Today South Carolina Republican Senator Jim Demint hosted a forum at which five Republican presidential candidates spoke. The transcript is here. Each candidate appeared one at a time, and the format allowed for in-depth questions and answers. Among the questioners was Princeton University’s Robert George. Prof. George asked each candidate if he or she would support congressional legislation, under section 5 of the 14th Amendment, to ban abortion. To state the obvious, such legislation would be contrary not only to Roe v. Wade and Penn. v. Casey (abortion rights are protected by section 1 of the 14th Amendment), but also to Boerne v. Flores (Congress cannot use section 5 to protect a right in defiance of direct Supreme Court holding about the particular aspect of the right). The question explicitly presumed that Roe v. Wade had not been overturned, and that a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution had not been adopted.
The candidates’ answers were as follows:
Bachmann: Yes.
Cain: Yes.
Gingrich: Yes. Cooper v. Aaron‘s assertion of judicial supremacy was wrong. Following the precedent of the first Jefferson administration, I would abolish some federal judgeships. But I am not as bold as Jefferson. “I would do no more than eliminate Judge Barry in San Antonio and the ninth circuit. That’s the most I would go for. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE). But let me say this. That’s part of the national debate. That’s not a rhetorical comment. I believe the legislative and executive branches have an obligation to defend the constitution against judges who are tyrannical and who seek to impose un-American values on the people of the United States.”
Paul: No. Violence and murder should be dealt with by the states. The federal police are already too numerous. I support a bill to deprive lower federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion cases, so that state restrictions on abortion would be immune from judicial review.
Romney: No. I would focus on appointing judges who would return abortion regulation to the states. The George proposal “would create obviously a constitutional crisis. Could that happen in this country? Could there be circumstances where that might occur? I think it’s reasonable that something of that nature might happen someday. That’s not something I would precipitate.”
Personally, I agree with the Romney approach. Moreover, the next President is going to have to address a fiscal crisis that will devastate the United States economy soon if it is not solved. Dealing with the fiscal crisis is going to be quite difficult politically, in part because there are many millions of people who benefit from the current, and unsustainable, levels of federal spending. The tax consumers may be very highly resistant to any reduction in the amount of money that flows to them. So there will be no shortage of national division and acrimony. Thus, 2013 would be an especially bad time to precipitate a constitutional crisis over a social issue. The answers of Romney and Paul displayed prudence, which I think is a very important characteristic for a President, and the answers of Bachmann, Cain, and Gingrich did not.
As for the Ninth Circuit, Gingrich has been saying the same thing since March, according to Politico. I have not found anywhere where he has provided details on this plan, but perhaps it would involve merging the 9th circuit states into the 8th and 10th circuits, since they border the 9th. The Politico article is not entirely clear, but it appears that Gingrich has claimed that he could get rid of the 9th circuit by signing an executive order. This would be plainly unconstitutional, a usurpation of power worthy of impeachment. Article III gives Congress, not the President, the power to “ordain and establish” the inferior federal courts. During the Jefferson administration, the Judiciary Act of 1802 repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, in which the lame duck Federalist Congress had created many new federal judgeships, to which President John Adams had appointed Federalists in the waning days of his administration. As President Jefferson recognized, the choice to eliminate federal judgeships belongs to Congress, not the President acting by himself. [Update: a commenter says the video (for which a link was not provided) shows that Gingrich was not claiming that he could abolish the 9th Cir. by executive order. I looked on the Internet, and did not find a video of the March 25 Iowa speech by Gingrich. There's a video of a speech earlier that month in Iowa, in which he criticizes the 9th cir. but does not call for its abolition.]
Debrah says:
Keep your hands off a woman’s right to choose.
Or you’re going down!
September 5, 2011, 8:05 pmnewrouter says:
no he did not. go watch the video.
September 5, 2011, 8:14 pmnewrouter says:
the lawyer class don’t like folks messing with their power.
September 5, 2011, 8:18 pmalkali says:
I don’t think abortion is murder. However, for a person who actually believes that abortion is murder, the fact that the US faces a fiscal imbalance would be a strange reason not to make any effort to stop a million murders from occurring each year.
September 5, 2011, 8:20 pmGordo says:
More proof that the Tea Party punks hate government interference in their lives, except when the interference would advance their moral values, in which cas they’re all for it.
September 5, 2011, 8:21 pmCornellian says:
Paul: . . . I support a bill to deprive lower federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion cases, so that state restrictions on abortion would be immune from judicial review.
I don’t think such a bill would have the effect that Ron Paul thinks it would. Even if such a bill were enacted, the Supreme Court would still have jurisdiction to review a state court decision, to the extent it was inconsistent with federal law (including the Constitution).
September 5, 2011, 8:25 pmCornellian says:
I would do no more than eliminate Judge Barry in San Antonio and the ninth circuit. That’s the most I would go for.
So decisions of the District Courts in the Western states would then get appealed directly to the Supreme Court? Since I don’t think Gingrich is really that stupid, I’m inclined to think he was just pandering.
September 5, 2011, 8:27 pmepluribus says:
The best that can be said for this Republican field is that Gingrich is sucking the hind tit.
September 5, 2011, 8:34 pmnewrouter says:
so was 1860.
September 5, 2011, 8:36 pmArthur Kirkland says:
The Republicans continue to go all-in with the minority of Americans who claim* to believe — for reasons that rarely withstand reason — that most of their countrymen are cold-blooded killers.
* It is difficult to square their ostensible principles, however, with their inclination to stop short of calling for the criminal prosecution of all women who choose an abortion or use a morning-after pill.
September 5, 2011, 8:51 pmnewrouter says:
do you borrow that strawman from baracky of scoamf fame?
September 5, 2011, 9:10 pmKirk Parker says:
Debrah, please please let’s keep the Conspiracy an elision-free zone. Don’t say “free to choose” w/o including what it is you want us to be free to choose, ok?
September 5, 2011, 9:19 pmOrenWithAnE says:
Obama should respond by preemptively dissolving the 4CA.
September 5, 2011, 9:20 pmTJ says:
I support the prosecution of all women who intentionally end the life of a child in their womb.
I don’t think that most Americans are cold-blooded killers. Are most Americans willing to support and defend cold-blooded killing by others when their political religion says it is OK? Yes. I think this is true for most Democrats as well as for most Republicans.
September 5, 2011, 9:25 pmJohn Herbison says:
It is a pity that no one asked the Republican candidates what penalty should be imposed, if abortion were criminalized, upon a woman who hires a doctor to perform an abortion. That might smoke out who among them actually takes seriously the “abortion is murder” dreck.
September 5, 2011, 9:30 pmBen P says:
I don’t think that’s it, at least per EV’s comments. Although if what EV said is true, it doesn’t make the change any less dumb. It seems like it would be a bold faced court packing plan, or a bad idea for judicial economy’s sake.
I would suspect that if he (congress) were to “abolish the 9th circuit” per EV’s comment, half the 9th would go to the 10th and the other half would go to the 8th. The legislation could concievably dictate that all of the judges would be out of a job and then that President Gingrich could appoint a dozen or so new circuit judges. A bold faced court packing plan.
On the other hand, that would create two circuits as big as the old ninth. Particularly the 8th would just be massive. Rationaly it would be much better to split the 9th into a 9th and 12th. Say make 12th the northern half of the 9th (WA, OR, ID, MT)
September 5, 2011, 9:45 pmByomtov says:
Who appointed Newt Gingrich (or any other politician) to decide what are and are not “American values?” Kiss my a**, Newt.
Do “American values” include serving divorce papers on your wife as she is undergoing cancer treatment? For Newt they do. I guess we’ll soon be hearing about the “sanctity of marriage” from this serial adulterer. Too bad they didn’t ask him about that in SC.
September 5, 2011, 9:51 pmTJ says:
It would have been interesting to hear Rick Perry’s responses, considering that he endorsed Rudy Giuliani for Present.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAZYWrDaYAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biy_EdGW1Fg&feature=related
Gingrich does name FDR as his hero.
September 5, 2011, 10:03 pmwm13 says:
I don’t see where the overheated rhetoric about “Constitutional crisis” comes from. Congress passes laws which attempt to overrule Supreme Court decisions all the time; sometimes those laws are upheld (since “law” on these issues is merely the political opinions of a changing cast of five judges), and sometimes they are struck down. In either case, life, and the nation, go on.
September 5, 2011, 10:10 pmOrenWithAnE says:
Kind of makes “don’t tread on me” (with what?) sort of meaningless too eh? What else can we fix up with this newfound desire for specificity?
“(Some particular) liberty or death!”
September 5, 2011, 10:10 pm“Freedom (to eat french fries)isn’t free!”
John Herbison says:
Can anyone explain how creating an unregulated black market for abortion services is “pro-life”??
September 5, 2011, 10:27 pmMartinned says:
Did I miss something?
September 5, 2011, 10:30 pmEvan says:
I haven’t watched the video, but I assume Paul would also strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over those cases. It’d be an unfortunate precedent, but quite Constitutional.
September 5, 2011, 10:34 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Are you under the impression that Tea Party punks want murder in general de-criminalized? I’ve not seen any indication that Tea Party punks are complete anarchists.
Probably the same way that the fact that any murder is necessarily done on the black market, so to speak, is “pro-life”. That is, you have to sneak around to do it with the clear understanding that society doesn’t want you to.
September 5, 2011, 10:39 pmtamerlane says:
Arthur might want to check the poll numbers for the last forty years or so. About 75% of Americans are opposed to the current SJC stance regarding abortion
The constitutional crisis occurred with the original Roe v. Wade decision, or going back even further with Griswold v. Connecticut when the SJC made up a non-existent Constitutional right to justify their personal preferences. This country has had forty years of un-necessary political turmoil because of the original unconstitutional behavior of the SJC. To complain that attempts to right this original wrong and defuse the current political crises created by Roe v Wade are the problem is a bit disingenuous.
September 5, 2011, 10:50 pmAJ says:
Romney’s is the most mature view and, go figure, corresponds with my own. Send it back to the states where it belonged in 1973. Muscling a position where the votes are not there is simply masochistic. Change the venue of debate (eventually) and move forward in areas where there is majority agreement. The all-or-nothing approach to governing is mind numbing.
September 5, 2011, 10:53 pm(Not That) Bill O'Reilly says:
Probably in much the same way that barely-relevant fines for not having insurance guarantees “universal” health coverage. The mere fact that a law cannot be perfectly enforced, and by virtue of its existence will make the behavior(s) it seeks to curtail even more risky, is entirely immaterial to the primary question of whether or not the goal of the law is legitimate and desirable.
Of course, there’s plenty of room for rational disagreement on that front when it comes to abortion. Would be nice if we could remember that’s what the discussion is about, though.
September 5, 2011, 10:55 pm(former) Seattle Law Student says:
I’d be interested to see how the numbers play out. Assuming for the sake of argument that an aborted fetus counts as a death, are there more deaths now under the current regime than there would be if abortion were made illegal? Under the latter regime there would certainly still be a sizeable number of abortions, plus there would be a dramatic increase in maternal deaths caused by unskilled or unscrupulous back alley providers, plus an increase in maternal deaths in cases where a woman was denied an abortion even though it would have been better for her medically to terminate. I’m sure there are factors I’m not considering.
If I had to guess, I’d bet the numbers would be in the same ballpark as the current regime.
September 5, 2011, 11:04 pmnewrouter says:
totalitarians don’t like 50 or per baracky 57 state approach.
September 5, 2011, 11:09 pmnewrouter says:
ask maggie sanger and planned genocide of black people. oh yea you said “black” racist.
September 5, 2011, 11:12 pmTravis says:
“Arthur might want to check the poll numbers for the last forty years or so. About 75% of Americans are opposed to the current SJC stance regarding abortion.”
Um, no. You’re not entitled to your own set of facts.
WaPo Poll, July 2011: Do you think abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?
Legal in all + most = 54
Illegal in all + most = 45
Time Poll, June 2011: Please tell me if you personally strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree: A woman should have the right to decide to terminate a pregnancy in the first few months of her pregnancy.
Strongly + somewhat agree = 64
Strongly + somewhat disagree = 35
Gallup Poll, May 2011: Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?
Legal all + certain = 77
Illegal all = 22
http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm
I’m not sure in what universe those polling results mean Americans are opposed to Roe v. Wade, but I know this: it’s not reality.
September 5, 2011, 11:43 pmKirk Parker says:
OrEn,
What flavor of disingenuous is that? Who else uses “choice” as a nickname for their favorite issue? The 2nd Amendment folks? First-Amendment absolutists? Help me out here…
September 5, 2011, 11:46 pmSChaser says:
Sure – the absolute number of abortions would go way, way down.
September 5, 2011, 11:54 pmSChaser says:
It is a myth that there were a lot of dangerous back-alley abortions pre-RVW. It also goes against human nature to suppose that the number of abortions would be as high as it is now, or that the number of maternal (is someone killing their fetus “maternal?”) deaths would make up for it. Finally, you unnecessarily assume that medically necessary abortions would also be outlawed.
I’d love to bet you big money that the number of total deaths would drop by a factor of at least five. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will achieve the state of law where such a bet could be tested.
September 5, 2011, 11:59 pmWayne says:
I don’t see why the alleged views of Ms. Sanger, who is long dead and unable to defend herself, are in any way relevant to the abortion debate. Unless you are claiming that current pro-choice voters are actually in favor of genocide of African Americans, your statement is totally pointless. If you are claiming that, you are kind of a jerk.
September 6, 2011, 12:02 amSkyler says:
I think Paul’s approach is very interesting. If the Supreme Court can just make up penumbras and push the limits of their power, why can’t the legislature? It’s within their power to do that so the courts can’t even complain. I think it’s a very interesting way to put the courts into a less powerful position.
September 6, 2011, 12:13 amJohn Herbison says:
How did Rep. Paul vote on the federal enactments which criminalized so-called “partial birth abortion”? (I am not inquiring to be sarcastic; I don’t know the answer.)
September 6, 2011, 12:22 amGuest12345 says:
This one is a bit of a polling failure. The certain circumstances answer drew 50% of the responses. Without knowing what the respondents considered “certain circumstances” to mean, it’s a bit silly of a category to have and even more silly to throw it in with the legal all category. If it was going to be added to one of the sides (legal/illegal) it seems like it should be added to the illegal side rather than the legal, as “certain circumstances” conveys a message of narrowness, not broadness. However since there is no way to know if the responses were coming from (“should be legal except when the pregnant woman is impaired” v. “should be illegal except when the pregnant child is twelve years old and her father is the father and the grandfather”) all we can draw from that particular poll is that for the significant majority, the question of abortion is far from black and white.
September 6, 2011, 12:26 amSChaser says:
While they are probably not in favor of genocide, when you put it in those terms, they are are in fact in favor of a policy which amounts to genocide. They just call it “choice,” while ignoring (or silently approving) it’s impact on the black population.
September 6, 2011, 12:39 amreadery says:
I don’t see the conflict with Mr. Demint’s remarks. The core of Roe v. Wade was its holding that the term “person” in the Bill of Rights lacks “prenatal application.”
The Court has since squarely held in Boumediene v. Bush that when it refers to the Bill of Rights lacking “application”, this means that the Constitution “stops” at that application and federal courts lack jurisdiction to decide matters concerning it. Since this is essentially what Mr. Demint is saying, then all he’s doing is applying a perfectly logical and straightforward interpretation of the Court’s current interpretation of its language to identical language used in an older case.
Frankly, it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that the word “application” in “prenatal application” means the same thing as the word “application” in “extraterritorial application”, particularly since the Roe Court never said a fetus isn’t a person, only that the word “person” in the Bill of Rights lacks “prenatal application”, a linguitic approach that’s a near perfect parallel parallel to the way the Court has historically approached the “extraterritorial application” language of the enemy combatant cases. No crisis.
I would agree Congress can’t abolish a judgeship to get rid of an identified judge, although it can of course abolish a vacant position (or fail to fill it, which if long term amounts to almost the same thing).
September 6, 2011, 1:27 amReg says:
It’s time to leave the issue to the states. The Supreme Court clearly overreached, and the issue won’t go away. Morals issues are what the democratic process is for, absent clear constitutional provisions to the contrary.
As far as an unregulated black market for abortion services, we aren’t far from that now. Abortion mills are disgusting, completely unregulated places. And attempts to regulate the procedure and push it into hospitals meet objections about decreased access and increased cost! Liberals do understand the costs of regulation when it comes to abortion, but not when it comes to every other highly regulated business in this country.
September 6, 2011, 1:27 amWayne says:
It is apparent that SChaser does not know what “genocide” is.
I think Roe v. Wade has been one of the most successful Supreme Court decisions ever. It settled the issue nationwide, for the most part. If it was left to the states, we would have constant battles over the issue in every election, and a hodgpodge of laws throughout the country ranging from liberal to medieval. We would have a new Underground Railroad with groups transporting pregnant women from states where the procedure is illegal to states where it is legal, and laws passed to make that illegal. It would be a damned mess. Of course, I think whether a pregnant woman should have her child should be left up to the woman and her doctor, and we should get on to more important issues.
September 6, 2011, 3:58 amA says:
Article III
Section 1. The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish…
Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority…
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
Article VI
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
–
Both from the text of the document itself, and from the judicial opinions handed down since the nation’s founding, jurisdiction cannot be entirely stripped from the federal courts. Some federal court has to have jurisdiction. Perhaps not the Supreme Court itself, but one or the other.
September 6, 2011, 4:28 amRicardo says:
The average black woman consistently has more children than the average white woman in the U.S. Moreover, the Convention on Genocide disagrees with your idiosyncratic definition of genocide which is rather comparable to the way Marxists used to compare factory work to slavery.
September 6, 2011, 5:10 amJoe says:
Kopel is very supportive of taking away power from the states to regulate guns in various respects, but wishes to allow them to deny women a basic right over their body. Someone else keeps on talking about how the feds want to “commandeer” us but is fine with states (and the feds in federal areas, I guess) “commandeering” women’s bodies. Selective federalism, selective liberty.
None of the options are very reasonable as policy. Gingrich is hard to take seriously but if a judge is “tyrannical,” I guess s/he did something impeachable. That word doesn’t mean that they decide things in a way Gingrich (at this moment, given his views keeps on changing) doesn’t like.
Paul’s desire to strip independent tribunals of justice of the power to help protect our rights underlines why true libertarians should find him dangerous on certain issues. States already regulate abortion (like speech or guns or …) any number of ways. The right to choose an abortion remains a basic constitutional liberty. If the next President has to deal with economic issues etc., why the Casey approach is not good enough w/o opening up the abortion conflict even more by allowing states to have even more power is unclear.
Gun rights over the right over your body. I’ll take both, myself.
September 6, 2011, 7:28 amepluribus says:
I wonder if opponents of abortion understand the inconsistency in these two arguments. On the one hand we hear that abortion is murder. On the other we hear that it should be left up to the states. Why is it acceptable to leave it up to the states to decide if an abortion is murder but not up to a pregnant woman to make the same decision? If abortion really is murder (and thus morally unacceptable), then nobody should permit it. If it isn’t, why is a state legislature more competent to decide whether a woman should be required to carry a pregnancy to term than the pregnant woman herself (and her doctor and family and spiritual counselors, if any)?
