Dobbs Worked, Dobbs Is Working

Taking a long view of how the decision affected, and is affecting, American politics.

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307
Abortion demonstrators at the Supreme Court in 2021. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Is abortion a losing issue for Republicans?

It will be for some Republicans, surely. Nobody expects a Republican to be elected to Congress from the Bay Area on an anti-abortion platform, in part because nobody expects a Republican to be elected to Congress from the Bay Area at all. But since the Dobbs decision, the cause of abortion rights—the most ghastly and bloodthirsty enthusiasm that can be celebrated in polite society—has won victories from Kansas to Kentucky.

There is one thing that those who long opposed Roe v. Wade and those who support abortion rights should be able to agree on: Dobbs is working exactly as it is supposed to work. 

Or at least they should be able to agree, if the debate were an intellectually honest one on both sides, which it isn’t.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Hear hear!

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  2. Matthew.Whinery

    I question if any of these pro choice commentators have ever seen an Ultrasound? Do you just stick your head in the sand and say “yeah I think it’s fine to destroy that (baby if valued by mom) fetus”

    Spare me the women’s rights/my body smoke screen

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  3. Avatar photo
    DougCLE

    Thank you, Kevin.

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  4. Lee Rone

    You seem to have determined that some people's civil rights should be protected by the federal courts (blacks) while others' rights should be determined by conservative state legislatures (women, gays). How do you arrive at this standard?

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      TJ

      Actually the rights of the child may also be at issue. At 8 months after fertilization does the unborn baby have no rights? That likely should be an issue for the courts.

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      1. Tom Doniphon

        No, it should not be settled by courts; it should be settled by a Constitutional amendment.

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    2. Ingenero.lux

      We have the Reconstruction Amendments that explicitly protect the former, we have novel legal theories to insist things written about entirely different topics protect the latter. All manner of rights are legislated across the country, from the small (do I have the right to brew my own beer, smoke marijuana, pump my own gas) to the large (Do fathers have equal standing to mothers when it comes to custody? What rights do I have to defend myself from harm? Ala the Morning Dispatch yesterday, do I have the right to end my own life with assistance?). It’s not that all rights of women and homosexuals are up to state legislatures, just that some are and always have been, just as the rights of men are hugely curtailed in the middle of a general war as they must fight for the country or face jail time if they can’t prove an objection acceptable to the government.

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  5. Royemeitav

    The idea that the 50 year goal of the pro-life movement was simply to have a national democratic debate and take it on the chin when the maximal pro-choice position wins in red state after red state is pretty risible

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    1. Royemeitav

      Imagine telling a bunch of March For Life activists a few years ago that they get Roe overturned but end the decade with abortion legal everywhere except just like, 5 states in the deep south! Somehow don't think there'd be much enthusiasm

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  6. Egal.Fabrice

    I can disagree with David French on abortion and still enjoy his writing as well-meaning, thoughtful and looking for common ground. And with all due respect to Mr Williamson, describing support for abortion as "ghastly and bloodthirsty enthusiasm" is not how you build bridges. I am reminded of a left-wing columnist making the asinine claim that conservatives who did not wear masks during Covid were a "death cult": just what was the writer hoping to achieve here? Perhaps some train of thought led him to this conclusion, but if he was in fact trying to reach people with a different opinion, he should know better than to insult them.

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      DougCLE

      I mean, neither is dressing up in Handmaid’s Tale cloaks, or waving a picture of Justice Kavanaugh with “Sexist Man in America”, as in the photo above, right?

      When has the abortion argument ever been about building bridges?

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      1. Egal.Fabrice

        By "building bridges", I was refering to The Dispatch. I am one of the many readers who never considered themselves conservatives but come here to read thoughtful perspectives by people I don't necessairly agree with.

        I didn't join for articles stating either "abortion is the Worstest Thing" or "Kavanaugh is the Worstest Person". Neither interest me. On the contrary, I come here to escape this sort of noise. That's why I'm annoyed.

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          DougCLE

          That's fair.

