Curiosity – Roe vs. Wade Overturned

Elliot Temple
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DD tweet implicitly supporting the recent Roe v Wade overturn.

I think that DD has a position like: he wants everything (including the existence of rights) to be wide open to the democratic process, because somethignsomething Popper somethignsomething error correction. (The reason for the "somethignsomething"s is that I haven’t seen DD make this argument explicitly, I’m just inferring his position from this and some other things. If anyone would like to fill me in on his real view, please do.)

DD is wrong and his position contradicts Objectivism. It is unequivocally a bad thing when anyone is forced to “persuade” others to respect her rights.

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Regarding persuasion, note that Trump didn’t run on a pro-life platform and persuade the electorate of that. He emphasized other issues like wall building and swamp draining.

Similarly, Trump’s judges didn’t make it through the senate confirmation hearings based on a persuasive pro-life platform. I didn’t follow this issue much, and don’t really trust this website, but I think they just lied: What Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett Said About Roe at Confirmation Hearings - FactCheck.org

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Before an adoption, it’s common to lie to mothers about letting them visit their kid.

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https://www.tiktok.com/@craftyfeminist/video/7161983735691218218

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A consequence of the law changes:

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This video made me think about how anti-science the abortion bans are. Also, makes me think about how there are some dangerous Christianity-associated ideas that are still affecting American society.

I checked out polls on abortion belief. I found some Pew polls from 2014. I think views might have changed since then but I’m not sure I trust polling that took place since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. The difference between Texas and California that wanted abortion illegal in all/most cases are 50% vs 38%. I also looked at Pennsylvania, which does still allow abortion, and had 44% that want abortion illegal in all/most cases. Those numbers make me think that it might not take such a huge shift in public opinion to overturn the abortion bans. Harrowing person stories like the ones in these videos could ripple out and change public opinion enough, in perhaps just a few years.

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Here’s an NPR article and the poll that it references. I didn’t look into the poll but the numbers just sounded suspicious.
Poll shows a majority of Texans support abortion rights. : NPR.
https://tfn.org/cms/assets/uploads/2022/08/PerryUndem-Texas-Electorate-on-Abortion_SB-8.pdf

If that recent poll is correct the abortion bans might have enough support to be overturned relatively soon.

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I don’t think these things are actually decided by popular opinion.

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Yeah, I think a lot of policies and government actions don’t have much popular support. I don’t have a good model for understanding how public opinion affects government actions. Does public opinion have any affect on any policies? Which policies can public opinion affect? Are there historical examples of public opinion turning the tide on a political issue? Does it makes sense that public opinion could be a factor but not a deciding factor? How do political issues like the abortion bans get decided? Is policy set mostly by elites negotiating outside the public eye? What is the minimum number of people that need to be persuaded to change Texas policy on abortion bans?

I don’t think I have answers to the above quesions.

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