(My own opinion, for whatever it’s worth, is that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a serious moral decision, fraught with consequences for human life. But the decision should be made by the pregnant woman, in consultation with her medical and spiritual advisers, whoever they may be, not by legislators with their moist fingers held high in the air.)
September 6, 2011, 7:43 amepluribus says:
Romney’s position may sound more reasonable than the others (and, compared to Gingrich’s, almost any position would sound more reasonable). But, if understood literally, Romney has told us that he would establish an abortion litmus test. He “would focus on appointing judges who would return abortion regulation to the states.” He would determine (perhaps by directly asking the question) whether potential judicial nominees would or would not “return abortion regulation to the states” (i.e., overrule Roe). If the potential nominee would do that, he or she will be nominated. If not, that nominee’s name will be struck off the list. Considering the great range of constitutional issues that faces the country, establishing a litmus test on a narrow issue of this kind is hard to justify. What about the First Amendment? The Second Amendment? The war powers of the president? Eminent domain? The interstate commerce clause? All of these issues would be subordinate to the one issue of whether the potential nominee would “return abortion regulation to the states.” I think Romney is subject to closer criticism on this question than some of the other nominees. He is, after all, a lawyer himself and should understand the implications of what he is proposing. I have never heard any Democratic nominee—not Clinton, not Kerry, not Obama—say they would only appoint judges who would uphold the freedom of the woman to choose. Yes, it is generally understood that this is their position. But it is not a litmus rest. It is the Republicans who have chosen to make this issue a litmus test.
September 6, 2011, 8:08 amOwen H says:
I have to wonder why anyone still believes Republican politicians that say they are the ones that support and defend the Constitution.
If someone says they support it only in certain circumstances, but those circumstances are rape and incest, then they are hypocrites.
And we can certainly say that a majority does not believe it should be illegal entirely.
Simple. They think the states will decide the way they want. That’s why they don’t want to leave marriage to the states, since it appears the states won’t.
September 6, 2011, 8:09 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Is murder too important to be left to the states? Murder is always a federal crime?
September 6, 2011, 8:26 amNAME REDACTED says:
Actually, no, murder is a state crime. It can be a federal tort, however.
September 6, 2011, 8:39 amhugh says:
Okay, so everyone who disagrees with Owen H on this issue is a hypocrite. A position like that is not going to encourage useful debate. Why do so many people have trouble with recognizing that this issue is controversial because each side has good points? On the one side we have individual autonomy and the right to control one’s own body. On the other side, we have uncertainty about when life begins and the need to avoid categorizing some lives as expendible. People are struggling with this issue in good faith. A lot of people are uncertain; many of these uncertain people may voice opinions on certain parts of the abortion debate that seem to be inconsistant. Inconsistancy is not hypocrisy.
I am part of that big mass of uncertain people. I can think of some very rude terms to describe the people who say. we are hypocrites.
September 6, 2011, 9:01 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Well, that’s what I thought, which is why I was confused by this:
September 6, 2011, 9:02 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Agree with Hugh.
The number of abortions performed due to rape and incest is a very small fraction of the whole. If allowing these exceptions is a compromise we make in order to get the whoops-I-didn’t-use-birth-control abortions outlawed, there will be a whole lot of babies who aren’t aborted. Sometimes standing on your principles isn’t worth the human life you have to sacrifice to do it. Maybe that is hypocritical. It’s pragmatic.
September 6, 2011, 9:06 amStang says:
The black market for hitmen and ninja assassins is also unregulated. Does that mean we are also pro-murder?
September 6, 2011, 9:07 amOwen H says:
If you support abortion only in the case of rape or incest, then yes, you are a hypocrite because you do not really believe that it is murder.
if this is the case, then does rape or incest make it ok? The product of incest or rape is expendable?
If people aren’t certain then they should stop acting as if they are certain.
September 6, 2011, 9:18 amOwen H says:
If it’s, “It’s a baby, not a choice”, then why isn’t it, “It’s a baby not a compromise”? The very fact that so many are willing to “compromise” in that fashion makes it clear that most are not nearly so certain of their position as they say. If it is murder, why are you willing to compromise? And why then are you not willing to compromise on other facets, such as health/life of the woman? If it is because it is so rare, why then the fury over late term abortion, which are also rare, and generally not the “convenience” abortion so many oppose?
September 6, 2011, 9:24 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Owen, are you unable to comprehend my argument? Or unwilling?
September 6, 2011, 9:31 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Also this:
Where do you get that I won’t compromise on abortion to save a woman’s life?
Because in many cases those babies could simply be born alive. If the mother has to terminate the pregnancy early, labor can be induced and the baby allowed to take its chances. My sister did this. It actually happens a lot. You do get, hopefully, a live baby at the end so if it’s a dead baby you want, then you will have to take action to kill it. That’s what the objection is, Owen.
September 6, 2011, 9:35 amOwen H says:
oh, I understand it. I think it’s a copout. Very few say it that way, and I doubt many see it that way.
September 6, 2011, 9:36 amJustin says:
Debra,
Do you agree with a man’s right to choose all of the following:
1. to buy raw milk from a dairy in a different state and then drink the raw milk
2. to inject himself with testosterone and other steroids as he sees fit and for any reason whatsoever
3. to negotiate for purchase, then transact for any medicine or food or dietary supplement from any firm willing to sell any such product and to do so without any oversight from any state or federal agency.
What I am curious to learn is the justifications people have for banning behaviors that impact only themselves, yet at the same time believe that killing a fetus (and sometimes viable fetuses at 22 weeks) is acceptable. I am for abortion rights, but not if steroids are illegal. Can any legal minds here actually show how the logic behind Roe v. Wade does not apply to my three examples above?
Justin
September 6, 2011, 9:46 amloki13 says:
Owen H,
I think you’re putting a little too much emphasis on a black/white issue on what is, for many people, a gray moral issue.
There are those that believe that believe there is some dividing line where you can say “A ha!” there is a life (sperm, implantation, 2d trimester, popping out, twelve years old ;), etc.).
There are those who view it as a continuum, where there is no “life” (consciousness) until there is, and the exact demarcation is tricky.
And then there are those who see it as a balancing of interests (sort of like self-defense / murder)- that it is never, per se, a great thing, but there are times when it is necessary. The “safe, legal, but rare” formulation. Or the “incest and rape” formulation.
It doesn’t mean that these people are hypocrites. It means that they are struggling with a moral issue that they don’t see in the black/white terms that you do (or that some of your opponents do).
September 6, 2011, 9:52 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
It’s a copout to disallow 95% or so of abortions if I can only do that by allowing the other 5%?
Okay, Owen.
September 6, 2011, 10:01 amloki13 says:
A few points-
Does the “right” to steroids only extend to men?
Is it related to family, privacy, and childbirth?
Would it impact the right to not take steroids (bodily integrity)?
The right to procreative choice is just that- the right to carry a child to term (or not) without government involvement. The women’s interest is higher than the state’s (until a certain time is reached). The state can neither force the women to carry the child to term nor force her to abort it.
September 6, 2011, 10:05 amJustin says:
Loki13,
Where in the Constitution is the right to procreative choice given? That is the point. If abortion is legal, how the heck is taking life-beneficial medicine or steroids, illegal? Contrary to what most nitwits think, there is very little evidence to suggest steroids are dangerous, but a mountain of evidence to the contrary; the same cannot be said for the very much legal tobacco.
As for your questions, women can take steroids under my guise.
Steroids are certainly related to family, privacy and childbirth:
Family: a proper vigor being necessary for providing for one’s family, steroids can provide the boost many men need
Privacy: is not the choice of what food to eat private? or what medicine to inject also private? If not, then the way to ban abortion is to create a myriad of laws where it ends up that a physician or nurse is unable to lawfully administer medicine to a woman seeking an abortion.
Childbirth: I don’t know.
Regarding the right to avoid steroids, of course legalizing them would not nullify a person’s right to choose freely.
Really, this issue comes down to why the Constitutional reasoning behind Roe v. Wade does not apply to all matter of other human behavior. How is it that abortion is legal, but the very, very beneficial drug testosterone is schedule III?
This is a serious question.
September 6, 2011, 10:22 amOrenWithAnE says:
Forty years of unprecedented global power, prosperity, technological advancement and rising standard of living.
If these are the fruits of “political turmoil” then it’s a fantastic thing!
And who uses “liberty” as an abstract word for their particular policy preferences? Or “freedom”? Or “justice”? When someone says they are pro-liberty, that’s a pretty vague phrase. Liberty to have a job, liberty to do heroin, liberty to rape your sister, liberty to eat ice cream?
The English language is full of abstract terms that we understand in context. Whether it’s freedom, choice, equality, justice, liberty, honor — we use those words because they evoke a particular locus of related ideas. Fleshing out the details comes later.
September 6, 2011, 10:24 amCornellian says:
I don’t think such a bill would have the effect that Ron Paul thinks it would.Even if such a bill were enacted, the Supreme Court would still have jurisdiction to review a state court decision, to the extent it was inconsistent with federal law (including the Constitution).
I haven’t watched the video, but I assume Paul would also strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over those cases. It’d be an unfortunate precedent, but quite Constitutional.
I assume he’d have to try to strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction as well. But whether or not that’s even possible, the blog post says Paul proposed stripping lower courts of jurisdiction, so what Paul is saying doesn’t make sense.
September 6, 2011, 10:26 amloki13 says:
See, inter alia, the work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (EPC).
If you seriously want to know, then you need to look back at the history of the decisions. Assuming you went to law school, recall the difference between the line of cases including Eisenstadt, Griswold, and Moore and cf. Glucksberg. If you haven’t, wiki them.
September 6, 2011, 10:27 amSteveL says:
This is not evidence of anything that has to do with the Tea Party. It’s instead evidence that in heavily evangelical South Carolina, banning abortion is popular. I’m opposed to the killing of unborn children, except in self-defense. Yet my answer would be the same as Mitt’s.
This is a deeply divided country on this and many other issues. If we insist on applying a one size-fits-all (federal) approach to this issue or others, we polarize the country further. This is also an appropriate answer for Romney when pressed on Massachusetts healthcare. I live here, and while I don’t like it, the people wanted it. Mitt tried to improve it via amendment, but the veto proof Democratic legislature pushed it through.
Return abortion to the states. Return health-care to the states. Leave same-sex marriage to the states as it is.
September 6, 2011, 10:28 amCornellian says:
It’s time to leave the issue to the states. The Supreme Court clearly overreached, and the issue won’t go away. Morals issues are what the democratic process is for, absent clear constitutional provisions to the contrary.
Perhaps legislatures should preface all their legislation with the phrase “this is a morals issue” and thereby shield it from judicial review?
September 6, 2011, 10:31 amSeaDrive says:
I’m not sure if you’re intentionally ironic, or if you simply understate the state-to-state differences, and election-to-election rhetoric of the current situation.
I can’t predict what black market might arise in the event of a country-wide ban on abortion, but I’m sure that we would see development of an “offshore” abortion option.
September 6, 2011, 10:42 amloki13 says:
Justin,
By the way, you are welcome to not accept the reasoning of the Roe/Casey courts. But arguing that their logic compels you to your absurd steroid position is just as ridiculous as arguing that Kennedy’s overheated rhetoric in Lawrence compels you to the position that the government can’t stop you from keeping a nuclear arsenal in your bedroom, because you have an ineffable right to privacy in your bedroom that must remain inviolate.
The right to privacy, first, is not the right to choose whatever you want, and, second, must be asserted with some particularity.
September 6, 2011, 10:43 amJustin says:
I didn’t go to law school. But I don’t see why it would be difficult or onerous for any lawyer interested in defending abortion, or interested in banning it, from succinctly providing the logic behind the Roe decision. My guess is that most people who favor Roe, want the logic hidden because they fear other people will demand equal protection for behaviors the supporters of Roe find less than desirable. Ignorance is advanced on this issue for a reason, and I assume the reason is dishonest.
Regarding Ginsberg, what do you recommend? From my vantage, she does not appear to be a person who much cares for the truth. I recall hearing her discuss the lack of opportunities given to women, yet in the same discussion she never mentioned the work of Gottfredson, Murray or the anonymous La Griffe du Lion. Surely, anyone seeking answers to the former issue can find much explanation in the work of the latter.
September 6, 2011, 10:43 amloki13 says:
Well, there’s a number of primary sources. The wonderful thing about our system of governance is that the courts have to give their reasoning behind their decisions in these written documents referred to colloquially as “opinions” that can be read by anyone. If you want to know why the court ruled the way they did, I recommend reading, um, why they they did so. Google scholar is a good place to start. Try the cases I listed (it’s Moore v. Cleveland, btw). Also Casey. In addition, there’s a number of great law review articles that are a little harder to get to (some are available on scholar or you could try SSRN or the individual websites) or you could try a primer on ConLaw (available via Amazon).
Something tells me you’re not really interested in that, however.
September 6, 2011, 10:51 amJustin says:
Loki,
What is your definition of privacy? If privacy, means the right to be free from intrusion or disturbance in one’s life, and if people have a right to privacy, then how are you ever going to defend laws against the private use of medicine? For, if I have a right to privacy, then you have no right to look upon my actions.
What is the particularity with which any such right must be asserted? Where is that written in the Constitution?
Why don’t you create a mathematical model of your logic. Then using an analysis we can insert new behaviors for the change variables. This will show you, how your logic is necessarily flawed. You want some things private, but other things not private. A man can manufacture his steroids at home, by himself. A woman cannot give herself an abortion, with existing technology. The steroid user can thus engage his behavior alone, but the woman cannot engage her behavior alone. However, you assert that her behavior has a superior right to privacy? Your position will be impossible to defend across the panolopy of laws in the nation.
September 6, 2011, 10:53 amloki13 says:
Read Glucksberg.
September 6, 2011, 10:55 amJustin says:
Regarding your assertion, that I am not interested in reading the various court opinions, what is more interesting is how the legal community is so shallow that no one within it has constructed a framework for outsiders to critique the various machinations within the field. Why are lawyers trying to keep the system complex and convoluted? For most lawyers, the answer is, assuredly, that they are not curious, intelligent and uncaring. However, for the small, but important fraction, the answer is that they wish to keep the system opaque because the logic used to support the various decisions and actions is riddled with contradiction.
For the record, I am glad that abortion is legal. The population is too great, and I cannot imagine a society that has even more residents in the ghetto. The problem is that the “governing dynamic” logic used to support Roe is denied for the many other behaviors that should be covered by the decision. Once a person understand logic, then it is not necessary to read everything, for the governing factors are universal.
September 6, 2011, 11:06 amloki13 says:
At least we’re intelligent! :)
As I noted, you’re unwilling to actually look at any of the primary documents that would answer your questions. There’s a number of secondary sources- for you to assert that “no [lawyers] within it ha[ve] constructed a framework for outsiders to critique the various machinations within the field” is mindboggling. I am guessing you haven’t looked very hard. Not only are there multiple sources critiquing both the field in general (and, of course, some praising it), but for this topic in particular? It’s easy to miss everything when your mind is already made up, I guess.
Heck, if academic work, or non-fiction work for lay people, is too much for you, just pick up one of the hundreds of fiction works about the legal system. They may even have tv shows that feature court proceedings and/or fictionalizations of them.
September 6, 2011, 11:13 amSarcastro says:
It’s worse than that. Almost every field is hard for Just Folks to penetrate! Mathematicians are also in on the sinister complex system scam, as is the English Lite community.
And it’s not just acedemia – ever checked out a contracting forum? Roe’s reasoning is nothimg!
September 6, 2011, 11:14 amJustin says:
will do.
September 6, 2011, 11:14 amJoe says:
from succinctly providing the logic behind the Roe decision
Past rulings recognized that certain private choices involving marriage, childbirth, raising a family and so forth was a component of the “liberty” protected by the Due Process Clause. Past rulings underlined various components and reasons for the privacy right, including the personal morality involved.
Abortion, as recognized by many lower court rulings on the topic, fit into this category. Women in particular are burdened here and Planned Parenthood v. Casey specifically noted that this raises an equal protection concern to the affair.
As with most rights, it is not absolute. Laws that are honestly concerned with health that regulates abortion are legitimate. The embryo/fetus is not a constitutional person — this is shown by how the term was used legally and otherwise. Those that survive outside the womb are close enough though to trump the right to abortion, again various sources was given to say why, except if the life/health of the pregnant woman is at risk.
A “trimester” framework breaking down the pregnancy into three parts was set up to make it doctrinally easier to apply the rules here. This is done in other areas of the law too. Two justices dissented. One (White) recognized a right to privacy but thought it was applied too broadly here. One (Rehnquist) was dubious about the whole concept, but suggested it would be legally irrational if there was no life exception.
she does not appear to be a person who much cares for the truth
I recall her hearings too and the fact she didn’t cite the people you brought up in itself doesn’t seem to prove this statement. Anyway, Ginsburg is far from the only one who relies largely on EP to defend the right to choose an abortion.
September 6, 2011, 11:15 amloki13 says:
BTW, regarding your question about particularity (you’ll get one free question answered!):
People who want to assert a new right always try to plead it with the least amount of specificity. People trying to deny it always try to characterize it with the most granularity. So, using your steroid example.
You would assert that you had a right to privacy.
Of course, there is no “right to privacy.”
So then you’d characterize it as something like a SDP right in the liberty to make your own medical choices.
Your opponent would say that there is no SDP/liberty right to take steroids.
You’d lose (based on current precedent).
Better?
September 6, 2011, 11:17 amBob from Ohio says:
Does the phrase “Correlation does not imply causation” mean anything to you?
Without Roe, we would not have the most powerful military, for instance?
How do you explain 1945 to 1971, btw? We were pretty rich and strong then too.
September 6, 2011, 11:23 amJoe says:
My guess is that most people who favor Roe, want the logic hidden because they fear other people will demand equal protection for behaviors the supporters of Roe find less than desirable.
As with the apparent dishonesty of Ginsburg because she didn’t cite certain sources you think useful, I don’t see much evidence of this claim. People who favor Roe don’t “hide” the logic of their reasoning. They also manage somehow to accept that disallowing steroids is not of the same caliber as forcing people to bring pregnancies to term.
As to your comment that steroids are somehow related to childbirth, not as directly as abortion or contraceptives, but okay. Steroids are legal though as are any number of things related to reproduction. So, where does that even take you?
September 6, 2011, 11:31 amJustin says:
Locki,
Regarding a mathematical framework, can you point me to any website or document where the logic of opinions and arguments is converted into math? I am only interested to see if any attorneys are interested in proving their logic through numeracy. The fact that no such site exists is the basis of my point. What appears true, and Steven Hsu has written of this (great reading for everyone interested in IQ), is that our elite are not very mathematical but are highly verbal. This is problematic, because these people do not see the errors that riddle their thinking. They create a quagmire of a system where the foundation is easily disproved.
