The Mommy Standard

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was a little girl and an history nut (now I’m an old woman and an history nut) I found out about the (supposed) at least Spartan standard for whether an infant lived or died. The baby was brought from the birthing chamber and put at the feet of his father. If the father took him up, he was a baby, a son of the household (or a daughter, but this being Sparta, sons mattered more.)

The books I read treated this with some approval. The father inspected the baby for defects, and would of course know if the baby was illegitimate, and thus only the fittest survived. The eugenics thing was still strong in Europe. Probably still is. And in Portugal it made perfect sense for the father to be the one deciding because he was, after all, the one expected to pay for the kid’s raising.

I thought it was unspeakably barbaric. And I’d like to ascribe this to my being so enlightened and smart, even at eight or nine, but really, it was probably because my family provided the ribbing about how any sane father would have rejected infant-me, born extremely premature and very hard to keep alive. And how this was why I was still a weakling and caught every disease possible and some impossible. The idea that culling would apply to oneself, like hanging in the morning, sharpens the mind something wonderful.

Anyway, I was very grateful to live in a civilized time when keeping me alive, at least in the measure of the possible, was expected by both society and law. After all, I was a lot, both personality and health, and it was for the best that drowning me in the bathtub or abandoning me in the woods wasn’t acceptable.

Some — dear Lord — 20 years ago, Libertarians who were friends of mine became very alarmed that our standard for who was human and a life worth keeping had changed. Now, it had effectively become “You’re human if mommy says you are.”

No? Look at when a pregnant woman gets killed. Whether the child gets counted as another homicide depends on whether the child was wanted or not. A lot of states have not only abortion till birth but, like Colorado — COLORADO! — you’re allowed to kill the baby for some time after birth with no consequences.

You’re human if mommy wants you.

If mommy doesn’t want you, you stop being human even as labor pains start. She can say “My body, my choice, I want the fetus terminated.” If mommy wants you, on the other hand, she’ll send your sonograms at two months around with “Look at my baby. He has my nose.”

And that decision can change in a minute. Sometimes on a dime.

This is not tenable. It is particularly not tenable for a secular humanist society. (Religious societies have their own answers to abide by. That’s different.)

It’s not tenable because “humanist” rests on “humans” and if what a human is depends on the whim of the woman (and usually a woman who is stressed, hormonally off-ballance and possibly exhausted and ill) the foundations of the society crumble.

My generation — forgive us — were lied to, with a lie we couldn’t personally disprove. We believed that until some time (12 weeks, I think) the growing baby was “a tube with no feelings and no brain” and no human characteristics. This is also untenable in the time of more and more developed sonograms. My older son looked like a peanut in the sonogram at 10 weeks, but now you can see features, little fingers.

So you fall back on ever more specialized definitions of why it’s okay to kill this person whom society says is not a person if mommy says he isn’t. The excuses are amazing. The relationship broke up and mom can’t afford him/her. The mother is mentally wounded somehow, and the birth will hurt her mental health. The baby has this or that defect. And of course, the baby will need complete support to stay alive after birth. (Like all of us did.) And of course, until x or why stage of development they can’t think as we define thinking. Etc. etc. etc.

But all of these definitions are thin when you consider “till birth and sometimes after.” Or for the “too expensive” “too much work” “too weak” “not compos mentis” …. we’ll all hit these at various points in our lives, and sometimes we recover from that, and sometimes we don’t. That standard will allow us to kill most of the disabled, most of the ill, and 100% of the aged. Looks towards Canada. And don’t think it’s not been noticed. Hell, when I was in the hospital, at 33, with pneumonia, I was told I should allow them to do the procedure that was almost guaranteed to kill me because I was a “drain on my family” and would probably always be, and did I want my husband to lose his job because he insisted on staying with me at the hospital? I mean, the old and the sick in general don’t even have mommy to stick up for them. In fact, according to various cases, at that point it’s “you’re human if your spouse/children say you are.”

It sucks. A society built for humans should have the broadest possible definition of human. Not “you’re disposable scrap unless someone else vouches for you.” and “You’re not even human unless your mother says you are.”