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      Ms. SSM

      This assumes bridge building is the desire. It’s not. And that’s great! The unpopular side doubling down in doing and saying the most unpopular things is a win for my pro choice philosophy. By all means. Be as reactionary as possible during this political upheaval. In the long run it just makes the CA outcome more likely then the TX one.

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    3. Tom Doniphon

      Should we lie about what abortion is?

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      1. Egal.Fabrice

        If I thought pro-life activists were reactionnary patriarchs terrified by the thought of women making their own decisions, should I say so openly? Or would that just be more of the asinine hyperbole that wrecked US politics, and makes me look more of a partisan hack the more I try to justify it?

        People who support abortion roll their eyes at claims that abortion is baby murder. In fact, they support abortion *because* they do not think it is baby murder. If the point is to decrease the number of abortions, rather than scoring partisan points, try starting from the fact that virtually no one thinks having an abortion is a good thing in itself - if only in the sense that one wouldn't wish, say, surgery on someone. That's what David French did in a few memorable columns. Do not accuse these people of murder because, wouldn't you know, that turns them against the point you are trying to make.

        So yes, if you think abortion is basically murder, and you are talking to people who disagree, you should in fact bite your tongue and find a different angle. That much should be obvious.

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        1. Blaise V Jones

          In the past few months I have read and seen multiple statements from those on the left side of the political spectrum that having abortion is a good thing in itself, testimonials about how it was one of the best things they ever did in fact. So unfortunately your statement that "virtually no one" thinks that is no longer valid, although it doesn't seem that long ago that it was. I suspect that this is the sort of "ghastly enthusiasm" that KW refers to, and he is well within his rights to find it ghastly. I don't think the greatest bridge in the world would get those folks to walk over and meet in the middle.

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          1. Egal.Fabrice

            Yes, I suppose you could find activists of questionable sanity who would argue that maths are racist, crime is a social construct, and third-trimester abortions should be celebrated with a party. But the idea is to find points of agreement with the "normies" who are willing to hear you out, not the loud idiots who get a disproportionate amount of screen time.

            Correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine that when the pro-life movement finds people rambling that women who get an abortion should be arrested, tried and locked away for murder, it doesn't see them as kindred spirits either.

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        2. Tom Doniphon

          I'm not talking about matters of opinion; I'm talking about matters of fact. It is simply a fact that an abortion kills a human, because a new human organism is created by conception.

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          DougCLE

          “If I thought pro-life activists were reactionary patriarchs terrified by the thought of women making their own decisions, should I say so openly?”

          If you don’t, then thank you, but plenty of others - even here at TD - have said exactly that. And worse, frankly.

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          1. Egal.Fabrice

            I know. "Pro-choice" partisan warriors can be as obnoxious as any "pro-life".

            To be clear, I understand where opposition to abortion is coming from. I would strongly oppose unrestricted abortion in the third trimester, because there are clearly two people involved by that point. The pro-life believe the same is true even when the embryo is a cluster of cells, and although I disagree, you must feel pretty much like I do when I think of third-trimester abortion.

            Conversely, you can probably imagine how annoying it is to be called "bloodthirsty" when you honestly, genuinely believe there is no one in a womb by week 6 of the pregnancy. Even the woke calling me a racist don't usually imply that I like killing.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Dustin Anglin

    I just don't understand why anyone is pretending the Alito opinion in any way put a final stamp on the substantive due process argument. I think that "modus vivendi" that is likely to be reached in another 50 years very well could be another SCOTUS ruling reaffirming the rights of Roe & Casey, precisely because Dobbs did so little to effectively address the underlying constitutional argument while attempting to straddle the fence to avoid placing decisions like Loving, Griswold, and Obergefell in jeopardy.

    I just hope the pro-life movement doesn't spend the next 50 years fighting for wildly unpopular abolitionist policies when they could be fighting for better financial and healthcare resources for women who are or may become pregnant. The only viable path to anything close to abortion abolition in this country is one that reduces as many unwanted pregnancies as possible. Every other path is just delaying the inevitable and increasing the human suffering along the way.

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    1. Tom Doniphon

      The Constitution doesn’t protect a right to kill one’s children in the womb. It quite simply isn’t there.