By translating verbal arguments into math, a very difficult task, we can begin to tear down the absurd logic that says killing a 22 week old fetus is acceptable, but asking another person to help you commit suicide to end indescribable personal suffering is unacceptable. This is an untenable position. As mentioned, I have seen Ginsberg talk about the inequity visited upon women, but the Justice did not mention the vast reams of data that show women to be less intelligent than men thus marking her not as a student of truth, but as a woman hell-bent on assuaging her feelings of inadequacy via judicial activism. From this simple issue, we can see that our Justices are people who are pushing their own psychology upon the innocent masses; if not that, then why no discussion of La Griffe who is part and parcel to every intelligent discourse on unequal outcomes? Given so much power, and so little opportunity for ostracism, it would be foolish to be firm in the belief that the court always rules in a logical fashion. In fact, many opinions receive scything dissents that point out logical inconsistencies. Why pretend the opposite is true? Why pretend the court has built a house of stone, when an evaluation of incentives and of social controls would show that the court has no need to be logical in order to defend and preserve its very existence.
September 6, 2011, 11:33 amBob from Ohio says:
Gingrich has an interesting idea but is not thinking boldly enough.
1. Abolish all federal courts, let the state courts enforce (or not) federal law.
2.
September 6, 2011, 11:34 amBob from Ohio says:
Gingrich has an interesting idea but is not thinking boldly enough.
1. Abolish all federal courts, let the state courts enforce (or not) federal law.
2.
September 6, 2011, 11:34 amBob from Ohio says:
Gingrich has an interesting idea but is not thinking boldly enough.
1. Abolish all federal courts, let the state courts enforce (or not) federal law.
2.
September 6, 2011, 11:34 amloki13 says:
Ummmm…… yeah.
Replace “very difficult” with “impossible.”
1. Judges are not calculators.
2. The Constitution is not a math problem.
3. You cannot reduce a concept like, say, “due process” to a mathematical formula.
Put another way, you can reduce every football team to numbers, and determine who is the “best” football team. Yet they still play the games, and every Sunday I am surprised.
PS-
No. For you, perhaps.
September 6, 2011, 11:46 amJoe says:
we can begin to tear down the absurd logic that says killing a 22 week old fetus is acceptable, but asking another person to help you commit suicide to end indescribable personal suffering is unacceptable.
Roe says that the government can ban abortions at viability (which is around 22wk) unless the pregnant person’s life is at risk or health is seriously threatened. The constitutional liberty involved here has been used to defend the right to euthanasia. It is those against abortion rights that are more likely to deny that.
Regardless, it is not “untenable” to argue that helping to kill a separate legal person is different from helping a girl/woman abort a fetus that is still attached to her, a fetus that was never treated as fully equal to the girl/woman person involved. Of course, 90& of abortions occur in the first trimester and the tiny fraction at 22 weeks usually are hard cases that even those strongly against abortion admit to being hard cases.
September 6, 2011, 11:48 amJustin says:
Joe,
Clearly men are more burdened by the ban on steroids than are women. Thus we would seem to have an equal protection issue. Right? Moreover, men of some races have lower hormone levels and lower virilization compared to men of other races. So this is a race issue too. Right?
You will notice, however, that no one has pointed to a single site or mindmap or equivalent that shows the governing logic of Roe. Instead, convoluted answers are given thus demonstrating my point: people within the field of law wish to keep their actions opaque. This is more problematic for society than Coca-Cola keeping its actions opaque because the law is the vehicle for controlling the masses.
As for Ginsberg not bringing up the sources I cited, who did she bring up to show that fewer women inhabit the right tail of the IQ distribution and thus unequal outcomes are probable to expectation. That is the real issue. I just named some of the more commonly known researchers on the subject.
September 6, 2011, 11:49 amB-Rob says:
If you go back as far as Beck v. Bell (forced sterilization of “imbeciles”), the 1940s castration case, up through Griswold v. Connecticut, there is an evolution in drawing lines where government is permitted to intrude on the decision whether to have children or not. Roe, applying the Ninth Amendment, is the natural extension of Griswold and Eisenstat v. Baird. In short, the government may not willy nilly police the contents of a woman’s uterus.
September 6, 2011, 11:50 amClayton E. Cramer says:
Hint: the right to keep and bear arms is explicitly written into the Constitution. Where’s that right to abortion? Hiding under an inkblot?
September 6, 2011, 11:51 amloki13 says:
The governing logic of Roe is entirely within the opinion of Roe. Of course, that case is no longer controlling.
September 6, 2011, 11:51 amBob from Ohio says:
Oops, lets try again.
Gingrich has an interesting idea but is not thinking boldly enough.
1. Abolish all federal courts, let the state courts enforce (or not) federal law.
2. Abolish all federal courts and then pass a new Judiciary Act creating new lower courts with entirely GOP judges.
3. Revive FDR’s idea. Expand the Supreme Court.
I like #3 myself. 6 new conservatives would reverse Roe pretty quickly. The House would go for it. How would the Dems counter? By making the Court 25 people? They could reverse the law but that could not affect the new 6 justices, I don’t think.
September 6, 2011, 11:52 amJoe says:
“Due process has not been reduced to any formula; its content cannot be determined by reference to any code. The best that can be said is that through the course of this Court’s decisions it has represented the balance which our Nation, built upon postulates of respect for the liberty of the individual, has struck between that liberty and the demands of organized society. If the supplying of content to this Constitutional concept has of necessity been a rational process, it certainly has not been one where judges have felt free to roam where unguided speculation might take them. The balance of which I speak is the balance struck by this country, having regard to what history teaches are the traditions from which it developed as well as the traditions from which it broke. That tradition is a living thing. A decision of this Court which radically departs from it could not long survive, while a decision which builds on what has survived is likely to be sound. No formula could serve as a substitute, in this area, for judgment and restraint.”
– Poe v. Ullman (Justice John Harlan II)
September 6, 2011, 11:53 amloki13 says:
Ask the police when they want to pump your stomach to get evidence. Same place. ;)
September 6, 2011, 11:53 amRoger says:
David, your post is confusing because you say that you are giving the “candidates’ answers”, when you actually paraphrase answers and change the context.
September 6, 2011, 11:54 amMDJD from NY says:
Maybe because we do leave punishment of murder up to the states. All 50 states criminalize murder of persons ex utero. If (and this would be far-fetched) a state decided to repeal its murder law, the federal government does not have the power to override this.
Legislation to promote the health, safety and morals of the people is a state power– not a federal power (I’m not going to get into the Commerce Clause and N&P Clause issues here).
I am not making any statement for or against abortion here– just poinitng out that your understanding of the basis of murder law is incorrect.
September 6, 2011, 11:55 amAnon says:
From what I’ve seen, certain legal fields tend more towards mathematical analysis than others. If you want to see mapping of behaviors to mathematical functions, you can check for intellectual property cases. However, most cases that address the potential for mapping behaviors to functions end up showing that the concepts by definition cannot be mapped.
I’m an engineer, so I would love to see behaviors easily mapped and legal opinions simply stating the results of those maps. The truth tends to be more complicated than that, and conflicting philosophical viewpoints must therefore result in compromises that cannot reflect a mathematical model. For a model to make sense, the behavior must fully correspond to a single worldview, and that is not how the legal system operates.
The fact that you demand that the world correspond to a single overarching worldview that can be portrayed in a single algorithm does not make that distillation possible. Expecting a mind-map of these issues is naive. If you disagree, then by all means write a book showing the mapping. I would read it.
September 6, 2011, 11:57 amloki13 says:
I dunno. Maybe procedural due process must be at least 10 units, with no less than one unit of notice and one unit of being heard.
So 1 unit of notice + 9 units of being heard = PDP, while 4 units of notice and 5 units of being heard = constitutional violation.
In addition, you must get at least 5 units of substantive due process or the decision is arbitrary and capricious, consisting of at least 1 unit of touching papers and 1 unit of asking questions.
How’s that?
September 6, 2011, 11:58 amMDJD from NY says:
Not all opponents of abortion believe that abortion is homicide. Most probably believe it is wrong, but that the level of wrongness falls somewhere short of homicide.
Furthermore, some believe that the wrongness of abortion also has something to do with the state of development of the fetus– with its likely capacity for self awareness. It is possible to beleive that aborting a 4-cell embryo should not be a crime, while aborting a 24 week fetus should be.
If one does not have your binary view of abortion, one can excuse it in some circumstances but not others.
September 6, 2011, 12:05 pmJustin says:
If the work of La Griffe, or a very close analogue, does not influence your discussion on unequal outcomes, then, very likely, you are incapable of offering much. But maybe you can send a link?
Regarding math and the courts, all logic is mathematical in nature. Thus “due process” must be reduced to math in order to ensure the fair and equitable treatment of everyone under the law. Unlike your system, where the rules of logic change with the pyscho-sexual desires of the Court, my system provides a fair platform. What you do not seem to understand is that the Constitution provides a pivot around which all decisions are made. Violations of logic are easy to spot and decipher and the more decisions that are made, the easier the absurdities are revealed. The Court is not allowed to write a new constitution as it goes forward; it were then perhaps it would be easy to make abortion legal but steroids illegal. Instead the Court must base its decision on the pivot. The branch from pivot to extension provides a concrete logic that if not applied universally is thus contradictory. Therefore, any opinion that relies upon disparate impact as a bad thing, necessarily causes all other decisions to consider disparate impact. In the end, only a mathematical approach can manage such a quagmire.
September 6, 2011, 12:05 pmJoe says:
Justin says:
Clearly men are more burdened by the ban on steroids than are women.
Women use steroids too. Also, banning hair braids might burden women more than men. The breadth of the burden matters too. Forced childbirth is more serious in various ways than not being able to use steroids.
Moreover, men of some races have lower hormone levels and lower virilization compared to men of other races. So this is a race issue too. Right?
See above. Steroids aren’t illegal anyways.
You will notice, however, that no one has pointed to a single site or mindmap or equivalent that shows the governing logic of Roe.
What? Various sources, down to Roe itself, was cited. Lots of verbiage was spent on it. It isn’t some mystery, if you take but a few minutes on the net to research it, even if you don’t actually agree with it.
Instead, convoluted answers are given thus demonstrating my point: people within the field of law wish to keep their actions opaque.
Convoluted how? The fact abortion and other serious topics can’t be boiled down to a one sentence equation that answers all points is duly noted.
This is more problematic for society than Coca-Cola keeping its actions opaque because the law is the vehicle for controlling the masses.
Okay. You are starting to lose me.
As for Ginsberg not bringing up the sources I cited, who did she bring up to show that fewer women inhabit the right tail of the IQ distribution and thus unequal outcomes are probable to expectation. That is the real issue. I just named some of the more commonly known researchers on the subject.
Women in fact as a whole are BETTER than men in certain areas, though equal protection of the law is about individuals, not some average. Equal treatment of each person is “the real issue” when the 14A is involved, not treating people based on the average of their groups. Either way, intelligence differences in no way explain the breadth of inequalities over time, including deprivation of the right to vote, choices in marriage et. al.
September 6, 2011, 12:06 pmepluribus says:
So much for conservative thought these days.
September 6, 2011, 12:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
1 – The third trimester starts at week 28, not week 22.
2 –
What?
September 6, 2011, 12:09 pmloki13 says:
To quote the TV show Archer,
“Noooooooope.”
But to put it in terms you might understand, since you premise is incorrect, your deductions that follow after that are wrong as well.
Logic can be reducible to math. Law can’t.
September 6, 2011, 12:11 pmJoe says:
Clayton E. Cramer says:
Hint: the right to keep and bear arms is explicitly written into the Constitution. Where’s that right to abortion? Hiding under an inkblot?
So, the idea is to disparage those rights not expressly enumerated? Madison raised a red flag about that. I think he had a solution in mind. What was it again … oh … the Ninth Amendment.
Roe took the due process approach. Much verbiage was spilled to fill in the details there and elsewhere.
September 6, 2011, 12:13 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Odd. But I see something in the Fourth Amendment that says “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures….” Are you arguing that there was a recognized right in 1789 or 1868 for police to pump your stomach?
September 6, 2011, 12:15 pmloki13 says:
Are you arguing that they can do it if they get a warrant or meet one of the myriad exceptions?
September 6, 2011, 12:17 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
If there were no laws against abortion in 1789, you would have a strong argument that this was a reserved right (at least against federal action). But abortion was criminal in 1789.
September 6, 2011, 12:17 pmMDJD from NY says:
A quibble.
Roe said that abortion must be legal until the thired trimester (26-27 weeks).
By the time of Casey, the age for fetal viability fell to 25-56 weeks because of medical advances, so Casey abandoned the Roe trimester rule in favor of a viability rule.
September 6, 2011, 12:18 pmNI says:
I agree with Roe’s bottom line that a flat ban on abortion is unconstitutional. But I don’t understand why there need to be so many of them. Everyone knows how to avoid making babies, and birth control is cheap and easy to use. So while I continue to support abortion rights, I’m finding it harder and harder to remain sympathetic to large numbers of women who apparently can’t be bothered to prevent the pregnancy in the first place.
September 6, 2011, 12:21 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
In 1807, Congress passed a ban on importation of slaves to the United States. In the period 1776-1810, a number of northern states provided for the gradual abolition of slavery–providing that those born after a certain date were born free, or that slaves would receive their freedom upon reaching particular ages (21 and 25 and being very common). I guess because these were halfway measures, abolitionists were all hypocrites.
September 6, 2011, 12:23 pmloki13 says:
Cite, please. Most abortion laws were not passed until 1857, and abortificents were common until then. Even the RC church didn’t take a position until the 19th century.
September 6, 2011, 12:25 pmloki13 says:
Found it- first US law against abortion was 1821, Connecticut.
September 6, 2011, 12:27 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
NI, no kidding.
CONTRACEPTIVE USE
• Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users report correct use.[8]
• Forty-six percent of women who have abortions had not used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant. Of these women, 33% had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy, 32% had had concerns about contraceptive methods, 26% had had unexpected sex and 1% had been forced to have sex.[8]
• Eight percent of women who have abortions have never used a method of birth control; nonuse is greatest among those who are young, poor, black, Hispanic or less educated.[8]
• About half of unintended pregnancies occur among the 11% of women who are at risk for unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives. Most of these women have practiced contraception in the past.[9,10]
September 6, 2011, 12:27 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Because abortion takes away incentive for both men and women to be responsible about contraception. Part of why I have moved from reluctantly pro-choice to reluctantly pro-life was reading an article in the Los Angeles Times some years ago, a very sympathetic piece about an Arkansas abortionist, which included this chilling paragraph:
And another paragraph by a woman in her in 20s who had never used birth control, and wanted an abortion because she was making wedding plans, and her wedding dress wouldn’t fit so well with a baby in there.
September 6, 2011, 12:28 pmMDJD from NY says:
Gestatinallength is 40 weeks. To find the beginning to the third trimester, divide 40 by 3 and subtract the result from 40. The result is 26 2/3.
September 6, 2011, 12:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
MDJD, I’m going by ACOG which states that for purposes of coding abortions, the 3rd trimester starts at 28 wks.
September 6, 2011, 12:32 pmPLR says:
I have no interest in abortion policy being set by the part time idiots in my state legislature.
And if in some Libertarian (sic) dream scenario that would ultimately come to pass, I suspect it would not be long before the call would come to divest them of their powers and leave regulation at the local level, in the hands of some Catholic minister. We cannot leave important decisions like this to sex-crazed women or their physicians.
September 6, 2011, 12:38 pmJustin says:
Joe,
For the record, I am 100% in favor of mass abortions. The fact that they have kept our ghetto population, mean IQ
Joe:
September 6, 2011, 12:39 pmwe can begin to tear down the absurd logic that says killing a 22 week old fetus is acceptable, but asking another person to help you commit suicide to end indescribable personal suffering is unacceptable.
Roe says that the government can ban abortions at viability (which is around 22wk) unless the pregnant person’s life is at risk or health is seriously threatened. The constitutional liberty involved here has been used to defend the right to euthanasia. It is those against abortion rights that are more likely to deny that.
Regardless, it is not “untenable” to argue that helping to kill a separate legal person is different from helping a girl/woman abort a fetus that is still attached to her, a fetus that was never treated as fully equal to the girl/woman person involved. Of course, 90& of abortions occur in the first trimester and the tiny fraction at 22 weeks usually are hard cases that even those strongly against abortion admit to being hard cases.
loki13 says:
Fascinating. So it’s a base desire to punish irresponsible people that induced your switch. Not the same, I am sure, for gun owners. Or for free speech.
You see, when I read that, it makes me think that there should be reasonable ways to do two things-
1. Decrease the availability of late-term abortions (the ones most people aren’t happy about) to case that either involve the real physical health of the mother or judicial bypass (rare cases where the mother was physically prevented, by, say, a rapin’ relative, from seeking the abortion in a timely manner).
2. Decrease demand.
Unfortunately, there will always be some dumbasses out there. But it’s not my job, or the state’s job, to make an already difficult process that much harder for those women who do take it seriously.
September 6, 2011, 12:39 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
First statute, perhaps. But Blackstone’s Commentaries is clear that abortion after the quickening is homicide at common law. He also discusses guardian ad litem appointments for unborn children.
September 6, 2011, 12:39 pmShelbyC says:
I’m with Newt to the extent that maybe someone should start a constitutional crisis over the ridiculous Cooper v. Aaron assertion, though not on an issue so inconsistent with federalism.
September 6, 2011, 12:40 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Can’t speak for Clayton. But I think he’s saying that he realized the rhetoric he kept seeing about how abortion is such a difficult decision and no woman enters it lightly is a bunch of crap. You aren’t punishing mothers of 3-month-olds if you require them not to smother their babies if they cry too much.
September 6, 2011, 12:42 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Blackstone’s Commentaries
September 6, 2011, 12:47 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
There isn’t this troubling problem about the rights of a third party involved in those cases.
Except that no one is proposing to make it more difficult to get contraception. I would be quite happy to shovel condoms out of dump trucks if that would do any good. California, like many states, makes it homicide to intentionally cause the death of a fetus–with one exception: when done by a licensed physician with the consent of the mother. Why is it murder (and I know of police officers who have been sent to prison in California for a criminal act that caused the death of a fetus), but it is okay if she wants it killed? Because the fetus is the mother’s property. The analogy to slavery is very strong.
September 6, 2011, 12:52 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
For some women, abortion is indeed a painful and difficult decision. And for others, it’s like blowing their nose. For a lot of men, they have little interest in being responsible: she can always get an abortion.
September 6, 2011, 12:54 pmyguy says:
It seems Professor Kopel fails to understand the distinction between a constitutional crisis and a political one.
September 6, 2011, 12:55 pmyankee says:
Question for the pro-criminalization “libertarians”:
Should the law impose a duty to save where failure to take heroic measures to save someone else’s life can be prosecuted as murder?
September 6, 2011, 12:57 pmJustin says:
Laura,
Yes, men have a slightly higher mean IQ than women (although, if memory serves the inverse may be true for black Africans) and a slightly wider distribution. This is not controversial at all within the field of study. No one knows why this system exists, but one explanation is that the need for men to attract women is so great that it is worth the genetic risk to have a trait superior to other men. Thus more men fill the left and ride tails of the bell curve.