Look, I had a friend who had been very abused in childhood and who said that being wanted was a great standard. Otherwise the child would end up abused. She was a little taken back when I told her she was wanted. Her parents needed a child to abuse. Also “wanted” changes. Don’t believe me? Go to craigslist or facebook marketplace and see all the expensive-breed dogs being given away at 2 or 3 years of age, because they’re no longer wanted. Or, more heartbreakingly, all the old dogs and cats being given away because they’re no longer pretty, fluffy, compliant and CHEAP. As the vets bills mount “wanted” changes.

As for “But unwanted children won’t be happy”: poppycock. Beyond the fact that happiness is a terrible way to judge someone’s life and achievements (I am not permanently ecstatically happy. Are you?) by that standard both Dan and I — he was wanted by his mother, but as a GIRL, and I was never wanted by my mother. My father wanted more children, not my mother — are unhappy, suffering souls. And you know, despite illnesses and various issues, I don’t think we are. I really don’t think so. In fact, in the general order of things, and despite a lot of tight squeezes, we’ve been damn lucky and happy. And I don’t think we’re alone, as unwanted children.

In fact, there is absolutely NO justification for the Mommy Standard of Humanity. And the excuses grow thinner as we learn more about biology and human development.

It is a corrosive, crazy way of deciding what is human and what isn’t, what is to be protected and what is to be killed.

Birthrate drop? Ah! That would be lucky. People wonder about the deranged tick tock mommies and “we’re all Lindsey” nonsense. But why should they wonder? You gave mothers the right to decide who is human and who isn’t. Why should that stop once they’re out of the womb? Or in the crazy states out of the womb for a month or so? After all children can become inconvenient, expensive or simply trying and brainless-acting at any point between birth and eighteen. (And after. Hence my lamentations about “I’d smack you upside the head, but I’d need a step stool” which still happen, sometimes, and the boys are well, early middle age at this point. But I can’t say I’m responsible for them.) Why should they not have the right to do away with any inconvenient child they’re responsible for? After all, their sleep patterns are interrupted! They have to look after these small humans! Do you hear them crying? And just keeping them alive as toddlers is a full time job. Shouldn’t the mom have the right to personal fulfillment?

Roman fathers used to have the right to have their kids executed for anything including talking back. (How many of us would survive that?) Then we became more civilized…

In the ancient world, children got exposed in batch lots. Yes, for defects and maybe infidelity, but really for parents’ convenience. There was a Father’s standard. You’re human if he says you are. (Though if you think the women couldn’t give birth in secret and send the kid to be exposed, you’re an optimist or a fool.)

Christians were considered odd because they raised all they bore. If you think that had no impact on the advance and ultimate taking over by Christianity, you’re also a fool.

So, now, in a post-Christian world, we’ve reverted. And yep, birthrates are in the crapper.

But more importantly, the increasingly more obvious Mommy Standard of Humanity makes each and every one of us very aware “I’m only here, because I was allowed to live.” And “Society can change that permission at any time.”

Right to life? Don’t make me laugh.

But Sarah, you can’t be saying that every human is human from conception! Any number of pregnancies end, unnoticed, in spontaneous abortions.

Yeah, I’m aware of that. None better, since early miscarriage is the form my infertility took. So? Many lives end to, at various points before whatever arbitrary age. Does that give us the right to go around killing people, because so many people die of natural causes by their age? The standard is flawed.

I don’t know — and can’t think of any — standard for determining “What’s human” unless we go “is of human DNA, is alive, and if no one kills him/her has a good chance of growing into an independent autonomous human. Maybe not worth spit, (hell he might even grow into a communist) but definitely human.

If society is going to rest on the measure of the human and humanity, then human and humanity needs to be hard rock, something never questioned. The right to life of humans, all humans, must never, ever come into doubt.

Because that’s the price of the right to life for all of us.

The mommy standard sucks. Even the best, sanest of women have moments of idiocy and insanity. Trust me on this. I’m a woman and I try to be sane, but there are times… If her idiocy or insanity can cost the lives of other humans and this is legally and societally approved of? No one is safe.

“But you’d police every pregnancy.” Take a chill pill. I was born in a society where abortion was strictly forbidden by law. And yet it still happened. In fact, many women used it as their main method of contraception. In fact, it’s probably the only way to keep it safe and rare, because everyone involved knew they’d be in trouble if caught.

