There she blows

The much-anticipated and expected SCOTUS verdict on Roe vs Wade has caused the equally much-anticipated and expected set of responses (on both sides). The TikTok video from which the screenshots in the pic above are taken can be found here and elsewhere.

In what has to be one of the most surreal segues of all time, after this somewhat entertaining meltdown posted for the world to see, the meltdownee announced that she had to “go and do the dishes”.

I’m not an expert on the US constitution, but my view is that it stands as one of the most remarkable things ever written. I wish we had something as wonderful as this in the UK. In these days of ever-expanding state control it is worth us remembering that the constitution was written in such a way as to limit government.

Tongue-in-cheek here, but I think we Brits deserve a big slap on the back. After all, if we hadn’t imposed the tyranny of a royal in-bred lunatic from several thousand miles away upon you, this document might never have existed.

Despite all the rhetoric from the aggrieved in the US and certain world leaders, the Dobbs decision of SCOTUS has not banned abortion. It has ruled, as I understand it, that the issue, constitutionally speaking, is not one which should be decided at Federal level but at State level.

I couldn’t tell you whether, constitutionally speaking, SCOTUS came to the right decision here, but the whole abortion debate is one of the most difficult to disentangle, laden as it is with emotion and emotive reasoning.

Despite the attempt of many to paint the issue as the binary “pro-choice vs pro-life”, it is an example of a genuine spectrum.

The problem with moderate, balanced positions is that they usually require some explanation and reasoning. This is difficult to do on typical social media which tends to reward and amplify the more extreme viewpoints on any issue. Social media is essentially the place to go if you want to top up your daily quota of outrage porn. It is a medium that deranges and unbalances - and this is quite deliberate. Outrage generates more traffic.

As for the abortion debate itself I find the simplistic frameworks that are often employed are woefully inadequate to deal with the true complexity of the issue.

The “my body, my choice” argument logically implies that abortion should be a choice right up until the moment of birth. Indeed, that is the position of some - and I believe some jurisdictions in the US do allow this.

Abortion up to birth is, in my view, somewhat ghoulish and I can’t understand the moral reasoning involved in supporting it. Inside the womb, just before birth, it’s a “foetus” with no right to life (or a right to life that is lesser than the rights of the mother), to some. Yet, once it’s out of that location it has an equal right to life as the mother in the eyes of the law. There’s a jarring and stark moral discontinuity here that I can’t quite fathom.

Putting this another way I have been trying to wrap my head round the following (very) hypothetical questions :

Suppose a guy decided he didn’t want the baby that his girlfriend was carrying and so decided to slip a powerful drug into her coffee that caused a miscarriage. What offence should he be charged with?

If you want to say manslaughter or murder isn’t that a tacit recognition that a life has been taken? Clearly an offence has been committed - at the very least that of giving someone a drug against their permission or knowledge.

Suppose the woman in question agreed, in full knowledge, to let her boyfriend administer the drug and it caused a miscarriage. Should he now be charged with an offence?

The result in both cases is the same. The differences are in the motivations and who is making the choice.

I’m sure lawyers and judges could come up with clever ways to gloss over the inconsistencies, but to me the whole approach to abortion is full of these kinds of awkward inconsistencies.

In most of Europe abortion is illegal after about 3-4 months, except when there are very good medical reasons for the procedure. Whilst there are, obviously, disagreements about this we don’t tend to witness quite the widespread degree of passion on the issue as we’ve recently seen in the US.

I think the majority European position on this is a fair compromise. Overall I’m not too comfortable with the notion of abortion, but I recognise there are other important practical and moral considerations relating to the heath and well-being of the prospective mother. I’m not wise enough, or smart enough, to untie the Gordian knot here and so I think the European approach might be about the best and fairest compromise that can be reached.

The problem is that things, as they always seem to do these days, have kind of blown up beyond all recognition. Safe, legal and rare within the first trimester became, for some, a commonplace method of contraception, a matter of convenience that could be exercised right up until birth. A “right” that superseded any and all rights that might accrue to the unborn child.

It’s this all too common push towards the extremes of a given position that, ultimately, generates the passion. The first pride marches were a great thing - it was a movement that cried for a group of people to be de-stigmatized and allowed to be treated as utterly normal. Homosexuality, whilst statistically rare, should be no more remarkable than the choice of one’s footwear.

Pride marches today are a different beast entirely. I’m not sure what battle is being fought, still, or what we are supposed to be ‘celebrating’, but one component of today’s pride does seem to be a somewhat unwholesome public promotion of all sorts of sexual kinks and deviancies. Be as kinky and deviant as you want in the privacy of your own homes - I’m not going to judge at all - but do we really need to have this displayed so prominently in public? Is your fondness for leather thongs something appropriate in this context? I really don’t understand the message you’re trying to convey, other than “ooh look at me, I love tight leather up my arse crack”.

Great - let me get my flag of many colours out and wave it around for a month to celebrate your fetish.

There’s nothing wrong with sex, or intimacy, in all their wondrous flavours - but when did it become such a public thing? And, for the record, I’m also not at all comfortable with the over-sexualization of society when it comes to straight sex either. The pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake is not, I feel, a desirable goal. Life is, and should be, about much more. Can’t we promote warmth and intimacy in a better way?

Most of us are not superhuman and spend only a fraction of our lives enjoying a little rumpy-pumpy. What do we do with the rest of the time we have? Hopefully not obsessing about our next session!

The degree of passion certain issues engender these days is part of the problem. I’m not saying that some of these issues aren’t important and don’t warrant our concern, but recording a video of yourself screaming is a decidedly odd and counter-productive response.

I find myself, more and more these days, thinking this emotive polarization is being deliberately engineered. To what end, I don’t know, but if we want to make any real progress we’re going to have to try and meet folk in the middle somewhere and try to find that compromise that recognises the human value and worth of even those with whom we most profoundly disagree.

If you want to see an example of great wisdom and balance - look no further than the US constitution. Can any of us imagine such a document being written by the screeching maniacs of today?

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