Here are some links to get you started:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/08/average-male-iq-greater-than-average.php
http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/
Steve Hsu (http://infoproc.blogspot.com/) writes a great deal about intelligence and recently has been focused on Bejiing Genomoics Institute. What is going to happen is that the Chinese, free from all chains of political correctness, are going to prove all of things people know to be true but wish to deny. Given your surprise at what is established fact (no matter how often the fact is denied) I would suggest a ten year incremental bath into genetics. The world is going to be presented with some very hurtful information. I don’t think the world will be turned upside down, but the information is going to be made public as it is discovered and it is going to hurt the feelings of many people.
September 6, 2011, 12:57 pmMDT says:
loki13,
The right to procreative choice is just that– the right to carry a child to term (or not) without government involvement. The women’s interest is higher than the state’s (until a certain time is reached). The state can neither force the women to carry the child to term nor force her to abort it.
The “right to procreative choice” is not “just that” if it is as you say it is, given that half of all procreators are men. A genuine right to procreative choice would do something about, say, the inability to father a biological son without (except in very extraordinary circumstances) a long-term association with a woman, whereas women may consult the nearest sperm bank; or, of course, the right of women to stick men for everything up to college tuition in support of children their partners chose to have.
Serious gender equality would look very different. Surrogate mother-ship, for example, would be subsidized, to compensate for the pesky physical inequality between men and women in the matter of getting pregnant, just as freely available abortion does. And mothers who claim child support ought absolutely to be required to demonstrate, via DNA testing, that the man they want the six-figure sum from is the biological father of the child. If the actual father is not your husband (who could afford the six figures), but instead a guy whose last name you never did quite catch, that is your (and unfortunately your daughter’s) problem.
In a gender-neutral world, men and women would bear the same consequences of sex, and men and women would find it equally easy to have biological children without having to encumber themselves with opposite-sex biological adults.
I suppose it’s necessary here to say that I don’t favor a gender-neutral world. But the above questions are obvious. Are we really in the condition of “Ovaries Good, Testes Bad,” or is there some other reason that “reproductive rights” seem to apply only to women?
September 6, 2011, 12:58 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
You are making a strong case that contraceptives are oversold on their effectiveness–even when used correctly. But in a culture that worships sex, we certainly can’t remind people that these methods don’t work all that perfectly.
September 6, 2011, 12:58 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Yes, and the courts have generally upheld this. I have at least read of judges issuing search warrants for stomach pumping. (Not sure if this survived appeal.)
September 6, 2011, 1:01 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Why treat this special? You are not generally under any obligation to save the life of a person you find dying on the street.
September 6, 2011, 1:02 pmGiant Frog says:
Because men are wimpy enough to put up with it.
September 6, 2011, 1:08 pmAnthony says:
Uh… possibly no-one in this thread, but there are plenty of people who are opposed to contraception (e.g. the Catholic Church).
September 6, 2011, 1:08 pmFor another example, have you heard of things like ‘abstinence-only sex ed’? Not teaching about contraception makes contraception harder to get because you don’t know what you’re doing.
Clayton E. Cramer says:
I remember in grad school reading a paper about an 18th century abortion in New England that turned out badly. The author was trying to prove that because the father who procured the abortificient for his girlfriend went on to hold local public office later in life, this proved that abortion wasn’t a big deal, even though he was criminally prosecuted for this. I found the argument unpersuasive, but there was a criminal prosecution for procuring an abortion.
Of course, all sorts of mechanical methods of inducing abortion were common, all the way back to classical times.
September 6, 2011, 1:09 pmMDT says:
loki13 again,
You see, when I read that, it makes me think that there should be reasonable ways to do two things–
1. Decrease the availability of late-term abortions (the ones most people aren’t happy about) to case that either involve the real physical health of the mother or judicial bypass (rare cases where the mother was physically prevented, by, say, a rapin’ relative, from seeking the abortion in a timely manner).
2. Decrease demand.
Re (1), what are you calling “late-term”? Here, the restrictions are post-viability; in Europe they’re mainly post-first-trimester. Who’s right? (NB that the European approach is currently unconstitutional here, so you’d have to go all Romney to implement it even in one state.)
Re (2), I see two broad ways to do that: Make it more attractive to have a baby, or make it easier not to get pregnant. Considering that condoms are cheap and as close as the local grocery store, we don’t really have much in the way of options there, unless you want to come up with a way of sterilizing all men/women/everyone post-puberty until they petition to have the ban removed.
September 6, 2011, 1:11 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
The Catholic Church is such a powerful force in our society, too. :-)
I have heard of abstinence-only sex ed. There are, of course, no sources of information on this subject besides public schools. What percentage of the population lives within five miles of a store that sells condoms? Is it 98%? And yet, there are a very large number of teenagers who do not bother to use them. Why? Because they are as responsible about sex as they are about driving, alcohol, household chores, etc.?
September 6, 2011, 1:13 pmloki13 says:
If you think a one-day old fetus is a third party, fully deserving of rights, then why were you pro-choice to begin with? The story is a little too pat.
I think the cavalier attitude is disturbing to those of us who view it as potential life. I think it is a serious decision, just like the decision to have a child should be. But if I thought the fetus was a person, the motivations of the women involved might make me slightly more (or less) sympathetic, but not change my position.
September 6, 2011, 1:13 pmJohn Herbison says:
I have a question for those who favor states being able to criminalize abortions. Suppose your young adult daughter/sister/close friend confided in you that she is pregnant, the pregnancy is unplanned and unwanted and, because she trusts your judgment and values your insight, she asks for your advice as to whether to carry the pregnancy to term.
How many of you would say to her, “Don’t come to me. Instead, go ask the governor.”?
September 6, 2011, 1:14 pmMDT says:
Anthony,
Uh… possibly no-one in this thread, but there are plenty of people who are opposed to contraception (e.g. the Catholic Church).
There are “plenty of people” of other religions who are opposed to contraception. Any takers on the bet that the Catholics somehow fail to make the first cut as Pill-banner?
For another example, have you heard of things like ‘abstinence-only sex ed’? Not teaching about contraception makes contraception harder to get because you don’t know what you’re doing.
Because no teenager has ever heard of a “condom,” and they aren’t there in the nearest convenience store. Which all the teenagers are likely visiting over school lunch break anyway, in pursuit of hot dogs and soda.
I remember “health class” a good 35 years ago, and even then it was at least half about sex, as though human health were just a ton of sex attached feebly to a small all-the-rest-of-human-life.
September 6, 2011, 1:25 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
There are no “one day old fetuses.” I was pro-choice largely because I did not think too much about it, and because so much of the propaganda of the mainstream media promoted this view.
As I read more history about the abolition movement when I was in grad school, the parallels between slavery and abortion became quite clear: both movements insisted that they had a Constitutional right (and at least the slave owners were right about that); both argued that their rights took precedence over the authority of state governments to protect runaway slaves; both involved obnoxious Democrats calling their opponents religious fanatics; both involved a minority that was not prepared to follow the law (like John Brown).
September 6, 2011, 1:27 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Really? I can’t think of any Protestant denomination that opposes contraception.
September 6, 2011, 1:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Justin, I read The Bell Curve when it first came out. Your links don’t tell me much. I want to see the reams of data about how men are more intelligent than women. And don’t forget, if you’re talking about the tails on the IQ bell curve, there’s one at each end and males dominate both.
If the mean IQ of men is 4 or 5 points higher than the mean IQ of women that still doesn’t tell you that men are more intelligent than women. You would have to show that both distribution curves are symmetrical, or that if biased, they are biased the same way and to the same degree.
September 6, 2011, 1:29 pmyankee says:
Unsurprisingly, teenagers are not particularly responsible about contraception. Also unsurprisingly, they’re even less responsible about it when they don’t learn about it in school.
September 6, 2011, 1:30 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
How many of you would say, “If you wait a few months, it will be a baby that either you, or the adoptive parents will love. It might be a child who will grow up to be a wonderful person who finds a cure for AIDS. But go ahead, rip it apart now before you get attached to it.”
September 6, 2011, 1:30 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I have heard women say: “Of course it’s murder, but if I get pregnant I’m not having my life ruined.”
So your approach is only one of many even among pro-choicers.
September 6, 2011, 1:32 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Might add that both depended on the argument that a class of people weren’t fully human.
September 6, 2011, 1:33 pmyguy says:
Why would we say that?
September 6, 2011, 1:40 pmMDT says:
John Herbison,
I have a question for those who favor states being able to criminalize abortions. Suppose your young adult daughter/sister/close friend confided in you that she is pregnant, the pregnancy is unplanned and unwanted and, because she trusts your judgment and values your insight, she asks for your advice as to whether to carry the pregnancy to term.
How many of you would say to her, “Don’t come to me. Instead, go ask the governor.”?
I have a question for you: Suppose your young adult daughter/sister/close friend has confided in you that she’s in an impossible financial bind: She’s unemployed, she’s supporting a young son, her mortgage is underwater, and her only hope is that her elderly uncle, who has willed her all his money, and is 88 years old and unconscious most of the time, will die before a certain date.
Because she trusts your judgment and values your insight, she asks your advice. (No, not on how firmly to press the pillow down; just on how you ought to proceed.)
Do you say “Sure, come to me and I’ll advise”? Do you say,”No, really bad idea, I’ll have no part in it” and hang up the phone? Do you say, as most people would, “If you need a place to stay, I’m here for you, and I’ll see what can be done about the financial mess, and I’ll find someone to help care for your child while you look for work”?
No, of course not. Because the obvious place to appeal is to the governor, who has apparently outlawed smothering elderly relatives single-handedly, there being no legislature in your state.
September 6, 2011, 1:40 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Slave owners did not deny that slaves were fully human. Instead, they argued that they were “outside our social compact” (which was basically nonsense to cover their dishonesty), or that the slave owner only owned the labor of the slave. Those arguing that there should be no restrictions on abortion at any stage (a position that even Roe v. Wade did not take) are denying that a fetus is human until it is born. The slave owners, at least, were not that dishonest.
September 6, 2011, 1:44 pmShelbyC says:
States can criminalize abortion. You’re saying that if such a female friend of your came to you fairly well along in her pregnancy, maybe to the point of viability, that’s what you’d say? You’re a cold dude, man.
September 6, 2011, 1:46 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
You missed the better opportunity: she can solve her financial bind by killing the young son, thus saving on diapers and baby food. He’s not fully productive yet–he can’t speak complete sentences; so, in a sense, he isn’t fully human.
September 6, 2011, 1:47 pmMDT says:
Clayton E. Cramer,
Really? I can’t think of any Protestant denomination that opposes contraception.
I wasn’t thinking in terms of Christendom, exactly. Christians (even loosely defined) aren’t most of us. (Lingering ideological hangover from reading Steyn’s latest book yesterday, in toto.)
(Aside on Steyn: The endnotes on that book are state-of-the-art. Where there’s a URL for a source at time of print, it’s given, as well as the print source.
September 6, 2011, 1:48 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
From what I have read, the difference is about one point or so. The shape of the curves is different, with disproportionate numbers of men at both ends of the curve. This certainly explains disproportionate numbers of men in facilities for the severely retarded, and holding tenured positions in another sort of institution.
September 6, 2011, 1:50 pmCareless says:
Except it’s only really 38, they start counting pregnancy from the time of the last menstruation so women are typically two weeks “pregnant” at the time of conception. And the medical definition of the trimesters isn’t a simple “divide by three” split anyway.
September 6, 2011, 1:52 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
From what I have read, the difference is about one point or so. The shape of the curves is different, with disproportionate numbers of men at both ends of the curve. This certainly explains disproportionate numbers of men in facilities for the severely retarded, and holding tenured positions in another sort of institution.
September 6, 2011, 1:55 pmloki13 says:
No, nor would I ascribe that position to others. I am sure that there are a variety of positions among both the pro-choice and the pro-life crowd (one person who has commented on these threads is pro-life because he believes certain Americans are committing demographic suicide, but isn’t morally opposed to abortion, for instance).
I was remarking about Clayton’s transformation. In other words, it is strange that the motivations of others was the determining factor when he later ascribes “third party rights” (personhood). Of course, as we see later (“obnoxious Democrats”) it’s part and parcel with his many other transformations (see also, certain types of parades being formative experiences).
Grievance-based tribal politics are fun! Then again, I fall into that myself; there are certain people that I reflexively think- whatever they’re for, I will probably be against.
September 6, 2011, 1:55 pmJustin says:
Laura,
I don’t understand your point, the mean is the average and in a normal distribution it is also the median and the mode. If the male average IQ is 2-3 points higher than the mean female IQ, then that means the average man is very slightly more intelligent than the average female; both populations being marked at 1/2 their total population. You don’t need to have the same shaped curve to make the comparison. The curves tell you the distribution, and variance from the mean, of the scores for the target population. If you were to record the 100 meter dash times of the 100 fastest people on earth then compare them to 100 random kids from a high school, you are likely to have a narrower curve for the former compared to the latter. However, you can still make the comparison that the average top 100 performer ran the 100m in 10 seconds while the average high schooler took 15 seconds. No problem with that. I am not cheerleader for men or for women. However, people need to understand this information so that they understand there are many more men at the genius level than there are women. This understanding may reduce some of the negativity in the world where men are constantly criticized for being unfair to women, when a more obvious explanation exists.
September 6, 2011, 1:56 pmMike P. says:
I agree with Romney, too, but I would not rule out something like that at some point in the future, because I still think it is worth it to force the Court to revisit Roe, whether the Court is forced to do so by Congress or a state legislature. Even so, as long as the Court insists that there is a ‘right’ to get an abortion in the Constitution, when no such right exists in the Constitution, it invites this sort of thing. The Court has provoked a constitutional crisis when it invents ‘rights’ (such as the ‘right’ to abortion) that appear nowhere in the Constitution. Remember, the Court is populated with certain people who think (like Justice O’Connor did) that the justices can somehow settle these sort of disputes by encouraging ‘two sides in a national division to end their disagreement by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.’ As long as this sort of fanciful pablum dominates on First Street, abortion will divide American politics. Roe is bad not just because it is lazy analysis, it is bad because it has not, in fact, resolved the abortion question.
September 6, 2011, 1:59 pmMike P. says:
I agree with Romney, too, but I would not rule out something like that at some point in the future, because I still think it is worth it to force the Court to revisit Roe, whether the Court is forced to do so by Congress or a state legislature. Even so, as long as the Court insists that there is a ‘right’ to get an abortion in the Constitution, when no such right exists in the Constitution, it invites this sort of thing. The Court has provoked a constitutional crisis when it invents ‘rights’ (such as the ‘right’ to abortion) that appear nowhere in the Constitution. Remember, the Court is populated with certain people who think (like Justice O’Connor did) that the justices can somehow settle these sort of disputes by encouraging ‘two sides in a national division to end their disagreement by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.’ As long as this sort of fanciful pablum dominates on First Street, abortion will divide American politics. Roe is bad not just because it is lazy analysis, it is bad because it has not, in fact, resolved the abortion question.
September 6, 2011, 2:03 pmMike P. says:
I agree with Romney, too, but I would not rule out something like that at some point in the future, because I still think it is worth it to force the Court to revisit Roe, whether the Court is forced to do so by Congress or a state legislature. Even so, as long as the Court insists that there is a ‘right’ to get an abortion in the Constitution, when no such right exists in the Constitution, it invites this sort of thing. The Court has provoked a constitutional crisis when it invents ‘rights’ (such as the ‘right’ to abortion) that appear nowhere in the Constitution. Remember, the Court is populated with certain people who think (like Justice O’Connor did) that the justices can somehow settle these sort of disputes by encouraging ‘two sides in a national division to end their disagreement by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.’ As long as this sort of fanciful pablum dominates on First Street, abortion will divide American politics. Roe is bad not just because it is lazy analysis, it is bad because it has not, in fact, resolved the abortion question.
September 6, 2011, 2:03 pmMike P. says:
I agree with Romney, too, but I would not rule out something like that at some point in the future, because I still think it is worth it to force the Court to revisit Roe, whether the Court is forced to do so by Congress or a state legislature. Even so, as long as the Court insists that there is a ‘right’ to get an abortion in the Constitution, when no such right exists in the Constitution, it invites this sort of thing. The Court has provoked a constitutional crisis when it invents ‘rights’ (such as the ‘right’ to abortion) that appear nowhere in the Constitution. Remember, the Court is populated with certain people who think (like Justice O’Connor did) that the justices can somehow settle these sort of disputes by encouraging ‘two sides in a national division to end their disagreement by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.’ As long as this sort of fanciful pablum dominates on First Street, abortion will divide American politics. Roe is bad not just because it is lazy analysis, it is bad because it has not, in fact, resolved the abortion question.
September 6, 2011, 2:04 pmCareless says:
Gestation is 38 weeks. “Pregnancy” is counted from the last mensturation, so women are instantly around two weeks pregnant at the time of conception. Of course, the trimesters aren’t, medically speaking, perfect thirds of the pregnancy anyway.
Martinned is Rip Van Winkle?
September 6, 2011, 2:10 pmJohn L says:
Also, despite what the author of the study said, the difference between a 98 IQ and a 102 IQ is not meaningful. Over a huge sample, it becomes statistically significant, but it’s still not meaningful.
September 6, 2011, 2:23 pmCareless says:
Wow, it’s taking so long to post that the edit window has been closed for 10 minutes before the post shows up.
September 6, 2011, 2:26 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
I don’t think that I said that the motivations were the determining factor. They were one of several reasons that caused me to re-evaluate my position. Sometimes, a particular event or statement can provoke that re-evaluation. Why do I believe this? Is the evidence in support of my position sufficient?
September 6, 2011, 2:27 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
“If the male average IQ is 2–3 points higher than the mean female IQ, then that means the average man is very slightly more intelligent than the average female”
No. You get an average by summing your data points and dividing by the number of points. There’s no such person as the average man.
You could possibly offer the male/female split of the population of people with a certain IQ. Or a certain IQ range. You could say that approximately 50% of men, and approximately 50%, of women, have IQ=>100. Or that of people with IQ => 100, approximately 50% are female. There could easily be enough asymmetry in each bell curve to have that “approximately” number skew one way or the other.
But there is no “average” man or woman.
September 6, 2011, 2:27 pmloki13 says:
Funny. You seem to re-evaluate several of your deepest positions based on your personal discoveries of how you dislike the ways in which people conduct themselves. Personally, I have found it valuable to distance the concept from the individuals.
Which is why I support an individual right to gun ownership, despite any reservations I might have about some of the most vociferous posters on these threads. Because it’s not about them- it’s about the principle. And I don’t find myself re-evaluating it every time some idiot talks about how the Second Amendment means he should be allowed to keep tactical nuclear warheads, ‘cuz that’s what will keep King Obama away.
ps- I noticed how you finessed your earlier general statement that abortion was illegal in the colonies at the time of ratification to a new “well, Blackstone said it.” Yes, there were common law ideas about the quickening, but primary research has indicated that abortificents were widespread, and the first law was, again, 1821.
September 6, 2011, 2:42 pmOwen H says:
So your argument is that no rights exist except those explicitly enumerated in the Constitution?
September 6, 2011, 2:43 pmOwen H says:
Why do you think I have such a binary view? Seems to me it is those that believe that human life begins at conception, and that even birth control pills which prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg is immoral are the ones with the binary view.