But they’d be in trouble if caught. Society as a whole held that human life was precious and not at the whim of either of its creators, father or mother. Society as a whole, though it wasn’t codified, held that humans had a right to life.

Liberty and the pursuit of happiness are pretty hard on the Mommy Standard.

It’s making everyone more than a bit insane and insecure.

I suggest that we’re not Spartans (thank heavens. They were closer to Cuba than to us) and most of us are not insane. It’s time to face up to the Mommy Standard and rethink the whole thing.

Before civilization is completely gone.

68 thoughts on “The Mommy Standard”

  3. The Romans hated Christians because they not only raised their own sickly infants, they would also go out and rescue *other people’s* abandoned infants from the garbage dumps. And they raised them as their own, instead of enslaving them or selling them to brothels. Inconceivable!

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  5. There’s been a case in the Netherlands in the news recently, where they euthanized a two-year-old. I will say upfront that I don’t know enough about the case to make a full judgment, but I am disturbed by some of the reports, particularly the idea that, “The doctor made the right assessment, because ‘All facets of “being human” – regarding motor skills, behavior, and personality – were severely impaired.” In other words, he wasn’t human enough.

    At this point, I worry that we’re not going to hell in a handbasket anymore; we’re at least halfway through the first circle.

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    2. That’s already the law of the land here in California. And the Dems are doing their best to make it as difficult as possible for a future pro-life constituency to do away with.

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    3. And if you try to tell people that there are states where you can legally “abort” your child after birth, they’ll think you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist.

      The worst of it is that there’s little reason for a woman to need an abortion to begin with. Even discounting hormonal birth control (which is known to mess with the user’s head), there are plenty of ways to avoid a pregnancy. But many women choose not to use them.

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      1. Hormonal birth control messes with a lot more than just their heads. Assuming that many of you ladies used the pill at one time or another, how hard was it to get pregnant after coming off the pill? Took my wife 3 years to clear her system and get it working to God’s specs.

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        1. I saw a video, I think on ChubbyEmu’s channel, about a woman who ‘experienced side effects’ from birth control pills. Blood clots formed, one of them cut off circulation to a third of her colon, and by the time she realized the pain wasn’t just cramps it was way too late.

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        2. Sigh. I was on it for weird reasons. Got pregnant the month I stopped taking it. Second son. (Weird reasons: the doctor thought I was having excessive pain and was “balancing” me, supposedly. We now know it doesn’t work that way.) Also the pill makes me suicidal.

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  8. (Though if you think the women couldn’t give birth in secret and send the kid to be exposed, you’re an optimist or a fool.)

    On of the ways you can recognize Roman brothels is by the infant skeletons from the exposed babies – not that anyone will admit that anymore. The Madame Standard is as old as the Daddy or Mommy Standard, and it hasn’t gone anywhere: “The kid is inconvenient, I can’t get any sestertii out of you if you have a kid! Give me that, and get back to work!”

    No. No, no, no, a thousand times NO. We left that behind for a darn good reason, and it should STAY behind. No more Madame, Mommy, Daddy, or Warbucks standards. The only standard should be, “Is he/she human? Then he/she stays, and if no one here wants him/her, we’ll find someone who DOES.”

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  9. The only new part is that society has decided that “Mommy” can make the decision if someone is human or not.

    There has always been the societal belief that some people AREN’T people. They don’t have rights, thus are legitimate targets for actions which wouldn’t be allowed against fellow human beings. One tribe against another, one city against another . . .one person against another (Cain and Abel) . . .it’s easy to do evil things to creatures who aren’t people. One of the greatest examples was the Holocaust against Jews, Gypsies and other unpopular groups.

    Another example was when FDR shipped 85,000 American-born citizens and their aging parents to CONCENTRATION CAMPS, creating the world’s first prison for CHILDREN — solely on the basis of ancestry. FDR is still the idol of “Progressives” in this country, because they simply overlook this one minor little failure to fully observe their campaign against racism.

    When so-called “no-fault” divorce and abortion-at-whim became legal — then acceptable, then common, then PRAISED — this gave “Progressives” the ability to normalize the individuals affected as just statistics.

    Thus, it is no surprise that they have accepted sex attacks against children (Roman Polanski) and now the MURDER of children.