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      Rlritt

      Exactly. People are not going to stop having sex. Face facts. Take the morality out of it and teach young people that getting accidently pregnant is the stupidest most selfish thing to do when there are so many great birth control products avaible. Make them all free. I'm of the mind that decisions about pregnancy are private and should be left to the person who is pregnant.

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      Pat Riot

      The government of Colorado reduced abortions by 50% by giving out free birth control to anybody who needs it:

      https://cdphe.colorado.gov/fpp/about-us/colorados-success-long-acting-reversible-contraception-larc

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      1. Avatar photo
        Rlritt

        Yes!. So smart!

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  8. Matthew.Whinery

    It is so simple, either killing the fetus (aka an unborn human) is wrong or it is not. It has nothing to do with a “woman’s right” - if the fetus has rights of personhood - any more that a woman’s right to dismember me because I am inconveniencing her.

    The analogy of a fetus dismembering to wart removal is asinine. As a physician I wish the public could see that abortion is destroying and removing a distinct living organism from another. NOT removal of part of the mother. Roughly half of abortions (in the US) are on the opposite sex from the mother. Stop with the ridiculous talking points about women’s rights and my body my choice.
    If we are being intellectually honest, what matters is whether or not there is a God and thus an actual right or wrong. I’m firmly in the former camp.

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      Ms. SSM

      “As a physician I wish the public could see that abortion is destroying and removing a distinct living organism from another.”

      As a pregnant woman I see it. I’ve never argued the whole it’s not a life thing which is inconsequential to me. I don’t care. My life isn’t here to support other life involuntarily. I am 100% certain MY life is a life and it’s the only one I’m required to consider.

      Also the intellectual honest debate is whether there is a God!?!? I believe in God. I still don’t think you can make me support another life involuntarily. But a lot of people DONT believe in God. So our laws should be better designed then God says so.

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      1. Blaise V Jones

        " I am 100% certain MY life is a life and it’s the only one I’m required to consider."

        Perhaps in a civilized society we should consider more than we are required to. The willingness to support others is what binds a society together.

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          Ms. SSM

          Sure we should. But that changes nothing. What one SHOULD do and what the LAW REQUIRES one to do are two very different things. Certainly I often consider more then myself. But the law has never forced me to be so considerate nor should it. Only in pregnancy is this even debated.

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    2. CB76

      "Stop with the ridiculous talking points about women’s rights and my body my choice."

      The American people: "No."

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      Rlritt

      Yes, but that woman has to carry it and give birth. She should be able to say if she wants to do that.

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      Mark B

      “Roughly half of abortions (in the US) are on the opposite sex from the mother.“

      What’s your point here? Do you get that it would be weird if it was any other number?

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      1. Ingenero.lux

        It’s that “Our bodies, ourselves” and similar slogans ignored the second genetically distinct human body involved. The unborn fetus isn’t a wart or an organ, but another human organism. That raises a very different ethical question from the rights of a woman to remove a wart or an inflamed gallbladder.

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          Mark B

          My point is just math. Even under the most aggressive progressive gender theory the vast majority of pregnant people are women and babies are about 50/50 female/male. So one would expect about half of all abortions to be “the other sex from the mother” unless there was some bias at play.

          I think you may be arguing with a straw man with regards to the “my body my choice” argument. I have never in my long experience moving in progressiveish and pro-choice circles perceived a misunderstanding of the biology that the fetus is not a part of the woman’s body. The point of “my body, my choice” has always been understood by my peers and I that though the fetus is separate and distinct from the mother’s it is dependent upon the mother’s body. And that pregnancy takes a real toll on the woman’s body that she should not have to bear against her will. The argument is that even if at the moment of conception the fetus is fully alive, realized, invested with both soul, and legal rights the woman’s body is distinct from that fetus is still her own and under her control even to the point of refusing necessary life sustaining donation to the fetus. The analogy within this argument is that I have no legal obligation to give you blood for a transfusion even if it is necessary to keep you alive and without it you will surely die. It is my body, my choice even though it is your life that hangs in the balance.
          I think pro-choice advocates often refrain from making this position as explicitly as I have to the opposite side because it is in its extremity horrible. Of course I would give a liter of blood to save another regardless of whether the law compels me, but the law cannot compel me to give even a drop or it might be able to compel me to give two, or marrow, or a kidney, or part of my liver, etc. Pregnancy has costs for the woman, an alarming number of women die of pregnancy in this country often without any real warning. I don’t want even a single abortion but I oppose using the power of the state backed up with a monopoly on the use of violence to put a gun to the head of a woman who doesn’t want to give a drop of blood to another even when the other is her fetus.

