{"id":24950,"date":"2019-05-28T15:11:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T20:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=24950"},"modified":"2019-05-28T15:11:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T20:11:34","slug":"motivations-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/05\/28\/motivations-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Motivations Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today SCOTUS<\/strong><\/em> responded to a challenge to the Indiana state law concerning abortion regulation, as WaPo<\/strong><\/em> notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to a compromise on a restrictive Indiana abortion law that keeps the issue off its docket for now.<\/p>\n

The court said a part of the law dealing with disposal of the \u201cremains\u201d of an abortion could go into effect. But it did not take up a part of the law stricken by lower courts that prohibited abortions because tests revealed an abnormality.<\/p>\n

The court indicated it would wait for other courts to weigh in before taking up that issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No real answer, just putting it off. However, Justice Thomas is trying to sneak in an opinion based on a faulty understanding of the word eugenics<\/em>, a word fraught with negative connotations. From the dissent section of the response:<\/p>\n

Each of the immutable characteristics protected by this law can be known relatively early in a pregnancy, and the law prevents them from becoming the sole criterion for deciding whether the child will live or die. Put differently, this law and other laws like it promote a State\u2019s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A quick poke at Wikipedia<\/strong><\/em> to find out about eugenics<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Eugenics<\/b>\u00a0(\/j<\/span>u\u02d0<\/span>\u02c8<\/span>d\u0292<\/span>\u025b<\/span>n<\/span>\u026a<\/span>k<\/span>s<\/span>\/<\/a><\/span><\/span>; from\u00a0Greek<\/a>\u00a0\u03b5\u1f50\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ae\u03c2\u00a0eugenes<\/i>\u00a0‘well-born’ from \u03b5\u1f56\u00a0eu<\/i>, ‘good, well’ and \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2\u00a0genos<\/i>, ‘race, stock, kin’)[2]<\/a><\/sup>[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the\u00a0genetic<\/a>\u00a0quality of a\u00a0human population<\/a>\u00a0by excluding (through a variety of\u00a0morally<\/a>\u00a0criticized means) certain genetic groups judged to be inferior, and promoting other genetic groups judged to be superior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The key is “... that aim to improve the\u00a0genetic<\/a>\u00a0quality of a\u00a0human population<\/a> …<\/em>“. We’re talking about motivations here. But is that particular motivation applicable in this context?<\/p>\n

No. In my experience, it’s a rare mother & father who are worried about improving the genetic quality of the human race. Historically, the concern is economic: Can this potential baby be supported by the family<\/em>? Other motivations have also applied, such as Are we too old<\/em> and Do we want this potential baby<\/em>?<\/p>\n

In order to support the eugenics charge, it would be necessary for a court to infer the motivations of a mother having an abortion, absent a clear and trustworthy statement from same. Not that we haven’t tried to do so with hate-crime legislation, or at least crept up to the precipice with such laws, but it’s still a chancy and intellectually dubious enterprise. Given the stronger likelihood that the motivation is economic or convenience, Justice Thomas’ use of the word eugenics<\/em> in this discussion is ill-chosen to the point of the illicit interjection of politics and religion into the discussion.<\/p>\n

ALL that said, there’s an important question to ask concerning freedom of choice, as illustrated by the use of sex-selected abortions in India and China. Both of these countries now have large imbalances in their young citizens as measured by sex, which has lead to unrest. What if – and it’s an unlikely if<\/em> – we saw the same phenomenon in the United States? If our social harmony were roiled by the free choices of potential parents?<\/p>\n

In this unlikely happenstance, SCOTUS<\/em><\/strong> could rule that the government has a compelling interest in denying abortions for sex-related reasons. Not that I’m making that argument now; I think it’s absurd, given the lack of substantial dowries in American marital rites. But it’s worth contemplating how free choice must sometimes be limited, especially when there is a valid perception that a child is more valuable as one sex than as another.<\/p>\n

But, to return to the main point, attempting to borrow the negative connotations of a word that does not apply is a mark of intellectual dishonesty which should make further evaluation of Justice Thomas’ argument a rather fraught affair.<\/p>\n

And for a graphic eugenics example, see The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (2013).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today SCOTUS responded to a challenge to the Indiana state law concerning abortion regulation, as WaPo notes: The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to a compromise on a restrictive Indiana abortion law that keeps the issue off its docket for now. The court said a part of the law dealing with \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24951,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24950\/revisions\/24951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}