    The only thing that will disturb them is when the snake turns to bite them, now that they have destroyed 150 years of progress in women’s rights by marching to PROVE that woman are subject to what was once called “hysteria,” as chemical imbalances in their bodies can make them commit the most irrational and evil acts.

    And when one man on the jury defied all of the women and the other two (mere) guys to say that wrong is wrong, he has been vilified, doxxed, and his family threatened by those who want to believe that THEY are not the evil ones. They need to believe this, and will continue to crucify him in modern society.

    In the movie “Spartacus,” when the leader of the rebelling slaves was told to come forward and identify himself for crucifixion, with the promise that all of the others would be spared, he stepped forward and said “I am Spartacus.”

    Then, another man stepped out. “I am Spartacus!” Then another. And another. “I am Spartacus!”

    I now step forward.

    I am the holdout juror.

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    1. Any law that enables somebody to strangle three helpless children and then evade the consequences by claiming to be ‘not in their right mind’ is an evil law. Because people in their right minds don’t DO such things!

      The State can’t see inside people’s heads and determine why they committed heinous crimes. It can only guess, and guess badly. Therefore, actions are the only valid measure of guilt or innocence. Did the accused commit the crime? If so, guilty. After that, any other factors can be considered when setting the sentence.

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  10. There are extreme cases, though. Consider babies born anencephalic — without a brain. Nothing inside the skull but fluid, and maybe enough of a cerebellum to enable independent breathing. Definitely human, but not in any meaningful sense a person, and never will be. Should a society expend resources keeping an empty body technically alive for decades?

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    2. At this point, I would tend to answer “Yes”, because the cost of pushing the principle to that extreme is far, FAR less than the cost of taking the first step down the slippery slope that we are now many, many steps down (and sliding further down at speed). The cost of keeping every human being alive, even those who cannot breathe for themselves, would not be nothing. But the cost of killing people for the crime of being inconvenient, as we see happening far too often, is incalculably high.

      I’ll note that my views on this have shifted over time, as I become more and more aware that there are no limits to the evils that people will justify to themselves. Which means that the slippery slope doesn’t just slide down to a low point and stop. No; that slippery slope slides all the way down to hell. And I do mean hell, quite, quite literally. Best not to take even the first step onto it.

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    3. Very weirdly, some of the children are NOT anacephalic, jsut have fluid in the head and the brain is compressed. They can recover with a shunt.
      Also, no. in that case obviously it is enough not to intervene. (I had an aunt born that way or close enough, who managed to survive 3 months somehow, but still went naturally.)

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  11. When I was young and first heard of infant sacrifice I naively thought that the parents must have had to be held down by soldiers or something. That there would have been agoniziing screams, horrible scenes of grief, etc.

    Little did I know that I would live to see human sacrifice become not only a reality, but the norm. No agonizing screams involved. No soldiers needed.

    I had no idea that parents would willingly PAY to have their infants scraped out of mommy’s womb, turn the breathing ones over to the doctors to “take care of” or viciously strangle them at some later date. And all because, like the tossing of virgins into a volcano in days of yore to achieve a good harvest, killing kids is now the society approved way of avoiding inconvenience, saving money, having a better life, ensuring that “others” don’t have to foot the bill, or for all I know, achieving a larger harvest.

    The 21st century is NOT in any way, shape, or form more civilized than those before it.

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    1. Some parents sell their children into slavery, and not always under duress. Read John Ringo’s ‘Kildar’ series, and ‘Not That Kind Of Good Guy’ if you think it only happens in those benighted 3rd-world countries.

      I watched one of those LDM-generated Yoo-Toob videos about a group of high school students taken in by a shady ‘travel agency’ with too-good-to-be-true prices. Fortunately, the story ended with them only losing their money.

      I would say unto them: “You are luckier than you deserve to be that the scammers only took your money and ghosted you. If you were unlucky, they would fly you to Europe, you would get on the tour bus and never be seen again. The pretty girls would be auctioned off to rich perverts, the fat ugly girls would be sold to cheap whorehouses, and most of the boys would wind up in mass graves.”

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      2. Kids (including teenagers) disappearing is apparently a constant problem in China even today. And that’s even with all of the security cameras everywhere, which suggests that at least some of the local authorities are in on it in the regions where it’s most common.