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    5. Avatar photo
      CVS

      Ok. But what difference does that make to the political discussion that Kevin is having here?

      Slavery was wrong and abominable to God too. Still doesn’t mean that Wilberforce didn’t have to play the crassest political games to achieve incremental victories to eventually ban slavery in Britain. It still doesn’t mean that Lincoln didn’t effectively have to bribe members of Congress with jobs to Amendment the Constitution to ban slavery.

      Pointing to the righteousness of your cause doesn’t get you anywhere alone. And it’s those next steps that Kevin is talking about.

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    6. Avatar photo
      Kmregan7

      And naturally, because you're in the former camp, those of us who are NOT (especially all the women you'd force to remain pregnant against their will) have to abide by your religious beliefs. Because that's what they are.

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      1. Ingenero.lux

        And that’s different than the insistence that a genetically distinct living human organism has absolutely no rights…how? You have no more basis to make that claim than we do to claim that human organism has rights if we take religious beliefs entirely out of it. This isn’t as simple as religious believers imposing a religious practice on people, it’s an issue involving deep ethical and moral questions that cannot be resolved by science. And when you get to that table there’s no valid reason to pretend religious belief is any less valid a source of morality than any other source - the very ideas of personhood and rights don’t involve clean scientific categorizations, let alone which apply when. It is, however, quite popular to frame this as secularism vs religion rather than to recognize that secular morality has and does vary quite a bit and isn’t a single coherent entity any more than religious morality is - we are either all equal and thus equally allowed to assert our moral views in the public square or you‘re trying to relegate your fellow citizens to second-class status by insisting their moral views are only legitimate if they come from your exact viewpoint and background.

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          Ms. SSM

          Feel free to take this distinct life out of the woman and protect it then. Just don’t protect it by forcing woman to keep it. However as that technology does not yet exist it’s not even close to distinct. It’s wholly and completely dependent.

          This is the dividing line from which i see no compromise. The woman gets the duty to preserve the other life. And that’s it for prolifers. What she wants with her body doesn’t matter. What she wants to be doing with her body doesn’t matter. The ONLY thing that matters is the other life. It ranks higher then the woman always. Somewhat ironically when you consider childbirth is considerably more dangerous then an abortion. But there it is in a nut shell. Two lives get ranked and the woman loses every time.

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      2. Avatar photo
        Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

        How is that different than what you propose, to impose your values on others?

        Politics is simply a battle of values, where both sides smugly think theirs are the right one and the other is wrong.

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          Ms. SSM

          I don’t think there should be forced abortions or births. That’s how it’s different. My view is imposed on no one but me. Don’t like abortion. Don’t have one.

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          Kmregan7

          Well for one thing my values means women have a choice- I’m not ever going to force women to have an abortion, unlike those who would force women to continue a pregnancy and go through childbirth and then parenting or the additional (possible) trauma of adoption.

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          1. Ingenero.lux

            With the exception of rape and incest (per the Guttmacher Institute, those plus life of the mother abortions constitute less than 2% of the total) women have plenty of choices prior to being pregnant. The argument being made isn’t really about women having choice or no choice, women have many choices regardless of the abortion regime we’re talking about, it’s about the insistence that the only choice that matters is whether to have an abortion or not.

            And no, I have no interest in controlling women’s sex lives, before that fun claim comes up. I object to the idea that the only REAL choice is whether to kill a living human organism or not rather than recognizing all the choices that led up to that point in more than 98% of the cases that end in abortion. Women have agency, pretending they don’t unless abortion is allowed infantilizes half the human race. We can argue the germane issues (does the genetically distinct living human organism gestating in a woman have rights and if so what those rights should be, are there other measures that make sense to expand women’s ability to make reproductive choices period rather pretending the entire issue solely involves abortion, etc.), but this is not as simple as letting women make choices or not.

