MedicalStory2
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User ID: 2071
MedicalStory2
19d ago
For the right to life part, the relevant question is only whether they are persons: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
MedicalStory2
19d ago
The 14th Amendment gives the federal government the power to protect the right to life.
MedicalStory2
1mo ago
Israel is second place in world youth happiness?! Israel is at war. Am I missing something or shouldn't this be hot-take level shocking?
MedicalStory2
2mo ago
Public opinion is extremely malleable. As recently as 20 years ago, it was the abortion rights side that his from the issue. It seems that the main way to change public opinion is talking about it, on as big a stage as you can get. To quote myself (https://medicalstory.substack.com/p/a-parallel-campaign) "If pro-life views are quiet, especially when abortion is at stake, but pro-abortion views are not, the pro-life view will only become more unpopular. Whether you agree with gay marriage or not, consider its example. Even after repeated defeats of initiatives to legalize gay marriage including in blue state California, its proponents did not back down and within a decade or two, public opinion completely changed."
MedicalStory2
11mo ago
She wrote an essay called "Why I am now a Christian" (https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/) and left out any argument as to why Christianity is true, so it's natural to conclude that the truth-value of Christianity was not an important factor in why she is Christian.(And she references the title in the beginning of the article, so it's not just one of those stupid headline writer things.)
As it happens, I don't suspect she's lying. She just seems to think "I am Christian" means "Christianity is useful", which is just another form of the common practice of confusing what is nice to believe with what is actually true. This practice is seen all the time, including in both sides of the Christian-Atheist debate. It's not a lie, but it's sloppy logic around what Christianity actually is, so I concur with OP's use of scare quotes in reference to her "conversion" at least based on the best available information to me.
As it also happens, I am not Christian, but I believe Christianity is useful and probably even load-bearing for the USA.
MedicalStory2
1yr ago
I had the impression, but never checked, that Planned Parenthood still refers (maybe officially, maybe not) patients to out of state abortions in states like Texas. My google-fu is not providing an answer one way or another on that, but, if true, that would provide a non-revenge motivation.
MedicalStory2
1yr ago
I mean going highly saliently anti-abortion (which is not necessarily hardcore in terms of policy, but it could be). I'm proposing a candidacy that the elite hate because of abortion.
This is not unique to Trump - I'm suggesting another type of anti-elite candidacy that could imitate the anti-elite character of Trump 2016 in important ways. That said, if it is Trump doing it, he would have one of his few policy successes to point to - his Supreme Court choices.
MedicalStory2
1yr ago
Trump's secret sauce in 2016 was finding an issue set that got an extreme reaction from Democrats, while not pissing off too many Republicans. Not sure how much that strategy can be repeated for '24, though he might find a different route.
Might I suggest abortion as the issue to do this in 2024 or 2028? I'm certainly hoping for it.
By the way, I'd rephrase it:
Trump's secret sauce in 2016 was finding an issue set that got an extreme reaction from the elite while not pissing off too many proles. Not sure how much that strategy can be repeated for '24, though he might find a different route.
Plenty of Democrats became Trump voters because of the extreme reaction of their (now former?) co-partisans. Plenty of corporate Republicans switched the other way too because of Trump.
Back to abortion, I'm suspicious that a candidate that has completely pissed off the establishment Democrats could get away with supporting higher family spending (especially as payment directly to families) without much of Republican electorate even noticing, by a similar dynamic to how Trump was the first elected President to support gay marriage without the religious right seeming to notice much.
MedicalStory2
1yr ago
+1 to the all of the above and some of my experience with mandates:
By Sep 2021, I saw about 40% compliance with State-required retail mask mandates in the red parts of Nevada.
By Mar 2022, I saw about 10% or less compliance with the Federal public transportation mandate on city busses in Denver and its suburbs.
MedicalStory2
1yr ago
Last week, the subject of nuclear power came up on the culture war thread. As with all my other online places, all the comments when I looked were pro-nuclear. It seems that every place I see online has a pro-nuclear community.
I'm more of a fence-sitting non-expert, so I thought I would take this opportunity to ask about the give the anti-nuclear concerns that I don't usually see the pro-nuclear community addressing.
First off, safety: it's true that nuclear has a much better safety record so far, but nuclear seems to have the potential for black swan disasters in a way that coal is not. Is this true? If so, the record so far is not a good way to analyze risk. If nuclear power comes into common use, we should expect to have the power plants occasionally sabotaged or targeted in war and frequently run under oversight even less competent than the Soviet Union was, among other things. To bring me away from fence-sitting towards pro-nuclear, I would need to see a safety argument that addresses the disaster possibilities both accidental and intentional.
Second, what's up with nuclear waste? Specifically, if the waste is really a nothing burger, as I see argued often, why do I see (other) experts talking about how to communicate how bad it is to people ~10k years in the future. What are those other experts thinking and why are they wrong?
MedicalStory2
1yr ago
Who is UC? (From context it seems not to be University of California - my otherwise obvious guess.)
I'm not that familiar with US Code, but I guess basically yes.
Looking up the code you referenced, modifying it looks sufficient and might not even be necessary, since it also says "(c)Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being “born alive” as defined in this section"
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