        There’s also the several hundred thousand (iirc) unaccompanied minors that the Biden administration “lost track of”.

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  12. One glaring point about the Clancy case is that by one branch of LeftLogic ™, she should be dead and buried for about three years already. Perfect candidate for “gentle encouragement” to accept the help of the State to do the suicide right on the second try.

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  13. “The price of a thing is what that thing will bring” kinda applies empirically, though not exactly as that rule of thumb was intended: What we are doing now brings a civilizational price, which appears at this point to be demographic collapse.

    The rate of collapse looks to vary with other factors, but the places in the modern world that are not on a downward population trajectory are rare. If the future belongs to the ones who show up, that’s going to be a short list.

    This all leaves me wondering if the “passport bros” thing is a “one from column A, one from column B” societal adaptation attempt to the non-sustainable aspects of the societies on both sides of the equation. Like the various returns to traditional definitions trends, it all might not be enough in the end to matter, but to me these look like somewhat urgent societal variation to try and generate a work around to a looming problem.

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  14. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point. At one time I agreed that humanity of a fetus was based on want. That changed to being dependent on the ability to think, to be conscious (at least when not sleeping or in a coma – the anencephalic kid that Imaginos1892 mentions comes to mind.) The problem is there are a lot of reports of consciousness while the body is non-functional (OOBEs, near death experiences.) Consciousness, the soul if you will, may have very little to do with the body itself. So at what point does this fetus have a soul? Traditional Judaism once said the soul entered with the first breath of the child, obviously after birth. But Scripture also says God knew you when you were in the womb, period; not at 3 montths, or 6 months, or 24 weeks or whatever. The implication being at conception. And that’s where I happen to be now this journey, and it hasn’t been easy or comfortable.

    You’re a human being from the moment of conception. Not much of one, being a single cell at that point, but you are a human being in the only way that counts, your genetic code and your origins (Mom and Dad egg and sperm donors.) Note that the definition may need to be expanded if and when we get to the point of being able to construct a cell and all of its parts from a pile of molecules and somehow make it come to life. But the point is, humanness isn’t dependent on “want”.

    We all have the God given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But every one of us has to fight for them from the moment of conception. That’s life in this universe. We get to enlist allies to help us do that as we grow. But the first one that counts is Mom, followed by Dad and immediate family members. If we get lucky, we get good ones, who had good parents to learn from when they were growing up. Sometimes we crap out, with clueless parents only interested in themselves, food, drugs, and pleasure, who can’t even take care of themselves, much less a wee one in utero or crawling around the floor.

    I suppose that we could create a society that decides whether you live of die by trial by ordeal. Just make sure there are no exceptions; EVERYONE has to go through it, Leftists included. If you’re going to have The Hunger Games, elitist city folk don’t get to sit safe and watch. Failure means you died, nobody else killed you, unless of course one of the ordeals is combat. Would it work? Maybe. But I don’t think anyone would like it.

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    1. Nobody who has ever lived outside of the city could believe the Hunger Games scenario.

      The city people are EATERS (using Jerry Pournelle’s definition).

      Any city over 4 square miles is an artificial construct, a house of cards that stands only so long as people not in cities choose to support it. This will be brought home (no pun intended) when California has the Big Shake, or the Cascadia Event. There are literally not enough emergency response resources on the planet to resolve either disaster at even the 75%-worst-possible level, much less a full Wipe Out, and it will reach out across the world.

      Least affected will be the rural areas. Those are where the food is, where the water is, where power is generated, where fuel is found and stored, where the only question when someone sees a gun is “how do you like that one?”

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      1. Ignoring logistics for a city is part and parcel of much of fiction these days.

        Unusually, I once read a Dragonlance short story in which the lack of logistics around the town was the giveaway that the town was bait for the patrol that stumbled across it. The town looked normal when you were inside of it. But there was nothing in the surrounding areas to feed it or justify it. By and large, those details get ignored in most recent fiction nowadays. The food in the city spontaneously appears on the supermarket shelves.

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  15. I have a book written before Roe v. Wade where the author uses the thalidomide scandal to argue forcefully for legalizing abortion. He describes the heartbreaking sight of “seal babies” playing happily not knowing they were have to live in world of normal people. If only, he laments the mothers had been permitted to abort their children.