Now here’s the question; in the case of the 24-week fetus, if the mother’s life is at risk and she cannot safely deliver, what then? Do the fetus’ rights outweigh hers to live? Seeing as how that’s how the law currently works, I mean. A woman cannot just abort a 24-week fetus on a whim, after all.
September 6, 2011, 2:47 pmOwen H says:
What reproductive rights do you want that you do not have?
September 6, 2011, 2:53 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Owen, the baby will come out, one way or the other.
September 6, 2011, 2:56 pmjustin says:
John,
You want your cake and eat too. The difference between vast populations with mean IQs 98 and 102 respectively, is that the latter is going to put many more people into the supersmart category at the right tail. That means you will have many more men than women in the positions that require the highest level of “g.” To dismiss the small IQ difference as meaningless is ridiculous since society is bending contortions to equalize results for “groups.” You have a bunch of mediocre-minded feminists running up and down shouting that the lack of high-end physicists is somehow a sign of patriarchy. Society, ignorant of reality, then agrees to beat upon its sons in order to placate the feminists. How many billions of dollars have been wasted trying to promote girls to the highest levels when the girls clearly don’t want to be there. The true cost includes the compounded opportunity cost. The IQ gap, and our collective understanding and interpretation of it, has significant costs on society.
September 6, 2011, 3:00 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
No, but when I find that factual claims are actually false, it causes me to start re-examining the evidence related to those claims. Sometimes that is personal disapproval; sometimes it is the discovery that factual claims don’t survive even cursory examination.
If you were frequently running into people who argued for the right to keep and bear arms in order to exterminate subhumans, you might re-examine that principle. It wouldn’t necessarily throw the principle into disrepute, but you would probably wonder why it was attracting such weirdos.
The fact that abortificients were widespread doesn’t say much about the legality of abortion, anymore than the widespread presence of guns says much about the legality of murder. Many of these abortificients were common herbs, such as pennyroyal. You will find that infanticide was pretty common in Colonial America as well; indeed, most murder prosecutions of women are for infanticide. That doesn’t mean that it was legal.
First statute doesn’t mean very much. I can’t find statutory prohibitions on obscene materials in American states until mid-19th century, but criminal prosecutions for obscene materials are taking place, nonetheless, based on common law principles.
September 6, 2011, 3:00 pmJon Rowe says:
I’m not exactly sure how today Protestant denominations stand on the matter. But, historically they were as opposed to contraception like the Roman Catholics.
This link is informative:
September 6, 2011, 3:00 pmMarcus says:
You mean like, through the mouth maybe?!?
September 6, 2011, 3:01 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
No, but it is pretty clear that if something is a CRIMINAL offense in every state in 1789, or even in several states, it can hardly be considered a human right that the Founders would have recognized.
September 6, 2011, 3:04 pmMDJD from NY says:
No problem– it isn’t the legal standard anyway, and hasn’t been for 22 years. It also isn’t that relevant clincially, as pregnancy is a continuum, and crossing a time threshold doesn’t change the doctor’s approach radically.
September 6, 2011, 3:05 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Interesting that you make an argument that essentially the entire society of Constitutional America condemned contraception, yet it is now a constitutional right. Which amendment changed this? Or were the justices in Griswold just imposing their view on Connecticut?
I can tell you that I can’t recall ever hearing a Protestant, in any church that I attended, criticize, even slightly, contraception. While there have been a few big families in churches that I have attended, 2-3 kids is the norm.
September 6, 2011, 3:08 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Oh, no. The fact that more men are at the right tail is completely independent of that tiny difference in the mean. And if you’re going to use the men at the right tail to say that men are more intelligent, then you have to look at the left tail and say men are more retarded. This is of totally equal truth.
September 6, 2011, 3:09 pmSeaDrive says:
Not all distributions are normal, but if they are normal, the curves have the same shape. You seem to be inconsistent.
September 6, 2011, 3:10 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
No, I mean alive or dead. Having an abortion doesn’t magically unpregnant a woman.
September 6, 2011, 3:10 pmMarcus says:
MR. HARRY BLACKITT: Look at them, bloody Catholics, filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can’t afford to bloody feed.
MRS. BLACKITT: What are we dear?
MR. BLACKITT: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.
MRS. BLACKITT: Hmm. Well, why do they have so many children?
MR. BLACKITT: Because… every time they have sexual intercourse, they have to have a baby.
MRS. BLACKITT: But it’s the same with us, Harry.
MR. BLACKITT: What do you mean?
MRS. BLACKITT: Well, I mean, we’ve got two children, and we’ve had sexual intercourse twice.
MR. BLACKITT: That’s not the point. We could have it any time we wanted.
MRS. BLACKITT: Really?
MR. BLACKITT: Oh, yes, and, what’s more, because we don’t believe in all that Papist claptrap, we can take precautions.
MRS. BLACKITT: What, you mean… lock the door?
MR. BLACKITT: No, no. I mean, because we are members of the Protestant Reformed Church, which successfully challenged the autocratic power of the Papacy in the mid-sixteenth century, we can wear little rubber devices to prevent issue.
MRS. BLACKITT: What d’you mean?
MR. BLACKITT: I could, if I wanted, have sexual intercourse with you,…
MRS. BLACKITT: Oh, yes, Harry.
MR. BLACKITT: …and, by wearing a rubber sheath over my old feller, I could insure… that, when I came off, you would not be impregnated.
MRS. BLACKITT: Ooh!
MR. BLACKITT: That’s what being a Protestant’s all about. That’s why it’s the church for me. That’s why it’s the church for anyone who respects the individual and the individual’s right to decide for him or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in fifteen-seventeen, he may not have realized the full significance of what he was doing, but four hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas,… [sniff] …and, Protestantism doesn’t stop at the simple condom! Oh, no! I can wear French Ticklers if I want.
MRS. BLACKITT: You what?
MR. BLACKITT: French Ticklers. Black Mambos. Crocodile Ribs. Sheaths that are designed not only to protect, but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress.
MRS. BLACKITT: Have you got one?
MR. BLACKITT: Have I got one? Uh, well, no, but I can go down the road any time I want and walk into Harry’s and hold my head up high and say in a loud, steady voice, ‘Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I’ll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant.’
MRS. BLACKITT: Well, why don’t you?
MR. BLACKITT: But they– Well, they cannot, ’cause their church never made the great leap out of the Middle Ages and the domination of alien episcopal supremacy.
September 6, 2011, 3:10 pmMarcus says:
BOY: Couldn’t Mummy have worn some sort of pessary?
DAD: Not if we’re going to remain members of the fastest growing religion in the world, my boy.
MUM: Ehhh, he’s right.
DAD: You see, we believe–
[piano music]
Well, let me put it like this.
[singing]
There are Jews in the world.
There are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons, and then
There are those that follow Mohammed, but
I’ve never been one of them.
[music]
I’m a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They’ll take you as soon as you’re warm.
You don’t have to be a six-footer.
You don’t have to have a great brain.
You don’t have to have any clothes on. You’re
A Catholic the moment Dad came,
Because
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
CHILDREN: [singing]
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
GIRL: [singing]
Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each sperm that can’t be found.
CHILDREN: [singing]
Every sperm is wanted.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighborhood.
MUM: [singing]
Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
Semen with more care.
MEN: [singing]
Every sperm is sacred.
[clunk]
Every sperm is great.
WOMEN: [singing]
If a sperm is wasted,…
CHILDREN: [singing]
…God gets quite irate.
PRIEST: [singing]
Every sperm is sacred.
BRIDE and GROOM: [singing]
Every sperm is good.
NANNIES: [singing]
Every sperm is needed…
CARDINALS: [singing]
…In your neighborhood!
CHILDREN: [singing]
Every sperm is useful.
Every sperm is fine.
FUNERAL CORTEGE: [singing]
God needs everybody’s.
MOURNER #1: Mine!
MOURNER #2: And mine!
CORPSE: And mine!
NUN: [singing]
Let the Pagan spill theirs
O’er mountain, hill, and plain.
HOLY STATUES: [singing]
God shall strike them down for
Each sperm that’s spilt in vain.
EVERYONE: [singing]
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighborhood.
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite iraaaaate!
DAD: So, you see my problem, little ones: I can’t keep you all here any longer.
GIRL: Speak up!
DAD: I can’t keep you all here any longer! God has blessed us so much, I can’t afford to feed you anymore.
NIGEL: Couldn’t you have your balls cut off?
DAD: Hohh, it’s not as simple as that, Nigel. God knows all! He’d see through such a cheap trick. What we do to ourselves, we do to Him.
GIRL: You could have had them pulled off in an accident.
CHILDREN: [talking]
DAD: No. No, children. I know you’re trying to help, but, believe me,…
CHILDREN: Ohh…
DAD: …me mind’s made up. I’ve given this long and careful thought, and it has to be medical experiments for the lot of you.
CHILDREN: Ohh. Oh. Oh…
CHILDREN: [singing mournfully]
September 6, 2011, 3:12 pmEvery sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,…
Marcus says:
Oh, I see.
So, what’s your choice, Laura? Dead mother, or dead baby?
September 6, 2011, 3:12 pmjustin says:
Laura,
I don’t know your point on the existence of an average man or woman. The statistic is firm, the male average is slightly higher than the female average. Therefore, if you pluck a man and a woman at random, the man will, more likelier than not, have a slightly higher IQ. This should be completely non-offensive to anyone and I have no idea how you can pronounce “No” to the claim that the average man is slightly more intelligent than the average woman when that is what the data shows.
If you want to see intelligence bell curves, you can click here:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/g.htm
I am not sure what you are trying to relate in the remainder of your post. You seem to be saying that it is faulty to make the comment the average man is slightly more intelligent than the average woman, because there is no such thing as the average man or average woman. I am not sure what the meaning of your assertion since we are viewing statistics to help guide our understanding of the world and to modulate our expectations as per reality. This is not a race or sex war. The term average should be understood in the context of statistics. I am not sure the rest of your post.
Laura(southernxyl):
September 6, 2011, 3:20 pm“If the male average IQ is 2–3 points higher than the mean female IQ, then that means the average man is very slightly more intelligent than the average female”
No.You get an average by summing your data points and dividing by the number of points.There’s no such person as the average man.
You could possibly offer the male/female split of the population of people with a certain IQ.Or a certain IQ range.You could say that approximately 50% of men, and approximately 50%, of women, have IQ=>100.Or that of people with IQ => 100, approximately 50% are female.There could easily be enough asymmetry in each bell curve to have that “approximately” number skew one way or the other.
But there is no “average” man or woman.
John L says:
This is nonsensical.
If you discover that brown-haired people are, on average, 1/4 inch taller than blond-haired people, that difference can become statistically significant over a huge enough sample. It does not make the difference meaningful, and it most certainly doesn’t tell you which group has more 7-footers.
September 6, 2011, 3:23 pmJon Rowe says:
I’m not sure that orthodox authorities at the top speak for the “entire society.”
The general right to liberty is an unenumerated right in the 9th Amendment, privileges or immunities clause of the 14 and the Declaration of Independence. The source of the change comes from the documents themselves.
September 6, 2011, 3:24 pmTed says:
And do you happen to know off the top of your head when states began abolishing common law crimes? Was that significantly later?
September 6, 2011, 3:24 pmjustin says:
You can have normal curves with narrow deviations than other normal curves and still compare means. There is no inconsistency.
September 6, 2011, 3:24 pmMDJD from NY says:
No– women get pregnant two weeks after their last menmstrual period. And if you calculated gestational age this way the thrid trimester would start 7 weeks and 3 days after the first day of the last menstrual period.
In the hospitals where I have practices (I’m a Board certified OB/GYN) we’ve informally counted third trimester as beginning at 27 weeks. As I said above, though, the definition is not all that important from a medical standpoint.
It potentially is important from a legal standpoint, since law draws bright lines that do not exist in medicine. But I’m not aware of any statute that defines any sort of legal status as being associated with a given trimester– usually weeks’ gestation is used, and how to calculate this this is undefined. Yes– it was important in Roe v. Wade, whose trimester algorithm is no longer controlling. One of the many bad things about this opinion, even if you agree with its results.
September 6, 2011, 3:24 pmMDT says:
Owen H,
What reproductive rights do you want that you do not have?
None. But, then, I’m a woman.
September 6, 2011, 3:27 pmMDJD from NY says:
IIRC there was common law crime in the first years of the Republic, so abortion may have been illegal. I’m not a historian, so I don’t know. But there was no need, as now, th violate a statute to have committed a crime.
September 6, 2011, 3:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Marcus, do you think that is the choice? How many times is it necessary to kill – not just prematurely deliver – a 24-wk fetus to save the mother’s life? Do you think going in and dismembering the fetus and withdrawing him or her limb by limb is somehow less traumatic than just delivering him or her intact?
September 6, 2011, 3:36 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Even fairly unorthodox sorts like Ben Franklin acknowledged that atheists and infidels were in extremely short supply in America–and when Franklin writes that letter to Ezra Stiles in 1790 explaining his somewhat unorthodox religions beliefs, he wants it kept a bit of a secret, because he knows that he is WAY outside the mainstream.
Your “general right to liberty” was not recognized by any of the states of the time. All of them continue to criminalize homosexuality, public drunkenness, obscenity, and about a zillion other things right into the late 20th century. How is that the Founders intended this “general right to liberty” and no one noticed it until my lifetime?
September 6, 2011, 3:37 pmjustin says:
Laura,
I have no idea how you can misread the data with such fervor. The fact that more men are at +4 sigma than women is related to their higher mean than women. You can find the data at the websites I linked: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/g.htm
You should also email La Griffe and tell him why he is wrong.
As for your assertion that you have say that men are more “retarded” than women, that would depend on how you interpret your phrase, “more retarded.” I would suggest that the proper understanding of the term “more retarded” is to suggest that women are on average “retarded” and that men are moreso. However, since men are, on average, more intelligent than women, your assertion is wrong. That data does show that more men than women are “mentally-handicapped”. So, at once, men have higher mean IQ, and have higher representation at the tails of the distribution. This is all explained at La Griffe in his many articles. His being the website most easily referenced. However, you can got to GNXP or InfoProc and find the same. What’s your beef? Do you find it insulting that men are slightly more intelligent than women? Do you honestly feel you are part of a great sisterhood and have to stick up for all women, as if a discrete fact is an insult? Well, you are not part of a sisterhood and there is no need for you to defend women, because there is nothing from which to defend them, in this case.
September 6, 2011, 3:37 pmTed says:
As a man, I am offended by your math. Take the following sets:
Set 1: {1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 100}
Set 2: (5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 10}
The average of the first set is 5.95, the second is 5.25. Randomly select a number from each set, and you are much more likely to select a higher number from set 2 than set 1, even though set 1 has a higher average.
September 6, 2011, 3:38 pmloki13 says:
Not off the top. IIRC, the major move (esp. toward 1857) was in response to the early 1800s widespread commercialization of abortificents.
Usual moral panic. What had been practiced widely, but behind closed doors, was now a little too in-your-face; combined with the increasing Victorianization of America, and you got yourself a cause.
(BTW- I love Clayton’s series of posts. First, abortions are illegal. Then, it’s the common law and infanticide. Nicely dodges the whole quickening thing, which would allow him to sidestep the dilemma of noting that at the ratification, the Framers treated a fetus before a certain point as not a person, and after that point as deserving of government protection. But that would be a little more nuanced and correct than just saying “abortions were illegal.”)
September 6, 2011, 3:41 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
There are certainly cases where the choice is kill the mother or kill the baby, and from what I have read, even the Catholic Church recognizes this as a form of self-defense. These are difficult situations, more difficult than most defensive killings outside the womb, because the fetus has no idea what it is doing. But does anyone seriously think that even 1% of abortions in this country are cases where the mother’s life, or even serious, permanent risk to her health, are in play?
September 6, 2011, 3:44 pmJon Rowe says:
Well they wrote about it in their documents when they termed “liberty” an “unalienable right” and the rights of man, unenumerated because they were unenumerable.
September 6, 2011, 3:45 pmAnatid says:
Justin, an important question.
Are you talking about steroids, or about anabolic androgenic steroids?
Steroid hormones, including testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone, are not illegal. You can get them with a doctor’s prescription if deemed necessary. Taking them appears to have few negative short-term side effects and some health benefits, although emerging data suggest there are negative long-term side effects.
The single greatest group of people using steroids are women. Millions of women take hormonal birth control. And these drugs can have direct medical benefits, not just elective ones – monthly hormone cycles can produce crippling levels of pain, can activate mood disorders such as major depression or bipolar disorder, can aggravate the growth of ovarian cysts (which 1 in 10 women have, and can be fatal to a much smaller number if left unregulated), and more.
Any ban on steroids would disproportionately affect women many orders of magnitude more than it would disrupt men.
Now, anabolic androgenic steroids, which is a category that does NOT include testosterone, are indeed disproportionately used by men. They are also linked to a variety of known health problems.
To which were you referring? You seemed to be using the word “steroid” to refer to “androgen steroids, endogenous or synthetic,” which is not the way that the word is generally understood to be used. If you are talking about anabolic steroids, you cannot include testosterone as a victim of regulation against them, because it isn’t one. If you are talking about all steroids, then you must include estrogen steroids. Please be consistent in your definitions.
September 6, 2011, 3:47 pmMDJD from NY says:
Both psitions represent a binary view. Either you think a fetus is a person like you or me or Gandhi, or you think it is morally akin to a hangnail. The difference between the two positions is which side of the fence one is on.
Such a situation would be extremely rare, if indeed it occurs. Do you know of such a situation? But I, personally, would save the mother in this hypothetical situation. And so would many people who ordinarily oppose abortion. They would see it as a stance of self-defense, which is a classic justification for homicide.
I’m not sure what you mean. The fetus has no rights up to the age of viability, as I understand it. The legal basis for restriction on abortion are the state’s interest in the fetus, and not the rights of the fetus. After the age of viability, the situation becomes obstetric, and not gynecologic. I can’t discuss a vague hypothetical situation in the context of a post on a blog comment, but rest assured that (1) the doctor is expected to prioritize the mother’s life over that of the fetus; (2) there is no requirement for extraordinary care of the baby, once delivered, though the nursery cannot kill a living infant; and (3) no procedure can be perfromed without the consent of the mother.
September 6, 2011, 3:49 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Sorry, buddy. If you pick a man and a woman at random, you have no idea how their IQs measure up until you check. Look at your own link:
“Based on their g distributions, I calculate that the woman has better than a 45 percent chance of being smarter than the man.”
That means that in a hundred pairings of randomly drawn men and women, between 45 and 50 of those the woman’s IQ will be higher, and between 50 and 55 of those the man’s will be higher. That certainly does not mean that if you grab a man and a woman at random you can count on his IQ being higher. It will be very slightly more than half of the time, that’s all, and you’ll have to pull a whole lot of pairings before it’s not exactly half.
September 6, 2011, 3:49 pmJon Rowe says:
This is a non-sequitur. Franklin knew that his heterodoxy offended the forces of religious correctness who still had their foot on society. Didn’t necessarily makes his views out of the mainstream. Just something that wasn’t openly discussed in polite society.
