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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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On "post-birth abortion" (more accurately, non-resucitation of neonatal infants) the Republicans are right that this occurs, though it is a matter of physician's judgement rather than something the mother can just demand:

In these cases, where there is little or no prospect of an infant surviving after birth, families might opt for perinatal palliative care, or comfort care — prioritizing comfort while allowing an infant to die naturally without exercising full resuscitation efforts.

https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/27/fact-check-do-democrats-support-abortion-up-until-and-after-birth/984338007/

They conclude that, fortunately, there is no actual post-birth abortion... because they DEFINE abortion to exclude such cases. That's like saying there are no gun owners who commit school shootings, because you DEFINE "gun owner" to exclude those who use guns for illegal purposes that would lead to their gun licence being revoked.

For moderates on abortion who don't even like the existence of a slippery slope towards infanticide (e.g. as "little prospect" becomes extended, then a judgement for the mother etc.) this sort of thing is cold comfort and an easy point of attack for Republicans against Democrats.

More generally, to see how this is a needlessly difficult issue for Democrats, see how the (generally sympathetic to them) FactCheck puts it:

Claim: Democrats “introduced legislation that allowed abortion on demand ... up to the moment of birth."

Claimed by: Lindsey Graham

Fact check by FactCheck.org: Spins the Facts

Same with AP news:

Claim: Forty-nine Democratic senators voted that it should be lawful to kill a full-term baby the moment before birth while it is still inside its mother.

Claimed by: social media users

Fact check by AP News: Misleading.

These editorial spins are fact-checker answers for when they can't say that something is false, but they would love to do so.

These editorial spins are fact-checker answers for when they can't say that something is false, but they would love to do so.

What you're doing here seems to be the exact process Scott argued for in "Bounded Distrust". You're looking at a system that lies a lot, and you're extracting usable signal from it by comparing the output of that system to the rules that supposedly constrain its falsehoods. As I understand his arguments, this should be a straightforward process to obtain truth-value, which is then generally persuasive. I think this is an interesting example of the "Bounded Distrust" thesis actually being tested.

I think you are entirely correct. I don't expect your argument to be very persuasive to anyone you're responding to, though, because the additional indirection provides too many degrees of epistemic freedom. "The Rules" leave you in a position of inferring the truth, and inference is much easier to dismiss. The Rules were created, it seems to me, with this goal in mind: to provide cover to rationalization. As I've mentioned elsewhere in the context of masked rioters, plausible deniability adds value at every step of the process of rationalization. "Bounded Distrust" is just a formalized defense of rationalization.