    These children must be in their 60s and 70s by now. I would love to track some down and ask them if they had rather been aborted. I suspect that few, if any, would have preferred never to have been born. Most of them probably lived satisfying lives.

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    1. Back in the late 1970s, I dated a girl who was a Thalidomide baby, though not hit as hard as many of the others. She married a guy that I knew, and last I heard (a couple of years ago) they were happy, but didn’t have much time to talk because some of their grandkids were over and wanted to go out to the pool.

      So, that was about a dozen people and counting who not only existed, but were enjoying life — despite the best efforts of that author and Sanger’s eugenicists.

      But there is an argument that makes both sides of the abortion issue dodge:

      If Roe v. Wade had been decided the other way, Al Gore would have been POTUS on 9/11, the Hildebeast would have won in 2016, and Kamala would be in the Oval Office NOW.

      If Roe v. Wade had been decided 15 years earlier, 17-yer-old Stanley Ann Dunham could have found an abortion mill, and we would never have been cursed with her baby — and if THAT had happened, the frootloops in Iran wouldn’t have been given planeloads of cash to fund their nuke program, and we wouldn’t have to be bombing them today.

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        1. That’s one theory, but it’s not taking into account the similarity of effects, across geological, economic and racial boundaries. The children also didn’t suffer from some more-common birth defects.

          If that theory were true, we would expect to see a MASSIVE increase in more common birth defects during the same period, not the merely incremental increase that was observed.

          If the Thalidomide effects were natural, but not masked (by miscarriage), we can see them as a high-tide marker, beyond the more common types — thus, as miscarriage prevention has improved over seven decades, we would expect to see a certain (and growing) number of children born with conditions similar to those that the Thalidomide kids showed. This has not been seen.

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      2. If Roe v. Wade had been decided the other way, Al Gore would have been POTUS on 9/11, the Hildebeast would have won in 2016, and Kamala would be in the Oval Office NOW.

        Could you unpack the logic here? I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong, but I can’t follow your line of reasoning. Actually on second thought I do think you’re probably wrong, but it’s definitely not clear-cut, so I’d really like you to explain the chain of events you see here. Why do you think that a hypothetical Roe v. Wade decision that allowed states to ban abortion would have led to the Democrats winning all the major Presidential elections since 2000?

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        2. I think the idea is that a good-sized chunk of the conservative grass roots movement was been built around overturning Roe v Wade. A good sized chunk of conservative activism and get out the vote activities was based around groups that wanted to ban abortion. The idea is that absent that, the Dems would have had a much easier time taking power.

          Personally I think that things are more complicated than that. But one can definitely point to things like defeating the ERA and noting how that suddenly stopped being an issue for conservatives at around the same time, and come to the conclusion that something similar might have happened if Roe v Wade had been ruled in the opposite direction.

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          1. That’s what I figured the argument was once I gave it some thought, which is why I went back and added “on second thought I do think you’re probably wrong” after I thought it over. Because a lack of talking about a solved problem (like defeating the ERA) could also just mean “we solved the problem, now let’s move on to the next problem rather than endlessly re-hash a problem that’s already solved”.

            Are there people who turned out to vote because of abortion? Absolutely; I was one of them. Does that mean I wouldn’t have turned out to vote if Roe v Wade had been decided the other way? Nope. The first Presidential election I was old enough to vote for was in 2000. And there was no way I was voting for Clinton’s vice-president. No. Way. I didn’t know much about Bush at the time, but I was dead certain he would be a better POTUS than Al Gore.

            So how many of those people who turned out to vote because of Roe v Wade would have sat home, not having another reason to turn out? Impossible to know counter-factuals for sure, but my suspicion is that it’s actually quite low. There were plenty of other issues the Democrats were on the wrong side of, which would have fired up the conservative voting base in the absence of the Roe v Wade decision. My suspicion is that the actual get-out-the-vote numbers would not have changed enough to swing elections. With a possible exception for 2000, since it was so very tight in Florida: just a couple thousand Republican voters sitting on their hands might have been enough to have it tip the other way.

            Or it might not have: who knows how many Democratic voters were enthused by “defend abortion” messaging? How many Democrats would have stayed home in 2000 if Roe v Wade had gone the other way? Again, impossible to say for sure.