September 6, 2011, 3:50 pmjustin says:
Ted, your example does not invalidate my simple claim, because your examples does not compare to Gaussian distributions. Sorry.
Related to my earlier postings on steroids, you might take some and man-up so that you are not so easily offended.
Click here: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/g.htm
September 6, 2011, 3:51 pmScroll down, and you will find La Griffe gives you the probability that a random woman is smarter than a random man is equal to .453.
Will Obama’s Perceived Weakness Cause Republicans To Overreach? says:
[...] case. However, for every conversation you hear from the GOP on jobs, you also get something like yesterday’s odd little political forum in South Carolina: South Carolina Republican Senator Jim Demint hosted a forum at which five Republican [...]
September 6, 2011, 3:59 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
What did liberty mean to them? If it meant the right to engage in homosexual sex, isn’t it a bit odd that they didn’t repeal the state laws on the subject? Now, liberals like Jefferson wanted to change the penalty for buggery from death to castration, but that’s hardly the liberty you have in mind, is it? Maryland, for example, didn’t replace death with ten years in prison for buggery until 1809.
If “liberty” means whatever a majority of justices want it to mean, untethered to any original intent, then it means nothing at all: just whatever a majority of the Court decides that they want it to mean.
September 6, 2011, 3:59 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Oddly enough, most states wrote constitutions that required you to be a Christian, sometimes specifically a Protestant, to hold public office. Delaware’s 1776 Constitutional Convention required all delegates to swear an oath affirming their belief in the literal truth of the Old the and New Testaments. Pennsylvania’s 1776 Constitution is similar. Amazing how effective those forces of religious correctness were, isn’t it? Or perhaps they reflected a strong majority will. That certainly makes more sense than to assume that Franklin was just being polite.
September 6, 2011, 4:02 pmSarcastro says:
This IQ thing is a pretty awesome digression.
‘Cause IQ totally equals intelligence, and thus utility for society. And America is all about the individual serving society, not vice-versa!
Not that all that policy junk matters. The real secret is to use statistics to assume any random woman you meet is dumber than you. Instant self esteem for enpenised Americans!
September 6, 2011, 4:07 pmMDT says:
Owen H,
Now here’s the question; in the case of the 24-week fetus, if the mother’s life is at risk and she cannot safely deliver, what then? Do the fetus’ rights outweigh hers to live? Seeing as how that’s how the law currently works, I mean. A woman cannot just abort a 24-week fetus on a whim, after all.
You’re talking about a vanishingly small percentage of cases — I mean, not “vanishingly small” as in “third-trimester abortions are a vanishingly small percentage,” as though 2% is a tiny number even if multiplied by something in seven figures. Even so, it’s a real case; it happens. I think the best course would to try to save the fetus, but lose the fetus if the woman’s life were imminently at stake. I don’t think many would disagree with me.
I wonder, though, why the pregnant woman is a “mother,” while the fetus is a “fetus.” The only context I know of in which anyone is ever the “mother” of a “fetus” is a comment thread like this one.
September 6, 2011, 4:08 pmjustin says:
Laura,
You cannot be serious. The statistic stands, there is nothing you can do to change math. You can be the biggest feminist on the planet, but you cannot change the mathematical fact that exists before you. That is why all the social engineering is falling flat on its face.
You reveal your own ignorance in your very first sentence, when you write that we will have no idea as to the IQ of a random man or woman. In fact, we have a tremendous idea as to this data. We know the man’s IQ is likely higher than the woman’s and we know that the man’s IQ is likely 100 (normed) and the woman’s is likely 97.5. You must be kidding when you say that we know nothing.
Your last paragraph is a giant absurdity. If you pull a man and woman at random you can be sure that odds are, he is more intelligent than the she. Using La Griffe’s data, we know that the probability a random woman is more intelligent than a random man is 45.3, not 45-50% as you claim. Why are you so offended by math? Why don’t you create a site to counter La Griffe? That would be enjoyable.
September 6, 2011, 4:09 pmJoe says:
Clayton E. Cramer says:
If there were no laws against abortion in 1789, you would have a strong argument that this was a reserved right (at least against federal action). But abortion was criminal in 1789.
Abortion was legal — the traditional line was quickening. If it was criminal, it could have been an illegitimate law. These exist, which is one value of judicial review. Also, the fact the feds in 1789 didn’t criminally ban something is not the only way to determine in 2011 if something is a reserved right.
MDJD from NY says:
Roe drew the line at “viability” — the trimester schemes were inexact lines that the ruling left open to some flexibility. To quote from the summary at the end of Roe:
“For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life [p165] may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.”
Justin says:
Joe,
For the record, I am 100% in favor of mass abortions. The fact that they have kept our ghetto population, mean IQ
Charming. I support the right of each person, those who live in ghettos or not, those with high or lower IQ, to make the decision whether or not to abort. Your priorities are duly noted. It’s nice to know you cover the topic with the right amount of moral seriousness and perspective.
September 6, 2011, 4:11 pmAnatid says:
You see, if we take a metric that is a strong predictor of performance for some localized brain regions/functions, and a mediocre predictor of other regions/functions, and not at all a predictor of yet other regions/functions, then we can use it and it alone to predict how likely an individual is to win an argument on the internet!
September 6, 2011, 4:14 pmjustin says:
Think IQ doesn’t matter, then you are a fool. The data on the importance of intelligence and IQ is profound. IQ scores are a tremendous proxy for “g.” This is important to know because nothing has been found that can increase the “g” of healthy individuals over the long-term. Therefore, if you populate your country with low-IQ immigrants you are going to have a problem; similarly if your social programs feed the low-IQ types so they breed like crazy, then you are going to have a problem.
Be sarcastic all you wish to be; the world will march forward and the facts you don’t like won’t budge. It is going to be a brutal future for the USA. We will end up somewhere between our present position and that of Brazil. A chart on imploding IQ scores:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/
People greatly misunderstand intelligence and how the smart fraction is a giant gift to the deserving dumb.
September 6, 2011, 4:20 pmJoe says:
I wonder, though, why the pregnant woman is a “mother,” while the fetus is a “fetus.”
You can be the “mother” of various things but even on that level, “mother” is not a term some would use. Few think those who use IUDs that result in the destruction of fertilized eggs are “mothers” nor do many think unused frozen embryos necessarily mean “mothers” and “fathers” are involved. In fact, many who abort early on don’t think of themselves as “mothers.” The terminology in this debate is complicated and often very emotion laden in debatable ways.
[Good point on steroids Anatid.]
September 6, 2011, 4:22 pmloki13 says:
Final note,
Justin- I hope you realize that La Griffe isn’t exactly well-known outside of the circles you enjoy. Also, without time travel, it is unlikely that RBG would have brought him up at her hearings. Finally, with regards to his stats- GIGO. There was a time when phrenologists made some wonderful findings as well, and some even applied math and statistics to their work. I am glad you enjoy La Griffe’s work- I prefer things that are more peer-reviewed and less stormfronty, myself.
This doesn’t mean that he isn’t right. But you’re acting like it’s the gospel truth. I lost interest when the first article I saw used the discredited data that four countries in Africa have an average IQ below 65. Wonder they can even breathe!
September 6, 2011, 4:23 pmjustin says:
Joe,
Unfortunately, my comment was truncated, but like you I believe people in the ghetto should be free to make the choice to have abortions. I am just glad that they make the choice, because most people in the ghetto are stupid and a very high fraction are violent. Therefore, a reduced ghetto population means fewer suffering people within the ghetto, fewer people like Christopher Newsome and Channon Christian raped and murdered by people from the ghetto and reduced malinvestment in social programs that attempt to alleviate an problem that is never going to go away, thereby freeing that capital for more productive uses. So yes, there is a tremendous amount of morality in my opinion. Good to know that you see it too.
September 6, 2011, 4:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Justin, is it your understanding that >50% of men have IQ = 100? Not 99 or less, not 101 or more?
September 6, 2011, 4:30 pmloki13 says:
BTW, to consider-
his data set indicates that the average IQ of Equitorial Guinea is 59.
An IQ of 59 = someone who would be disabled based on their mental defects. (70 is slow, could master an elementary school curriculum, and would need social support to function effectively).
So- the *average* person is EG is unable to function based on their mental defects… what about the people that aren’t average?
September 6, 2011, 4:31 pmJoe says:
is there some other reason that “reproductive rights” seem to apply only to women?
Whatever “seems” to be the case, men have reproductive rights. They can use birth control, for instance. There has been state rulings that denied the right of use of sperm for artificial reproduction w/o the permission of the man involved. Skinner v. Oklahoma involved sterilization of a man. Women are affected more if the rights don’t exist, largely since they are the ones who get pregnant, yes.
September 6, 2011, 4:32 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I think somebody needs to stop digging that hole. Draw a number line, Justin, and see where 45.3 falls on it.
September 6, 2011, 4:33 pmOwen H says:
Is the corollary true as well? If they didn’t recognize it as a crime then, then it isn’t?
I’m going to assume you also mean that things like laws banning homosexuality should still be on the books, like many backwards countries.
September 6, 2011, 4:35 pmOwen H says:
Then what rights does a man not have that he should?
September 6, 2011, 4:40 pmjustin says:
Locki,
I know who La Griffe is, and he is one of the most renown pyschometricians in the world. I won’t give his name, but you can find it with some Google searches. The data that he presents is commonly known among the intelligence community. He just conveys it in such a compelling manner and provides the math so that any detractor can take a stab; so far no definitive takers to the challenge.
So yes, RBG, might not of known him, but she should have known of his work given his day job. Afterall, if you claim to be a “justice” how can you not read psychometrics nearly regularly? People like RBG make their opinions upon premises that have been proven false, yet they refuse to open their minds. Sickening.
I am sorry you couldn’t make it through at least one or two articles. The data on some countries is pretty weak, however, once you get to know the material you will find that certain populations have certain life skills that far transcend their mental capacities. The article on Jews and Noble Prizes is great.
September 6, 2011, 4:45 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
I agree that first trimester abortions were generally legal, and you could make a case that the federal government lacks authority to ban first trimester abortions. By the same reasoning, you would have to decide whether states can regulate abortion based on the state of the laws in 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.
By the way: abortions past the quickening not allowed is not the position that NARAL takes; they support abortions right up to the point the baby’s head starts to crown.
When you say that a law was “illegitimate”: in what sense? If you mean that you disagreed with it, that’s fine. That doesn’t make it unconstitutional.
You say that looking at what was legal in 1789 isn’t the only basis for determining whether something is a reserved right. On what other basis will you determine this? What makes you feel good?
September 6, 2011, 4:45 pmBarb's Fan says:
Again inferring majority will is a non-sequitur. Those laws themselves were designed to keep a less than a majority at the voting polls.
Franklin, as effective governor, btw was responsible for removing PA’s religious test in part because he knew he couldn’t pass it!
September 6, 2011, 4:49 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
It means that if something was a felony in 1789, it’s hardly a constitutional right. If the people, through their elected representatives, want to repeal such laws (as many did), they have that right. I supported California’s 1975 repeal of its oral and anal sex laws, and I would not support passing new versions. But they are certainly constitutional, in spite of Lawrence‘s falsification of history.
September 6, 2011, 4:50 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
They certainly represent a majority of the voters. You are going to have to work pretty hard to demonstrate that non-voters were at variance with respect to religion.
September 6, 2011, 4:53 pmMDT says:
Joe,
Whatever “seems” to be the case, men have reproductive rights. They can use birth control, for instance. There has [sic] been state rulings that denied the right of use of sperm for artificial reproduction w/o the permission of the man involved.
And then there are cases like this one. I forget whether the similar, and more famous, case of the woman who insisted a man use a condom for oral sex and then fished it out of the trash and inseminated herself ever was resolved, but she, too, sued for child support. You need to work very hard indeed to get pregnant performing fellatio. But not as hard as you do paying the resultant child support.
Skinner v. Oklahoma involved sterilization of a man.
Yes, sterilization is pretty much off the table nowadays, apart from the folks who tell men that if that if they don’t want to pay child support, they can always get snipped.
Women are affected more if the rights don’t exist, largely since they are the ones who get pregnant, yes.
No, you’ve missed the whole point. Women and men are equally affected if there aren’t reproductive rights, because both women and men are capable naturally of reproducing.
Female reproductive rights seem to include having sex whenever we want with whomever we want, bearing any resulting children if (and only if) we wish, and annexing a portion of the biological father’s income as long as the child is a minor. If the biological father decides to take a pay cut, this will likely not affect what he owes. And if the biological father is unknown, or otherwise an inconvenient source of funding, the mother’s husband will do, even if the child is provably not his.
OTOH, there is no male equivalent of cheap biological child-production free of the long-term presence of the other sex. There are no “surrogate mother banks,” and there couldn’t be absent massive subsidy. But women who want to have a baby can just do it. Heck, if we skip the sperm bank part, we can get 18 years of monthly checks out of it.
So: Women can opt out of parenthood after conception; men can’t. (Women can opt out after birth, for that matter.) But women can opt for biological parenthood, without a father as a permanent presence; men can’t (with very rare exceptions) do the like re mothers.
September 6, 2011, 5:00 pmloki13 says:
Pretty weak? Uh- that would be the under statement of the year.
Huh? Look- either IQ is measuring this “g” thing, or it isn’t. Either it is measuring “mental capacities” (which would include life skills) or it isn’t. But assuming, arguendo, it is, those scores are way off.
If someone wants to make the point that there might be small differences, I might see the basis for the claim. But this is clearly BS.* This was the first article I came across (I did a search for “la griffe”, it was the third result). I have no desire to read any further after that.
*In a past life, I had to deal with this data set. It was BS then, it is BS now. It doesn’t even pass the laugh test if you think about it for more than a half-second.
September 6, 2011, 5:02 pmloki13 says:
Clayton-
Just to get you on the record, what, exactly, are you claiming was a crime in 1789? Abortion? Infanticide? Does the age of the fetus matter? What about the quickening? You seem to keep dodging around this, while continually asserting it. So, please, tell us. What, exactly, was the crime?
September 6, 2011, 5:04 pmjustin says:
I am sorry that you cannot see the truth in numbers. I suppose the law is a good home for a person who wants something challenging but cannot bear the thought of being schooled by a Chinese. The life skills comment I made reflects the fact that at least one population group appears to have a superior oral ability wherein very low-IQ members of that group speak with a higher fluency than do equally low-IQ members of other groups. “G” as measured by IQ is a general measure of intelligence or reasoning ability across a subset of tests.
La Griffe’s data is no BS, it the best of the best and comports nearly perfectly with the world as it is. If you capable, then you can find the flaws in his math. I am sure he will graciously accept defeat. You could even enlist all the liberals in the world to help you. I am sure you would all make millions in the process and be hailed as heroes for equality. The problem is, it cannot be done.
September 6, 2011, 5:11 pmMDT says:
Owen H,
Then what rights does a man not have that he should?
He should have whatever women see as their reproductive rights, or as close as we can approximate given the biological differences. He should have the right, as a woman does, to forgo parental responsibilities for a fetus between conception and birth (or up to a month post-birth, depending on the state); he should have something in place like a subsidized surrogacy agency so that he can have biological kids without the bother of a wife just as women can without the bother of a husband; he should have access to a family law in which an overwhelming fraction of verdicts in favor of the mother’s full custody is presumptive evidence of gender bias.
I don’t favor all of this; I don’t favor the majority of it. But if “reproductive rights” means “I can have sex whenever I want, have children or not as it suits me, and get the biological father (or my husband, whichever is more solvent) to pay for their upkeep,” then that’s more or less what the male equivalent would look like.
September 6, 2011, 5:14 pmShelbyC says:
Heck, a man arguable has too many rights. For example, he can donate sperm without being required to support his offspring.
September 6, 2011, 5:15 pmjustin says:
Laura,
You cannot change facts despite your hatred of men. The fact is, 45.3% is below the median. If, as you are promoting, 45.3% = 50%, then pay an extra 4.7 points every time you buy something. Afterall, that is a nominal difference. Go to your boss and ask for a small decrease in pay. Then do it again and again. Remember, each time is just a small decrement. No big deal.
September 6, 2011, 5:17 pmJoe says:
I agree that first trimester abortions were generally legal, and you could make a case that the federal government lacks authority to ban first trimester abortions.
The line was quickening, so that isn’t quite true, but regardless, just looking at what was “generally legal” in 1791 isn’t the only way to determine what a “reserved right” is.
By the same reasoning, you would have to decide whether states can regulate abortion based on the state of the laws in 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.
I’m not using your reasoning, so this only takes me so far.
By the way: abortions past the quickening not allowed is not the position that NARAL takes; they support abortions right up to the point the baby’s head starts to crown.
I don’t quite believe that is quite true but I’m not trying to defend NARAL here.
When you say that a law was “illegitimate”: in what sense? If you mean that you disagreed with it, that’s fine. That doesn’t make it unconstitutional.
It could be “illegitimate” in various ways, including unconstitutional. The mere fact the feds passed a criminal law doesn’t in itself make the law constitutional, including as a violation of a reserved right.
You say that looking at what was legal in 1789 isn’t the only basis for determining whether something is a reserved right. On what other basis will you determine this? What makes you feel good?
What makes me feel good? Another serious man!
The issue was not if it was “legal” as such, but if it was “criminal” under the law in place. That is, it was a criminal statute. But, if Congress passed a criminal statute that violated the 1A, because a majority had the raw power to do so, it still would be unconstitutional. The same applies to “reserved rights.” Various ways are in place — books have been written — to find a meaning there. Merely looking at 1791 statute books not the only one.
September 6, 2011, 5:20 pmloki13 says:
*shrug* Well, it has been a while since my undegraduate work in econometrics (I did my major work in the 90s on the different lag effects of monetary and fiscal policy), but, yeah, math is hard. Thank god I didn’t take those three years in college past the five semesters of calc I took in high school!
So let’s go to the data. An EQ *average* person has an IQ of 59. BTW, that would put the average person in EQ in terms of mental capability below the bottom .5% of all Americans.
Just stop and think about that for a second.
The *average* person in EQ (Joe Blow) has the mental capacity below that of the the dumbest .5% of Americans.
It’s one thing to say there might be some differences in population groups in mental capacity. It’s another thing to use data which is obviously incorrect.
September 6, 2011, 5:23 pmjustin says:
Laura,
The mean IQ is something that can be forced to fit 100 and that is common. You need to understand this in order to understand the data. Remember in a normal distribution the mean = mode = median. From that, you should understand the answer to your own question.
September 6, 2011, 5:23 pmPLR says:
Abortion topics bring out the crazy, examples 235 and 236:
Our children is not learning science.
The first two are correct. That third one is an arbitrary, legislatively-granted right. Write your state legislator.
September 6, 2011, 5:24 pmShelbyC says:
Does the fact that this “right” kicks in at a more or less arbitrary time call into question whether or not it’s really a right?
