Y2Kev: Had I been more awake at the time, I'd have done well to add in a qualifier: Mainly, my point is centered on the people/legislators Proactively Up in Arms on the issue---folks that are, well, casually in the general groove on "Hey, living kids and new life getting a crack at things are good and cool" are also known as normal folks going about their lives peacefully. As with most, there are those that would take them for a ride and lead them down a more severe path from there---muddling and corrupting those good general notions towards their own ends. I'm not aware of anybody that is "Pro-Abortion" so much as those that understand it is a risky medical thing that happens as opposed to some sort of recreational lark or sinister sadism---only ever really seen the term used as a bludgeon by the "Pro-Life" crowd as a pre-emptive framing measure as most of them fall apart if approached on misc "Anti-Life" issues versus the modern "Choice" framing...like kids already born, death penalty, etc.
Interlocutor: "Hey, what's the best way to stop murder?"
You: "Sex education or whatever. Definitely not banning murder."
You're wrongly conflating your beliefs about how to prevent abortion with pro-life individuals' beliefs about how to prevent abortion. I can do the same thing about the purported liberal opposition to poverty: if liberals were truly so opposed to poverty, they'd be working 24/7 to address its root causes, like stifling government regulations that make it hard to open a new business, absurd licensing requirements that make it virtually impossible for the poor to turn real-world skills into gainful employment, minimum wage laws that price unskilled workers out of the market, generous government handouts that disincentivize work, a culture that forswears shaming even for laziness, and so on. No, liberals aren't opposed to poverty--they're just in favor of government power over society!
This kind of rhetoric is no doubt part of the reason our politics are so polarized in this country. Rather than interact with the other side to determine what they believe and why they reject your preferred policies (if they do), you'd rather use your own policy preferences to berate everyone who disagrees with you to an audience that you expect will largely agree with you.
Also, your "religious instruction is child abuse" deserves little more than mockery, so consider this sentence that.
This on the other hand: Holy shit that's a lot of agenda setting and putting words in my mouth as if I'd launched into a baseless personal attack on you! I know I don't post in here as often as I used to and am generally an outlier, but jeez come on now.
-First point: Wrong and suspect kind of imaginative---don't believe I said a word about banning abortion? As if making it illegal now would auto-magically solve everything when it hasn't for well beyond recorded history in every place that has done so? Such a weak reduction to "education or whatever" to boot.
Abortion is risky business at the current state of modern medicine, but what is absolutely riskier by far is some shady back alley "provider" or D.I.Y. nonsense---the sum of it just "make it super illegal, case closed" is death and tremendous suffering, both absolutely needless and it takes a craven and callous mind to be okay with such a statistical damnation of women in general.
Attacking the myriad and societal root motivators of abortion is the only way to tremendously reduce the practice from being sought or carried out---everything else put forth has absolutely failed because it is engaged in a fantasy land of denial and vested interests otherwise.
Point 2: ...Um, both the "liberal" and "conservative" wings in the spectrum here in the US have been abject failure on eradicating poverty? Both should be working tirelessly for it/shouldn't have emboldened policies that exacerbate it for the last several decades, but it isn't quite the same sort of scenario on hand as if there were folks Worked Up About It the wrong way blowing up homeless shelters and food banks. Welcome to a highly disappointing America that has continued to fail to live up to the inherent potential for the good of the common public from the most vulnerable on up? You seem to think I'm something/somewhere else maybe?
Our politics are so polarized, due in large part to the already troubling reductionist notion of The 2 Sides being a thing, mainly on account of each side's more powerful and active folks actually being relatively OK with the Status Quo for various, oft compartmentalized reasons or are stuck in paralysis faced with the towering mass of problems that've been heaped up for decades now while they await for winds on a weathervane to serve as an appeal to authority to make it all better. In this particular case, the "Pro-Life" side has pretty much consistently won out big time outside of not yet wiping Roe v Wade---both the general discourse and reactions to their catalytic events pretty much favor them to keep on with the Sisyphean routine, be an ever-useful voting bloc upon some magic words, and never really get any serious consequences heaped upon them beyond each lone-nut-in-a-vacuum sometimes getting caught/arrested and such. Lots of money and influence in the anti-abortion movement alongside all that emotional investment/exploitation makes for some sweet ass sunk cost misadventure.
Final point: Oh. Well, the part where you say I said "religious instruction is child abuse" isn't the same thing at all as when I actually said "religious groups forcing their norms on the young". My, what I thought was a clearly branching point amidst the various other examples, was aimed squarely at those groups that have a penchant for the whole women as chattel thing and lean towards starting with the young flesh on that abusive nonsense. Informed consent is a hard thing to pull off when being tinkered with from the more cult'ish types from a young age and all---and even that aside, girls/women fearing physical reprisal from acting out from their Faith is absolutely a thing, be it any of the Abrahamic faiths in general or otherwise.
I guess I could've included parts in addition to "forcing norms on the young" that more explicitly got into "voiding critical societal mores as it relates to human health and sexuality"?
So yeah, mockery wise isn't amounting to much near as I can see it. Sorry for not elaborating further?