            Overall, I guess my point is don’t be too confident in predicting historical swings based on a 1973 event. There are lots, lots, of things that influence history, and one event going the other way might have ripples you didn’t even think about as they bounce off the rocks and shoals of history’s tides. (Mixing nautical metaphors furiously here).

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          2. My comment went into moderation, perhaps for being too long, so here’s a summary until it can be fished out: were there no other issues that would have caused conservatives to turn out in large numbers? Were the Democrats not doing anything else that conservatives would have opposed? I suspect the drop in conservative turnout would have been much smaller than Kaze thinks.

            I’ll stop there just in case this comment also gets moderated for being too long. Hopefully my long comment gets fished out so you can see the examples I gave.

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          3. It’s cherry picking what commenter thinks would be the (very few) changes.

            The Roe decision came down in January 1973, so I can pull a similar cherry pick out of thin air and say the reaction to the decision going the other way would have distracted Congress from the Watergate investigation and Nixon impeachment process, his secretary could have erased all the tapes, and as a result Nixon would have remained in office, which would have let him aid South Vietnam with air strikes when the North Vietnamese tried to roll south in 1975, saving the South Vietnamese and preserving that war in a stalemate much like that in Korea.

            But that executive action may have constrained further interventions, so there would have been no Vietnamese invasion to overthrow the Pol Pot regime and save the survivors of the Killing Fields, so the Communism toll for the 20th century would have been even greater. Or more optimistically maybe the South Vietnamese would have been able to do it, and bring along a few American journalists to publicize it more and sooner than it got in our timeline. And of course there would have been to Vietnamese Boat people crisis, and no wave of refugees into the U.S.

            But Nixon in office would definitely have meant no Jimmeh, which would have meant no overthrow of the Shah’s government in Iran – when he became ill his sone would have succeeded as Shah, so there would have been no 50 year long war on the US that the Democrats could try and pretend, or bribe, away…

            And no Jimmeh would mean no Billy Jeff, and no Billy Jeff would have meant no Barry.

            See, I can cherry pick with leaps of hand waving just as well as Kaze.

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            1. Oh, I forgot the best one – The Soviets would never have invaded Afghanistan if U.S. allied and very well armed Iran was right next door, so no Afghanistan war with the Soviets means no training and radicalization ground for OBL, and no OBL to found AQ means no 9/11.

              And it also means no Iran-Iraq war – the Shah’s army would have wiped Saddam’s up in a week if he started anything, and the US would have been flying in C-5s full of arms resupply to make sure they didn’t run out of Phoenix missiles for their Tomcats.

              Now does the USSR still fall apart without their defeat and retreat from Afghanistan? The built-in economic stress would have been the same, and if Reagan still was elected and could turn the screws via military competition, they still could not last very long, so I think yes’m though the date might have changed.

              A vastly different world.

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            2. My favorite bit of historical hypotheticals comes from the game Chrononauts, where each player is a time traveler from a different version of the future, and is trying to change key points in history to make the timeline line up with their own “past” so that their home future will exist and they can go home. (The premise works when there’s only one time traveler but collapses when there’s more than one, so don’t think too hard about it). One of the time travelers you can play as is a sentient cockroach who evolved after the humans wiped themselves out with a nuclear exchange in 1962. (Again, you just have to go with the premise, and not think too hard about how many people would survive even a massive nuclear exchange between the USA and USSR, and how “nuclear winter” has been proven false, as far as it is possible to prove false something that has never happened).

              The key event that that player is trying to change, in order to make his preferred version of history come out, is the Pearl Harbor attack. The logic goes like this: Japan attacks America, America gets involved in the war, ends up nuking Japan. The world sees how much devastation nuclear weapons can cause, and so even when the USA and USSR are sitting on nuclear arsenals pointed at each other, everyone hesitates to actually use them. No Pearl Harbor leads to no nukes dropped on Japan, so in 1962 nobody has seen nukes actually used on a city. And so Khrushchev actually orders a launch instead of just threatening one, and the world doesn’t survive the nuclear war that ensues.

              My second favorite historical hypothetical involves time travelers assassinating Hitler early in WW2 (or shortly before), resulting in someone actually competent being in charge. Meaning the German army encircling Dunkirk is not ordered to wait, a massive amount of the British army ends up captured, and Germany wins the war in Europe before the US really has time to get involved. Then another time traveler gets sent back to protect Hitler. (Talk about the world’s worst job).