September 6, 2011, 5:29 pmjustin says:
Do you have better data? Why do you think data isn’t collected? Because everyone is trying to avoid the “good news?” You make the mistake of thinking that one piece of data invalidates an entire research project or experiment. That is false. The only reason a person would do such a thing is to protect their emotions. You know it and I know it. The thing is, the Chinese at BGI or some other institution are going to prove the very thing you are trying to hide from. And they are going to do it via genetics. What will happen is that as the country becomes less and less wealthy and the more definitive data creeps in, the social masses will start to believe less and less in an unfounded belief that all world populations are identical in all ways. Belief in bald-faced lie is easy when everything is going great; but there is not need to pretend when your life is less than ideal. I would advise that you not view yourself as part of a group, then it is easy to accept and to move on.
September 6, 2011, 5:33 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Infanticide was a crime. Abortion after the quickening clearly was. You could make an argument that first trimester abortion were constitutionally protected, but not third trimester abortions. (To NARAL, that makes you one of those evil people trying to force women to be barefoot and pregnant.) Of course, such an argument would require some intellectual honesty and rigor that Roe v. Wade utterly failed to have.
I am not dodging; I am providing a wealth of information, not all of which fits into the neat pro-life/pro-choice extremes.
September 6, 2011, 5:36 pmShelbyC says:
fify
September 6, 2011, 5:37 pmJoe says:
And then there are cases like this one.
The man had a claim against the woman, arising from abuse of a reproductive nature. So, the man had reproductive rights.
sued for child support
The state interest there is for the needs of the child. If a man poked holes in a condom, the woman still has child support responsibilities if she is able.
Yes, sterilization is pretty much off the table nowadays, apart from the folks who tell men that if that if they don’t want to pay child support, they can always get snipped.
Women need to take care of babies too; they can not if they get sterilized. Not seeing the inequality.
No, you’ve missed the whole point. Women and men are equally affected if there aren’t reproductive rights, because both women and men are capable naturally of reproducing.
I don’t know what “the point” is here, but this doesn’t change that women in various cases have it harder w/o reproductive rights. Citing support requirements doesn’t refute this, since if women have the means, they have to support. Men however don’t carry pregnancies to term.
Female reproductive rights seem to include having sex whenever we want with whomever we want
Brad Pitt must be busy.
bearing any resulting children if (and only if) we wish
right. you want others to determine when they should carry things to term? I believe Margaret Atwood has a novel for you.
and annexing a portion of the biological father’s income as long as the child is a minor.
Women too have to pay. If the father cannot, they need not.
If the biological father decides to take a pay cut, this will likely not affect what he owes.
Ability to pay does affect what he owes.
And if the biological father is unknown, or otherwise an inconvenient source of funding, the mother’s husband will do, even if the child is provably not his.
Only in certain cases is this true and the interest is the good of the child. Even if the mother wants to waive it, it is set by the state for the child’s interests.
OTOH, there is no male equivalent of cheap biological child-production free of the long-term presence of the other sex.
Men don’t have to carry to term either. Want to trade? Seriously, this claim of male victimhood is a tad bit pathetic. Men traditionally willy-nilly had cheap sex w/o consequences and even now getting child support is quite impossible in many cases. You know, back in the real world.
There are no “surrogate mother banks,” and there couldn’t be absent massive subsidy. But women who want to have a baby can just do it. Heck, if we skip the sperm bank part, we can get 18 years of monthly checks out of it.
Gay men and infertile women and couples have hired surrogate women. Yes, pregnancy is so very easy. Just “do it.”
So: Women can opt out of parenthood after conception; men can’t. (Women can opt out after birth, for that matter.) But women can opt for biological parenthood, without a father as a permanent presence; men can’t (with very rare exceptions) do the like re mothers
The person who has to carry to term specifically has an additional bodily integrity interest. If men ala Arnold in Junior did that, they too could abort. Women and men can in various cases revoke their parental rights. Both in various cases have support requirements. If the woman wished to go away, as men often do, men can be a father w/o the mother being around. Men meanwhile don’t have to actually carry to term and deal with the various consequences of this fact. I know, trivial next to your list of woes.
September 6, 2011, 5:41 pmJoe says:
Does the fact that this “right” kicks in at a more or less arbitrary time call into question whether or not it’s really a right?
More “less” because there are various quite reasonable reasons for the lines drawn.
September 6, 2011, 5:52 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Trade? Absolutely not! But I’m glad that brought up two points:
1. Men and women are not interchangeable; sex is not socially constructed.
2. Irresponsible men have a strong interest in keeping abortion cheap and legal, because it’s a way to reduce their economic injury from their irresponsibility.
September 6, 2011, 5:55 pmShelbyC says:
So? There are quite reasonable reasons to draw the line in many different places. Birth, conception, quickening, determining a reasonable time for the woman to react to the news that she’s pregnant, etc.
September 6, 2011, 5:59 pmMDT says:
PLR,
Our children is not learning science.
OK, how about this: Men and women are each capable of reproducing, with the aid of the other. Or is our children learning parthenogenesis?
September 6, 2011, 6:06 pmTed says:
Conception?
September 6, 2011, 6:12 pmJoe says:
1. Men and women are not interchangeable; sex is not socially constructed.
Gender is to some degree.
2. Irresponsible men have a strong interest in keeping abortion cheap and legal, because it’s a way to reduce their economic injury from their irresponsibility.
The fact certain rights benefit irresponsible people is granted.
So? There are quite reasonable reasons to draw the line in many different places. Birth, conception, quickening, determining a reasonable time for the woman to react to the news that she’s pregnant, etc.
Some more reasonable than others. So, we need to determine by weighing various things in the balance what is the best way under our system. It is not merely by arbitrary whim. To the original question, the fact that other reasonable alternatives (such as how many countries handle trials) are possible doesn’t in itself call into question if it is a “right” under our laws.
September 6, 2011, 6:13 pmShelbyC says:
We?
September 6, 2011, 6:21 pmMDT says:
Joe,
The man had a claim against the woman, arising from abuse of a reproductive nature. So, the man had reproductive rights.
The man in question indulged in conduct that wouldn’t have gotten anyone pregnant absent the woman’s actions. Yep, “abuse of a reproductive nature”; yep, “a claim.” The bits you are leaving out are who won, and who was abusive, and how they seem to coincide.
September 6, 2011, 6:26 pmPLR says:
We’ll settle this once and for all. We’ll give a woman access to a sperm bank, and give a man access to an egg bank, and see who emerges first with an actual human being.
September 6, 2011, 6:32 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t hate men, Justin. You are irritated because I am pointing out your fallacies. My pointing them out is not due to hatred of you, it’s due to hatred of sloppy thinking.
I never promoted that 45.3% = 50%. My statement, drawn from your link, was that there is a 45 – 50% chance that a randomly drawn pair would have the woman with higher IQ than the man. I invite you to go back and review my comment. And 45.3 is between 45 and 50.
It’s not man-hating to point out the facts, any more than it is woman-hating to do so. It’s not man-hating to point out that you are misquoting me in an effort to prove me wrong, when I am right.
September 6, 2011, 6:48 pmShelbyC says:
Language!!
September 6, 2011, 6:54 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Justin, I know all about what a normal distribution is. You said that it was most likely that a random man has an IQ of 100. “Mean” doesn’t mean “most”. That random man has less than a 5% chance of having an IQ of 100, maybe 2.5%. So he is way more likely than not to NOT have an IQ of 100. There’s probably about a 50% chance that his IQ is between 90 and 110. But that range is way broader than the difference between the average male score and the average female score.
September 6, 2011, 7:20 pmMDT says:
Joe,
The state interest there is for the needs of the child. If a man poked holes in a condom, the woman still has child support responsibilities if she is able.
If a man poked holes in a condom, and for some reason she chose to bear the child, ceded custody to him, and made much more than he did, the cases would be precisely similar.
Women need to take care of babies too; they can not if they get sterilized. Not seeing the inequality.
The “inequality” is that “Don’t want babies? Get your tubes tied!” isn’t isn’t what most people mean by “reproductive choice,” now is it?
[snip — no, that isn't what I meant.]
right. you want others to determine when they should carry things to term? I believe Margaret Atwood has a novel for you.
As one “thing” speaking to another “thing,” both carried to term, I submit that Margaret Atwood has a novel for those who really, really want to believe that Canadians are the last outpost of living, human, caring civilization.
and annexing a portion of the biological father’s income as long as the child is a minor.
Joe: Women too have to pay. If the father cannot, they need not.
If the biological father decides to take a pay cut, this will likely not affect what he owes.
Joe: Ability to pay does affect what he owes.
——-
“Ability to pay” is not based on “what the non-custodial parent is now making.” What the non-custodial parent once made is part of the formula, and I gather it’s not easy to downsize your lifestyle, or rather the lifestyle to which your infant has become accustomed. (Therefore it’s entirely natural for [say] Barry Bonds’ kids to have deserved 20K/mo between them. I mean, we’re talking Barry Bonds’ sperm here!) If you’re working a long-hours, high-stress job, and drop it for something less stressful and less remunerative, it might be the best thing you could do, but not maybe for your wife and kids. Unless you’re divorced, in which case it will take some convincing to get the government to believe that you actually make less money.
Men don’t have to carry to term either. Want to trade? Seriously, this claim of male victimhood is a tad bit pathetic. Men traditionally willy-nilly had cheap sex w/o consequences and even now getting child support is quite impossible in many cases. You know, back in the real world.
Men don’t get to carry to term. If you don’t think that’s a privilege, ask women if they’d agree to quick, painless sterilization for everyone with an XX chromosome.
September 6, 2011, 7:25 pmJoe says:
ShelbyC says:
Joe: So, we need to determine by weighing various things in the balance what is the best way under our system.
We?
“We” as in the people talking about the issue here or we as a society when we set in place the rules, elect people who choose the judges who interpret it, etc.
MDT says:
Joe,
The man had a claim against the woman, arising from abuse of a reproductive nature. So, the man had reproductive rights.
The man in question indulged in conduct that wouldn’t have gotten anyone pregnant absent the woman’s actions. Yep, “abuse of a reproductive nature”; yep, “a claim.” The bits you are leaving out are who won, and who was abusive, and how they seem to coincide.
The court held that the man has the right to bring the claim and if he proved it, it was “truly extreme and outrageous” in respect to proper sexual/reproductive related behavior to the degree damages could be appropriate. This doesn’t really seem to help YOUR argument though.
The lawsuit was not the same as the one I referenced either — the claim here was “theft,” and legally, the court determined he “gave” the sperm to her. Forced paternity wasn’t mentioned. I read the opinion as well. Phillips v. Irons (2005).
September 6, 2011, 7:30 pmMDT says:
PLR,
We’ll settle this once and for all. We’ll give a woman access to a sperm bank, and give a man access to an egg bank, and see who emerges first with an actual human being.
Let’s first stipulate that the power is out and the water system is hopelessly compromised by earthquakes, and that the people who still know how to run the sperm banks and the egg banks are mostly men and women, respectively, while the people running their power supplies are mainly men.
If there’s a woman running the sperm bank and a man running the egg bank, we’d better damn well hope they are close to one another.
September 6, 2011, 7:33 pmShelbyC says:
But we set in place two types of rules, right? One set is the rules for what we are allowed to do, and that is what judges interpret when they determine the scope of state power defined in the constitution. And currently judges have decided that “we” are not allowed to “determine by weighing various things in the balance what is the best way under our system.” But it sounds like you are arguing that we should be allowed to do that, no?
September 6, 2011, 7:44 pmJohn L says:
Well, for one thing, the entire argument rests on the idea of “g,” which is an entirely hypothetical construct to begin with. Having administered many, many IQ tests in my lifetime, I’d argue that it’s utterly ridiculous to suggest that an IQ test measures a unitary construct, much less that it encapsulates all of “intelligence. Or, for that matter, to say that a 4-point IQ difference makes one person “smarter” than another.
September 6, 2011, 7:45 pmJoe says:
If a man poked holes in a condom, and for some reason she chose to bear the child, ceded custody to him, and made much more than he did, the cases would be precisely similar.
If the child is born, even if one or the other parent is guilty of trickery, support based on need is applied.
The “inequality” is that “Don’t want babies? Get your tubes tied!” isn’t isn’t what most people mean by “reproductive choice,” now is it?
You said that men have to pay support of a child that is born unless they get sterilized. The same applies to women.
[snip — no, that isn’t what I meant.]
Ok.
[Silly comment about Canada omitted]
“Ability to pay” is not based on “what the non-custodial parent is now making.”
It’s a factor.
What the non-custodial parent once made is part of the formula, and I gather it’s not easy to downsize your lifestyle, or rather the lifestyle to which your infant has become accustomed.
Sure. Support payments are still partially based on current income. If you now only make 5K a year instead of 50K, the support is not likely to be the same.
[Barry Bonds account skipped over.]
Men don’t get to carry to term. If you don’t think that’s a privilege, ask women if they’d agree to quick, painless sterilization for everyone with an XX chromosome.
Women use birth control because they don’t want to have a child. If they don’t want a child, they don’t see it as a “privilege” to get pregnant, what they are avoiding. Pregnancy is a major burden for girls and women even when they WANT to be pregnant. The chance of being pregnant when they don’t want to be, much more so.
So, yet again, both men and women have reproductive rights, and they often are much more important for women, especially in the current world we live in.
September 6, 2011, 7:48 pmSarcastro says:
Whoa, I think justin has quantified life!
IQ is correlated with ‘g’ which is correlated with success in life.
This clearly means IQ measures, if not intelligence, the quantity of ‘destiny to succeed’ a person contains within them.
Are we sure his name is justin and not Lachesis?
September 6, 2011, 7:54 pmJoe says:
But we set in place two types of rules, right?
It depends on how we divide “rules” into categories.
One set is the rules for what we are allowed to do, and that is what judges interpret when they determine the scope of state power defined in the constitution.
“We” the people enacted the Constitution. The judges interpret what “we” enacted.
And currently judges have decided that “we” are not allowed to “determine by weighing various things in the balance what is the best way under our system.” But it sounds like you are arguing that we should be allowed to do that, no?
If “we” think the current law is wrong, “we” can pass new ones, including constitutional amendments that draw some other line than the one judges have interpreted the current Constitution requires.
September 6, 2011, 8:00 pmMDT says:
Joe,
If the child is born, even if one or the other parent is guilty of trickery, support based on need is applied.
It would be very interesting were “support based on need” applied. What does the child need? Shall we think about what the child needs? Has it anything to do with what either parent makes or has?
Did Sun Bonds’ kids need $20K/mo.? Is the only reason I don’t because my mother failed to marry a major league baseball star?
Would it make sense to assess what it took to keep a child well-fed and well-clothed and well-prepared for school in a given neighborhood, and call that the declared non-custodial parent child support? Or (alternatively) to ask that all child-support funds be accounted for via receipts, as being actually spent on (y’know) the child?
September 6, 2011, 8:09 pmzuch says:
OIC. It’s the state’s business — in your mind — if married couples use birth control. Do I have that right? Anything else the state should be checking in on regularly? Sufficient broccoli eating? Teeth brushing?
Cheers,
September 6, 2011, 8:10 pmOrenWithAnE says:
I didn’t imply that Roe caused any of those things, only that the “political turmoil” that tamerlane referred to couldn’t have been that bad.
That is, he said Roe led to political turmoil over the last 40 years. I then remarked that if that’s political turmoil then political turmoil is not incompatible with unprecedentedly positive outcomes.
September 6, 2011, 8:12 pmTed says:
This has always irked me. There is some maximum amount of money that a kid needs, regardless of who his parents are. That amount should be the maximum a court can order for support. Bonds’ kid has to shop at Walmart? So be it. If Bonds still had parental control over where the kid shops, he could certainly limit his choices to Walmart. Or can a kid sue his custodial parents for not keeping up his chosen lifestyle?
September 6, 2011, 8:14 pmreadery says:
Over the years I’ve pointed out that the language the Supreme Court used in Roe on the nature of the Due Process Clause’s “application” is very similar to language it has historically used in enemy combatant cases.
The analogy to enemy combatants is I think a fruitful one. Enemy combantants can’t possibly have the rights of constitutional “persons”, for the simple reason that the government has a right to kill them on sight with no process at all. Government can’t possibly have the right to kill “persons” in the full sense of the word. The only reason enemy combatant court cases have arisen is that the military has sometimes chosen to capture rather than kill; if it had simply killed court cases wouldn’t ever have happened.
Yet, the fact that enemy combatants aren’t “persons” in the full sense of the word doesn’t make them mere pieces of meat or objects empty of moral consequences. Society, and government, can legitimately legislate morality, even hamstringing and risking the lives of our own soldiers, in order to implement moral traditions which mediate and limit our right to kill and prohibit purposeless killing even when we exercise it.
Moreover, although it is a plain historical fact that rules regarding the treatment of combatants arose during the Middle Ages under the auspices of theologians, we don’t think of advocates of morality in war as being something medieval in the sense of being opposed to modernity, and we don’t think of them as fundamentalists seeking to impose religion on a secular society. Even though we regard security as a fundamental right and a fundamental need, our courts have never interpreted the constitution in a way that would regard Americans’ security rights as trumping state interests in the protection of enemy combatants, striking laws protecting them them down as unconstitutional if they are thought to impose an undue burden on our security or on our soldiers’ freedom of action.
The State of Texas overplayed its hand in Roe. Texas defended its statute by claiming a fetus was a person and thus entitled to panoply of constitutional rights. The Roe court rightly reasoned that that couldn’t be so. But it wrongly went on to conclude that if something isn’t a full constitutional person, then the state’s interests in its life, health, and welfare are highly attenuated.
The enemy combatant cases make clear that this reasoning is simply nonsense, and a profound error.
For example, in the first Carhart case, Justices Stephens and Ginsburg wrote a concurring opinion saying that politicians shouldn’t second guess professionals, and if a professional can legally kill, it’s irrational for the state to worry about the method the professional uses to do the job. The enemy combatant cases profoundly illustrate the chilling wrongness and moral repugnance of this line of reasoning. To their credit, Justices Stephens and Ginsburg demonstrated they never actually believed what they were saying; they weren’t actually prepared give to military professionals the deference they had advocated in Carhart when their own moral values were at stake. But the fact that they were willing to put an opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court reports whose logic, if taken seriously, is just as dismissive of objections to torture in the enemy combatant context as in the abortion one, suggests that there really and truly is something wrong with Roe.
September 6, 2011, 8:15 pmMDT says:
Joe,
The court held that the man has the right to bring the claim and if he proved it, it was “truly extreme and outrageous” in respect to proper sexual/reproductive related behavior to the degree damages could be appropriate. This doesn’t really seem to help YOUR argument though.
The lawsuit was not the same as the one I referenced either — the claim here was “theft,” and legally, the court determined he “gave” the sperm to her. Forced paternity wasn’t mentioned. I read the opinion as well. Phillips v. Irons (2005).
The fact is that the dude had oral sex with his girlfriend, and that no one alleges that he had any other sort of sex with her; that she deliberately inseminated herself with sperm that couldn’t possibly have impregnated her without her considerable help; and that she wangled $170K+ out of him for producing a baby that she bore entirely on her own initiative.
September 6, 2011, 8:19 pmJoe says:
It would be very interesting were “support based on need” applied. What does the child need? Shall we think about what the child needs? Has it anything to do with what either parent makes or has?