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            Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

            Those are your values, and your opinions, but that by itself gives them no greater weight than does anyone else's.

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  9. DTruitt

    Here is where I clearly diverge from KDW and standard issue conservatism. The same logic that he applies to Dobbs in overturning Roe, and thereby overturning the 14th Amendment, is precisely the same argument that a future court could use in overturning the 13th Amendment (by restricting other rights enjoyed elsewhere such as the right to vote), thus returning to the states the decision to democratically reinstate slavery or its practical equivalent in the former Confederate states (as Jim Crow laws clearly did).

    The 14th Amendment unambiguously prohibits States from encumbering the privileges and immunities enjoyed by the citizens in other states. Thus the 14th Amendment serves as a bar to States attempting to end-around the 13th Amendment. Collectively the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are referred to as the “Civil War Amendments”. Human rights in the United States are a Federal government matter, not a state’s rights matter … any more than slavery was a states rights matter. The US can no more remain part free and part anti abortion/anti women’s rights than could Lincoln’s Union of 1860 remain part free and part slave.

    The original Roe court decision botched the reasoning behind the decision, making a mockery of judicial logic, with its silly emanations and penumbras analysis, thus setting up Roe for ridicule and a political overturning. The majority opinion made the actual decision look far weaker and without basis than it actually was.

    Some day Dobbs will be overturned, just as Roe was overturned, relying upon a simple and straight forward reading of the 14th amendment.

    That Congress and the States did not realize in 1865 that the 14th amendment could be applied to abortion rights does not render its application void … the Constitution was never intended to provide a prescriptive detailed recitation of all possible laws, but rather was intended only to provide a general statement of the rights, privileges, and immunities of the People, and the States, and to prescribe a structure within which those rights, privileges, and immunities may be procedurally preserved. Just as none of the Founders foresaw the development of broadcast radio and televised news and opinion in 1787, or the web, and thus spoke only of freedom of the “press”. But obviously the same principles apply to any mechanism of the practice of free speech in the media.

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      Martin Hernandez

      Professor Akhil Amar, guest on AO who is pro abortion, already dissected those arguments in his agreement with Dobbs decision and Roe’s oversteps, as compelling a case you make.

      The reasonable pro-life argument is one that recognizes abortion issue as one unenumerated right (body autonomy) converging against an enumerated (life) one, not the case with slavery. Understanding that states already restricted abortion at the time of those amendment ratifications reinforces the position. Furthermore, we already happily live in a nation in which issues such as euthanasia and the death penalty vary from state to state, we can live with that variety as it applies to abortion too, and as KW argues, it will likely lead to a properly legislated version of what Roe improperly imposed.

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      DougCLE

      “The same logic that he applies to Dobbs in overturning Roe, and thereby overturning the 14th Amendment”

      What?

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    3. David.Neidert

      You didn't go to law school did you? Your comment shows both a distinct misunderstanding of constitutional law and history.

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  10. Vance Pomeroy

    [ . . . ] the most ghastly and bloodthirsty enthusiasm that can be celebrated in polite society"

    The most cogent and precise description I have read about the the Roe-sters.

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      Ms. SSM

      This is one of those things that is precise to the people who already support it while meaning precisely nothing to the people who don’t. It will alter no minds. Nor was it intended to in all fairness. KW does have a way with words.

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    2. DTruitt

      It’s a medical procedure done at the behest of a woman who does not wish to carry a fetus. It is no bloodier than an appendectomy or plastic surgery, and morally no different. It’s a fetus not a baby.