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        3. Simple. The vast majority of abortions in the US were and are to “Progressives” rather than conservatives.

          There were a LOT of abortions over the years. A lot of children not born to be raised in “liberal” homes. Millions of “Progressive” voters between 18 and 44 who simply didn’t exist when a million votes would have made the difference.

          Meanwhile, a lot of unborn children became BORN children, in families that voted for Rs instead of Ds, who DID grow up to cast ballots. Millions of them, when a million votes DID make the difference.

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          1. But Roe v Wade wouldn’t have banned abortion across the country, it just would have let a Texas law stand (and other states would have followed suit). There would still have been states where abortion was legal, and people would have gone there to get abortions. Just as there were states where gambling was legal, and so people flocked to Nevada to gamble away their money in Las Vegas. (I am NOT saying that gambling is as bad as abortion. Though I am also NOT saying that I think gambling is a good idea. It’s a bad idea for most people, and for some people it’s a terrible idea).

            And so the net effect would still have happened: the conservative states would still not have had those children born into Democrat households, because by and large, those Democrats would have moved somewhere else anyway. Possibly less so, because some of those Democrats would have not moved (job, couldn’t afford it, whatever reason), and some of those who didn’t move would not choose to get an illegal abortion. So that means some more children born to Democrat-leaning households. But not millions; I think you’re greatly overestimating the effect.

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    2. I went to school with one of them. College, where only the top half of one percent of students made it. He was in French/Latin and linguistics, so we had limited classes together. But he had top grades for his section. And ALWAYS a group of girls around him, lighting his cigarette, pushing his wheel chair.
      I suspect he’s married and has children. Pfui.

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    3. Reminds me of the vile “Wrongful Life” case that was decided a few decades back.

      It’s also worth noting that there are a number of people who suffered terrible accidents that left them severely restricted (and thus they are fully aware of what was taken from them) who still don’t wish to be euthanized. Rather, they see their survival as a blessing, and something to take full advantage of even if life is now much more difficult than it used to be.

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      1. I rather suspect that the only people who want to die (as opposed to getting pushed into agreeing to be euthanized) are people who, for one reason or another (accident, disease, whatever) are in constant pain that will never go away for the rest of their lives. And even then, it’s not so much “I want to die” as “I want the pain to stop, and this is the only way”. (And even then, some people are brave enough to carry through regardless, and I salute them.)

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  18. Arg, nice long comment and it went into moderation. It was a useful one, too. Could someone rescue it? moderation-hash=2ff70bce08d4a2aad3c40dbf02491bdd in case that helps fish it out.

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  19. When I studied anthropology, I learned that an absolute taboo in easier to enforce than a partial taboo. Given how legalized euthanasia has galloped from the terminally ill to depressed teenagers to toddlers in Europe; I think there should be an absolute taboo on euthanasia for humans.

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    1. “When I studied anthropology, I learned that an absolute taboo in easier to enforce than a partial taboo.”

      …that explains a lot of politics and culture.

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  21. In wiser times, selective, applied hypocrisy was one of the lubricants that made life bearable for most folks. It was the pressure valve.

    As Sarah relates, abortion was categorically illegal in the Portugal of her youth, but it was nevertheless a common contraceptive strategy. The high cost, legally and monetarily, reduced the demand.

    In these benighted times, what used to be tacit must now be explicit and public.

    I am quite certain that sexually confused youngsters in most rural American settings were treated protectively and gently. (Think about how Andy Taylor would deal with the local tomboy.) Little Tommy is “different,” everybody knows it and everybody tolerates and watches out for her. Probably live out his/her life with a houseful of cats.

    Today, he must celebrate every increasingly rarified niche difference in the pursuit of “perfect” cosmic justice. Of course, this perfection comes at the expense of normies, who are now to be considered as the aberrants. (Harrison Bergeron only scratched the surface of the mischevious possibilities.

    I think that Perfectionism is the 8th mortal sin. (Maybe a subbranch of Pride … ) Instead of trying our best within the limits of our humanity we seem to be demanding our own comfort and pleasure as a matter of right.

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