are done not electively but due to some other necessity such as fetal abnormalities or the health of the mother. So posting pictures of a premature birth after 22 weeks is just an emotive move with no intellectual content at all.

As I explained to Pussy above, terms like "baby" and "fetus" and "Human being" are therefore nothing but red herrings and obfuscate what should really concern us. Which is that it matters not what a fetus LOOKS like. We even had one user who very comically went on about how it's tongue moves.

What matters is identifying A) What attributes precisely should we use to decide when to ascribe moral and ethical concern to something (such as human rights) and B) does the fetus have said attributes.

At 12-16 weeks, and in fact for some time afterwards, there is no reason I am currently aware of to suggest that the fetus has developed at all, let alone brought on line, the faculty of human consciousness/sentience. This is the only attribute I have found in nearly 30 years of conversations on this debate which warrants ascribing moral/ethical concern to an(y) entity. As such I fail to find any intellectual argument against elective abortion at this time.

Should any other attributes exist that I have missed I am all ears.

Prisoners, black people, and school children have heartbeats and feel pain but somehow the American right is more than happy with their being murdered.

It's about misogyny and control. Nothing else.

They’re really not though. As far as Alveda King, one of the most prominent anti-abortion campaigners on the right is concerned, abortion is about racial discrimination -

King is a pro-life activist. She had two abortions before changing her views following the birth of one of her children and her becoming a born-again Christian in 1983. King frames the issue as one of racial discrimination; she has referred to abortion as "womb-lynching" and accused Planned Parenthood of profiting from "aborting black babies." King is director of the activist group Civil Rights for the Unborn and is director of Priests for Life's African American outreach.

In 1996, she denounced her aunt Coretta Scott King for her support for abortion rights.

On September 22, 2020, King appeared in Birminghamalongside political activists including Amie Beth Dickinson to present the Equality Proclamation. The document, signed on the 158th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation's signing, argued that the tactics and locations of abortion providers like Planned Parenthood were racially discriminatory. According to a document distributed by the group, King and the other signees believed that “the targeted practices of Alabama abortion providers are both discriminatory and disproportionately harmful to black mothers and their babies” and that a legal case could be made against abortion using the Tenth Amendment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveda_King

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/identities/2018/1/19/16906928/black-anti-abortion-movement-yoruba-richen-medical-racism

The assertions that being anti-abortion is about misogyny and control and nothing else, are grounded in the same beliefs that people who are anti-abortion don’t care about women and children.

Not only is it premature, it's completely daft to see so many lose all sense of perspective, for, what is, a document that was never going to see the light of day in it's current form.

Any of the other justices in argeement would have made edits, comments, recommendations, to this initial draft and it may not have even been the majority position by the time it was released. Any of the judges can change their vote right up to the time the decision is due to be released, as has happened in the past.

Even more recently:

This thread is far too much about re-running the debate on the Irish 8th Amendment. Could we return to the US Supreme Court?

The problem is that for decades, the appointment of Supreme Court justices has been over-politicised. In Senate hearings, nominees to the Court are questioned more on political and social matters, than on legal ones. There are also the recent machinations of Senator Mitch McConnell in refusing to even the consider President Obama's nominee at least a year before the next election, while pushing for the approval of President Trump's nominee to fill a vacancy mere weeks before an election.

Given that the process is mandated by the US Constitution (Senate approval for Presidential nominees to the Court), the only real solution is a constitutional amendment. If you look at the supermajorities required to do that, than you should know its just not going to happen.

So Roe V Wade is just one aspect of a Constitutional process which has been gamed and abused to death by politicians.