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      1. Ingenero.lux

        Apart from the little problem of an abortion removing and killing a genetically distinct living human organism rather than removing an infected but genetically identical organ from a human body which continues to live without a non-vital organ. There is a very concrete scientific difference between those, so making sweeping moral claims does not make sense unless you either are basing your claim on a specific moral code (in which case you have to recognize many other people have similar but variant moral codes with just as much scientific basis, ie none) or some divine revelation (which is what you would likely claim to be refuting). A fetus is not and never has been an organ or a part of a women’s body outside of a scientifically ignorant argument that pretends genetics and scientific definitions of life don’t matter but that the source of sustenance for that organism somehow defines it. Does removal of a liver fluke involve organ removal? Since the answer is clearly no, stop repeating the ridiculous argument and start grappling with the far harder moral question of when a human organism becomes a person. Stating that personhood begins when the new, distinct life begins isn’t an incoherent position - it’s one definition of personhood with very clear boundaries. Challenge that as you like, don’t pretend it’s anything other than a concrete moral claim based on observable scientific phenomena even if, for most who hold it, it stems from a religious belief.

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        CVS

        Fetus means “little person” in Latin.

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      3. Rational

        You are, of course, simply assuming the key issue. If you see the “ghastly” photos of “late term abortion,” they are difficult to distinguish from a violently dismembered newborn. It is very hard for me to see how any humane person can view them with indifference. I appreciate that people of good faith can disagree on things like the day after pill or very early termination of a pregnancy. However, the abortion extremists in places like California or Michigan (with its new constitutional amendment) would have abortion be a “right” even when it looks and feels deadly close to infanticide.

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          Rlritt

          See that's the problem. Everyone frames the discussion to suit their cause. Yes, there are late term abortions. They are not done lightly. Usually something has gone terribly wrong. Either the baby will be born and die anyway and the women will never be able to have another child. Or the baby will be so deformed that he won't survive. They used to, and in places still do put babies like that in a quiet part of the nursery and don't feed it. Much more humane.

          I know its always fun to get outraged that some ditzy woman in her 8th month decides she would rather fit into her party dress than be pregnant. But I doubt that's ever the case.

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    3. Halvor

      It's a put down without ethical force. You come across this in Kevin's writing. Mortality aversion is the best he's got. It's as compelling as a vegetarian telling you that eating hamburgers is wrong because slaughterhouses are repulsive. Wait, that's a put down. I take it back. Kevin is too smart to actually claim abortion is bad because it's unpleasant, so he lays contempt on people -- women and their advocates -- because abortion is disgusting.

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      1. Ingenero.lux

        Is that actually an illegitimate argument? I’m not a vegetarian, but I also don’t scoff at the idea that the nasty business of the commercial meat industry is germane to the question of the morality of meat. It’s not the only consideration by any stretch, but it’s also not ridiculous. A very similar argument was made by anti-slavery activists - not only were slaves people, but the conditions they were held in were absolutely barbaric. They showed people slave ships, the wounds on the bodies of former slaves, the torture implements involved, and they tried to convince even people who thought Black people were an inferior race that the conditions were horrible none the less. The same thing happened with the move to end the horrific Belgian genocide in the Congo, the same thing happens today with videos of horrific conditions pets are in when bred at puppy farms or when abused. Pathos is one of the three modes of persuasion, and quite a legitimate one.

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        1. Halvor

          I apologize if I shortchange your replay, because persuasion is a cardinal element of ethical culture, not to be looked down upon. Basically, persuasion is the mode of speech appropriate to matters that can be stated otherwise and about which nobody has the last word. This encompasses most of human culture. Persuasion can't discover truth, however, because it's not logos, nor does it attain the partial truth of dialectic. The art of rhetoric is deployed masterfully from pulpits to persuade believers, but the truth of the sermon depends upon it's fidelity to logos.

          Pathos is the only mode of persuasion available to abortion abolitionists, because the arguments from moral realism that are deployed by philosophers such as John Finnis (Justice Gorsuch's teacher, I believe) depend heavily on the metaphysics of purpose and potentiality and Aristotelian biology, which don't carry much water nowadays. Pathos makes use of the mortality aversion that Kevin suggests in his denunciation of civilized barbarism. Pathos evokes the protective and nurturing instincts which the newborn depends upon for postpartum development, really the concluding stage of gestation. It's pathos again which employs the false comparison with slavery (as you have), as if to suggest that abortion disregards personhood and inflicts pain. (The *thought* of abortion can be painful to us, but the fetus doesn't feel it as we experience pain.) "Don't do it because it's gross" is an effective argument, but not a convincing one. There were slavers who themselves avoided physical cruelty, but "nice" slavery without the pathetic separations, shackles and the whipping post is still wrong.

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          1. Ingenero.lux

            “Pathos is the only mode of persuasion available to abortion abolitionists…”

            Only? Absolutely not. Abortion involves two lives by simple scientific fact: one the mother and the other a genetically distinct living human organism. Arguing that every human life is worthy of dignity and should not be artificially ended is not pathos, but can be part of an ethic that values all human life. Arguing that people don’t live up to that ethic doesn’t eliminate it.

            The counter-argument is grounded equally in a moral claim and makes an argument exactly equal in pathos - the living human organism killed either isn’t actually human (a common but scientifically false claim) or doesn’t matter (or matters far less than the mother’s desires - while people who want to forbid abortion to save the life of the mother exist, they are both rare and abortions for that purpose are very uncommon). The argument presented is pure pathos - the living human involved is so small and so dependent on someone else that the big human you see matters infinitely more than the one you can’t. Pathos - you can sympathize with the fully grown human and not with the far smaller one you can’t meet or talk to. Hence all the talk about the pain and inconvenience and risk from pregnancy - life is painful, life is inconvenient, and life is inherently risky. We don’t allow people to reject many courses of action despite the same (or far greater) issues. You can’t dodge the draft because of much higher risk or the possibility of much higher pain (that can’t be proactively managed by modern medicine in many cases). You can’t refuse to work because of the risk from driving to work every day for most of your life. You can’t starve your children or refuse them education because feeding and schooling them is incredibly inconvenient. Again, claiming those as absolute reasons to allow women to kill the living human organism inside them is pathos, as is “My body, my choice” (a highly misleading claim given the two actually involved), every invocation of “Choice” (apart from rape, incest, and the life of the mother women have a panoply of choices that can prevent them getting pregnant), and much, much more. The arguments are on equal footing in both the matters of ultimately objectively unprovable moral claims based on value judgements and/or claims of divine inspiration and the deployment of pathos to convince when their moral claim can’t be objectively proven.

            Your claim about pain is valid only early in development - we aren’t arguing the validity of a regime that allows only early term abortions but a regime that allows abortions well past the point we know conclusively that the fetus feels pain just as we do. You also make an artificial distinction between the protective and nurturing instincts many (but hardly all) mothers feel towards their unborn offspring from the time they know they exist and the protective and nurturing instincts many (but hardly all) mothers feel towards their babies after birth. The feelings are caused by the same hormones and the same physical changes - they are no less valid during pregnancy than after and thus invoking them is consistent.

            As for slavery, the comparison is only false if one accepts your moral claim about the non-personhood of the living genetically distinct gestating human organism before some point of development. If the living human organism is a person, the comparison is quite apt - slaves were not seen as human or were seen as lesser humans who were rightly enslaved and treated as their master wished, just as the living human organism is seen as a non-person or as a lesser person who can be killed at their mother’s whim. The falsehood or truth of the matter goes back to moral assertions that cannot be scientifically proven and thus are entirely up for argument and debate. As such, the only true arguments anyone has is moral argument from abstract (and highly debatable) principles or pathos. Let me show you where you inadvertently admit this: “… the arguments from moral realism that are deployed by philosophers such as John Finnis (Justice Gorsuch's teacher, I believe) depend heavily on the metaphysics of purpose and potentiality and Aristotelian biology, which don't carry much water nowadays.” Carry much water indicates that modern moral philosophers disagree, but you already indicate that at least some morals can be absolute (“… but ‘nice’ slavery without the pathetic separations, shackles and the whipping post is still wrong.” -an admission that, regardless of the views of the moral philosophers who asserted otherwise, slavery was still wrong), so the majority view of moral philosophers doesn’t matter in the slightest (because I can tell you that there was a time when many or most such would have agreed that black people were less and deserving of slavery). So your claim is a spurious argument from authority.

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        Pat Riot

        Good point about the hamburgers. I'm going to steal that.

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