The “need” involves weighing the needs of each party in some fashion and yes, in this country, “need” of the child in practice will be affected by how much one or the other parent (e.g., if Bonnie Bonds made 20M while her ex is an unemployed stay at home dad) makes.
It would be very interesting to live in some other world, perhaps one where Barry Bonds wouldn’t make 20M playing baseball, while some social worker is laid off for lack of funds.
September 6, 2011, 8:25 pmMDT says:
Ted.
If Bonds still had parental control over where the kid shops, he could certainly limit his choices to Walmart.
Exactly. Just as a married dad could refuse to pay for a kid’s college tuition, but a divorced dad might be made to pay. Bonds married could hold his kids to whatever standard of living he thought best; but Bonds divorced is a different story. Now the standard of living assumed for ex-wife and kids is basically what a judge with that money would do with it.
September 6, 2011, 8:28 pmJoe says:
readery: Enemy combatants can’t possibly have the rights of constitutional “persons”, for the simple reason that the government has a right to kill them on sight with no process at all. Government can’t possibly have the right to kill “persons” in the full sense of the word.
If the enemy combatant is in detention, the government doesn’t have the right simply to kill them.
MDS: The fact is that the dude had oral sex with his girlfriend, and that no one alleges that he had any other sort of sex with her
is someone disputing this?
that she deliberately inseminated herself with sperm that couldn’t possibly have impregnated her without her considerable help;
okay. again …
and that she wangled $170K+ out of him for producing a baby that she bore entirely on her own initiative.
And, the court held that the man had a claim against her for the “truly extreme and outrageous” action she did, if he could prove it. Meanwhile, if able, she too (other than carrying to term) will have to pay support. Plus any civil damages to the man.
This obviously is a rare case — not too many cases of women saving sperm from oral; men have in various ways tricked or pressured women in ways that led to pregnancy too. Many carried to term, particularly those who oppose abortion. But, your whining about men being harmed elides past reality to focus on a rare case and even there the woman was liable. This isn’t impressive.
September 6, 2011, 8:35 pmMDT says:
Joe,
The “need” involves weighing the needs of each party in some fashion and yes, in this country, “need” of the child in practice will be affected by how much one or the other parent (e.g., if Bonnie Bonds made 20M while her ex is an unemployed stay at home dad) makes.
So Bonnie’s children will need 20K/mo.? “In practice,” of course. The neediest children among us need $300K/year at least to flourish; $240/K is, “in practice,” only appropriate for children relatively privileged. I trust you have a source for all the proportionately larger needs for the proportionately needier children.
September 6, 2011, 8:35 pmJoe says:
So Bonnie’s children will need 20K/mo.?
Nope. They “need” it under the system we have, one that leaves something to be desired. That’s the point of me bringing up that social worker. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Again, if Bonnie Bonds made the 20M, the same would apply.
September 6, 2011, 8:43 pmMDT says:
Joe,
This obviously is a rare case — not too many cases of women saving sperm from oral; men have in various ways tricked or pressured women in ways that led to pregnancy too.
You think? Not a lot of men in this century or the last two desperate to get unmarried women pregnant.
Many carried to term, particularly those who oppose abortion.
The first hint here (from you, that is) that there are such people.
But, your whining about men being harmed elides past reality to focus on a rare case and even there the woman was liable. This isn’t impressive.
Enh. I wasn’t “whining” about men being harmed; I was wondering what “reproductive rights” would look like if men and women both had them. The gist of that was that men, like women, would be able to have sex without filial consequences; and men, like women, would be able to have biological children at nominal cost, without long-term emotional and economic attachment to someone of the opposite sex. At the moment neither’s true. You want ‘em true, go for it.
September 6, 2011, 8:48 pmMDT says:
Joe,
Nope. They “need” it under the system we have, one that leaves something to be desired. That’s the point of me bringing up that social worker. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Sorry, sir, still not getting it here. How does Sun (or Bonnie) Bonds’ kids getting $20K per month in “child support” have bugger all to do with social work? If you mean that social workers might do more good trolling the Maybeck homes an the like, rather than Jones and Turk, sure. But there is no way that any child in any part of this country needs $20K/mo.
September 6, 2011, 8:55 pmNM Kerr says:
The IQ gap is larger between Asians and whites does that mean that Asians should be running the US? The so called cap is both statistically and functionally irreverent.
September 6, 2011, 9:00 pmA. Cooper says:
. . . that doesn’t strike me as so far from the status quo, actually. How many states lack abortion providers altogether? How many people in the US don’t live within 50 miles of an abortion provider?
September 6, 2011, 10:35 pmMDJD from NY says:
Bear in mind, though, that the tests tht measure IQ have been validated in certain populations whose members have myriad cultural assumptions. If you translate the test and take it to another country, your data are not valid, no matter how good a mathematician (or statistician) you are. Also, the tests must be administered correctly, which takes a lot of training.
So the average IQ of 59 in Equatorial Guinea, or wherever, probably indicates that the test used by the investigators either was invalid in that context or was incorrectly administered.
September 6, 2011, 10:37 pmMDJD from NY says:
Ummm…in experimental science the experimenter has the burden of demonstrating that the experimental methodology is valid. I.e., that he or she isn’t publishing a great statistical analysis of dreck they collected.
September 6, 2011, 10:40 pmagimarc says:
I think you smart guys missed Newt’s point on the judiciary. For if congress can establish the inferior courts, it can most certainly disestablish the inferior courts – conducting a mass house cleaning of leftists from the federal bench in one constitutional fell swoop.
If Jefferson can do it with the right congress, so can a future conservative president. Disestablish a Federal Circuit on a Monday. Stand it up again the following Monday complete with transfer of all outstanding cases. Won’t take more than doing this once or twice before all the other Circuits get the idea.
The abortion discussion is the functional equivalent of shouting “Squirrel!” to a pack of dogs (a la the Disney movie “Up”). You guys for the most part chased the squirrel. Too bad for you. The real game is disestablishing the inferior courts via act of congress.
Sleep well. Cheers -
September 6, 2011, 10:57 pmreadery says:
Indeed the government does have this right, so far as the constitution is concerned, unless the detention occurs in a place where the constitution has “application.” The constitution lacks application extraterritorially and prenatally.
Boumediene v. Bush carefully reviewed the United States’ relationship with Guantanamo Bay and concluded that it was U.S. territory for constitutional purposes. But had they concluded otherwise, the courts could not have become involved.
September 6, 2011, 11:54 pmJustin says:
There are culture-neutral IQ tests that rely on logical sequencing and other performance problems. However, you don’t need an IQ test to estimate or closely approximate IQ across a large population; a standardized test like the SAT or TIMMS will do well.
September 7, 2011, 12:47 amzuch says:
You need to get your talking points in order. According to such as Mark Steyn (Limbot fill-in), it’s the whites that are going to be outbred to extinction. Which is it? Whites? Or Blacks? Maybe they’ll both fall to those booming Moooooosssllim hordes, if you listen to “Jugs” Atlas or Frank Gaffney or their fellow travelers in hate-mongering….
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 12:54 amzuch says:
It’s nice to be able to just make sh*te up:
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 1:08 amJustin says:
Laura,
In a normal distribution mean = median = mode and mode = most common data point in a set (here is a primer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution) As for the standard deviation of male scores, it will be about 15. Therefore, 68% of men will generally score between 85 and 115. Your comment asserting that the range of male scores is greater than the variance between male and female scores is not really useful because it is a given. I think you are trying to assert that the probability that a man chosen at random will have an IQ equal to 100 is less than 1:1. That is a given. I really don’t know why you are worried about the probability of a man’s IQ being equal to 100. It doesn’t change the fact that men score slightly higher than women on IQ and other g-loaded tests.
September 7, 2011, 1:08 amzuch says:
As Hertz would say, “Not exactly….” Not to mention, in this discussion on ‘incorporation’ under the Constitution in 1789, we’re talking about federal law. How may federal prosecutions of murder were there, much less prosecutions of late abortions? Can you cite any federal prosecution of someone for a late abortion in the 1789-1820 era?
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 1:15 amSChaser says:
What utter nonsense. RvW was one of the worst decisions ever, as evidenced by the huge reaction to it – on the one side, extreme demands for abortion (and even infanticide) and on the other, the rise of a whole new political movement (the Christian right).
SCOTUS arrogated unto itself that for which Democracy (and federalism) was invented, and we have paid dearly for it ever since.
September 7, 2011, 1:22 amJustin says:
Laura,
If you have pointed out a fallacy in my thinking, then I have missed it. I am aware that you wrote that the probability that a woman would have a higher IQ than a man is somewhere between 45 and 50%. However, you could have said it is between 0% and 100% and still have been right. For his data set, La Griffe gave us the more precise 45.3% figure. I am not sure why you don’t understand that 45.3% figure means that if you chose a man and woman at random, there is only a 45.3% probability that the women will be more intelligent than the man. I think you are postulating that because a minority fraction of men score exactly 100 that this means a man pulled at random will more likely have an IQ below 100 than exactly at 100 and that his lower than average IQ will compare unfavorably to the female average. The problem with your thinking is that you are just as likely to pull from the left side of the female mean as you are likely to pull from the male mean. Since the male mean is 2.5 points higher than the female mean, the difference in IQ will likely remain for any random pairing.
September 7, 2011, 1:30 amzuch says:
Of course, the WAIS-R asks as one question: “What color is the American flag?” [sorry, I won't give out answers in advance] Can you say “cultural loading”?
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 2:17 amzuch says:
Then there’s insurance paying for Viagra while the Rethuglicans try to strip any payments for birth control.
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 2:20 amzuch says:
I think you have that backwards. But you seem to argue with yourself here. Were they less “dishonest” in accepting the humanity of slaves, or more “dishonest” in engaging in some dissembling and self-serving bafflegab about how it was just fine and dandy to keep them as slaves even though the owners would graciously [patting themselves on the back] allow that the slaves were human?
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 2:30 amzuch says:
The only reason “IQ” scores are Gaussian is that they normalize the scores!!!
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 2:42 amzuch says:
Well, other than education. And time. There’s an amasing mutation rate in Iowa and Scotland.
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 2:48 amzuch says:
Awesome. Just awesome. What’s your skill set, Justin? Stoopid comments on InterToobz blogs? Just curious….
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 2:55 amRicardo says:
Um, no. See Neisser et al, 1996, “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns” from which I’ve chosen two excerpts below.
And
September 7, 2011, 4:15 amMDJD from NY says:
All of these are culture sensitive in that they are normed on a certain population, and their administration is in a cultural context. I don’t know that any test widely used in the US has been normed and used in a culture of non-literate adults. Do you think the SAT measures intelligence of people who can’t read? The same goes for individually administered tests such as WAIS. They are accurate tests when given to members of populations for which they have been normed, provided they are administered properly. This requires taking a graduate course in administration of these tests. Variations in administration technique results in wide disparity in results.
September 7, 2011, 6:44 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Justin.
You can stop explaining to me, as you have repeatedly done, about what a normal distribution is. I set up statistical control charts at work on Excel, all by myself, from scratch. I am not in third grade.
You misunderstand me. Do you want me to go back through that comment? Or do you want to read it again, for comprehension this time? Let me know if you need me to explain it.
I think you are not thinking hard enough. Here is what you said:
Emphasis mine.
Now if you want to cop to sloppy language here, fine. But you are asserting here that a random man’s IQ is likely 100, when in fact fewer than 5% of men have IQ of 100. You are not grasping the full meaning of that bell curve.
September 7, 2011, 6:52 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I’m glad that you are now aware of this. Before, you weren’t.
The rest of this comment continues to show your error.
45.3 is not zero. If you pull random pairs of men and women, more than 45% of the time the woman’s IQ will be higher. I don’t think you really get this. This number is really close to half. You can’t pull a random pair and say that you know the man’s IQ is higher than the woman’s. If you do, almost half the time you will be wrong.
You can talk about the comparative mean scores. You can say that of the group of people with IQ 130, males are overrepresented. But you cannot say one cottonpicking goddang thing about a specific random person’s IQ based on statistics. Until you get that, you are missing the boat.
September 7, 2011, 7:03 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Okay, that was weird. A chunk of my comment was left out. We don’t like less-than signs, apparently. Should read:
You can say that of the group of people with IQ less than 70, males are overrepresented – I’ve seen figures that say that there are anywhere from 1.2 to 1.7 times as many males in that low IQ group as females. You can say that of the group of people with IQ > 130…
September 7, 2011, 7:10 amJoe says:
Indeed the government does have this right, so far as the constitution is concerned, unless the detention occurs in a place where the constitution has “application.” The constitution lacks application extraterritorially and prenatally.
Under that rule, the government STILL wouldn’t be able to simply kill the enemy combatant — it would have to kill him/her the right place. And, even if a U.S. citizen was involved, the government has the power to shoot them if they were an enemy combatant and on the battlefield.
As to “extra-territorially,” that isn’t really right either, since citizens have rights overseas too. As Justice Kennedy noted in U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez:
In cases involving the extraterritorial application of the Constitution, we have taken care to state whether the person claiming its protection is a citizen, see, e.g., Reid v. Covert, 354 U. S. 1 (1957), or an alien, see, e.g., Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U. S. 763 (1950).
Prenatally, a “person” is not recognized in a full sense. But, extraterritorially, a person is present and has certain legal rights. The breadth of these rights is something of an open question. This includes as rights arising from treaties.
September 7, 2011, 7:32 amJoe says:
Sorry, sir, still not getting it here. How does Sun (or Bonnie) Bonds’ kids getting $20K per month in “child support” have bugger all to do with social work?
Again, the first time I answered your question, I noted how things work and put need in quotes to underline the child doesn’t really “need” all that money, but that is merely how the system determines it, again (contra to your whining) applied to both sexes. I also noted that it would be interesting to imagine another system, including one where social workers (or name some other useful employee, like police or fire personnel) do not lose jobs while ball players make 20M a year.
September 7, 2011, 7:39 amJoe says:
RvW was one of the worst decisions ever, as evidenced by the huge reaction to it — on the one side, extreme demands for abortion (and even infanticide) and on the other, the rise of a whole new political movement (the Christian right).
These threads are interesting, if repetitive. How a decision is so bad because of a “huge reaction” is unclear to me. Let’s take for granted, believe me I’m not accepting it, that there was some “extreme demand” for abortion.
Unless abortion is somehow bad, which still does not mean it is constitutionally unprotected, what’s the point? On the other side, not only was said “political movement” already beginning to grow before the ruling, it was likely to grow in reaction to cultural forces (and the assumed ideal solution: letting states weaken abortion restrictions, as some major ones did, resulting in strong reactions). And, again, Brown v. Bd. had a huge negative reaction too. This doesn’t by itself make it a bad ruling.
September 7, 2011, 7:50 amJoe says:
You think? Not a lot of men in this century or the last two desperate to get unmarried women pregnant.
I’m not merely talking “unmarried” here. Some do like if their wives get pregnant and there is likely as many or more cases of some wanting their unmarried mates to get pregnant to pressure them into marriage as there is women collecting sperm secretly. Also, it isn’t that they want them to get pregnant per se. They do like having sex and pressured women to have sex, even when they might get pregnant. And, once they did, plenty of times, the men didn’t support the women or even claimed it wasn’t theirs.
The first hint here (from you, that is) that there are such people.
Other than talking about those strongly against abortion and not implying in the least that they all suddenly have them once they get pregnant. Also, did I somehow imply otherwise?
I wasn’t “whining” about men being harmed; I was wondering what “reproductive rights” would look like if men and women both had them.
They both have them. You laid out this sob account about how men are so deprived and treated unfairly, when in fact women continue to have more pressures in the real world and things like support apply to both sexes.
The gist of that was that men, like women, would be able to have sex without filial consequences
Women have “consequences.” Women, unlike men, have to carry to term or have an abortion. They can have sex and at worse (and in the real world, quite a few do not) pay support. If they do carry to term, support obligations apply to both. Again, whine whine whine.
and men, like women, would be able to have biological children at nominal cost
The “nominal cost” of pregnancy or having an abortion, something many women at best think is a serious choice and rather not need to make, even if they do think it the best choice available? The nominal cost of carrying to term and raising the child or giving it up for adoption? The nominal cost of state required support requirements that are YET AGAIN applied to both sexes?
Right. No whining. That’s too polite.
without long-term emotional and economic attachment to someone of the opposite sex.
Men have had biological children plenty of times w/o continuing to have much of a “long term emotional” attachment to the biological mother. If one at all.
There really aren’t THAT many men out there who want to raise a child without the mother; but many gay guys have donated sperm and raised the child w/o an economic attachment to the opposite sex. There is some cost involved, but there is cost when a woman biologically conceives on her own too.
The support involved there is for the child. If an unmarried couple has a child, the man isn’t required to provide spousal support or something. It is for the child. To repeat myself, such support is attached to the child, and both sexes pay.
At the moment neither’s true. You want ‘em true, go for it.
Something isn’t true … So, let’s sum up. Both men and women have reproductive rights. You cited support. Both sexes have to pay support. You tossed out a lawsuit. Even there, the man had the right to damages for what the woman did. Women still have to carry to term and repeatedly do not get child support when they do so after the man quite voluntarily had sex with her in a way that might result in a baby. In the real world, the woman still has more burdens in the reproductive rights area.
But, I recognize the bogus reasoning and whining. Unfortunately, it infects more than blog comments.
September 7, 2011, 8:22 amJustin says:
You can use the SAT, TIMMS or other standardized tests to closely estimate IQ across a large population. You can also use logic questions that involve sequencing. The people who develop these tests are skilled at knowing how to make them culture-neutral. What happens is that people don’t like the outcomes of the test so they quibble about small issues that produce nothing more than a minor effect. I am sorry that you don’t like the outcomes of IQ tests. I can assure you that whatever “team” you think you might be on, doesn’t exist. There is nothing to be offended by.
September 7, 2011, 8:40 amJustin says:
Zuch,
The Flynn Effect has not been proven to correlate with increased “g.” Even Flynn has related that the increase in scores does not appear related to “g.” Here is a nice summary by the founder of Autodesk: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/
As for Head Start, it is a waste of money. The benefits of Head Start remain so long as the stimulus is forced upon the child. As the nice ladies are removed from the environment and the child grows into an adult, his ability moves back to a level concomitant with his IQ. Gottfredson has a write-up on the issue here where she credits Jensen’s work: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf
Just click that link, then search for “head start.”
September 7, 2011, 8:56 amJustin says:
MDJD,
If all IQ tests are cultural, and if we establish that the creators of the tests are of a West-European genetics, then why do so many Asian countries perform substantially better than the kin of the test creators? Asian success is a bucket of water on the claims that the tests are so biased that they are meaningless or less than very useful.
Regarding your claim regarding illiterates, I don’t have any data on testing illiterates. However, I am not sure what benefit testing the illiterate would have in proving the existing scores are inaccurate? The modern world is a nerd paradise. If someone is average or above average intelligence, they will have an easy time learning the basics.
You also claim that there is a wide disparity in scores based upon how a test is administered. Do you really believe that a substantial fraction of students are given tests in a noisy environment and others given them in a serene setting. Even so, do you have any data to show the change in scores from one setting to another? What would it say about the general intelligence of a community, if such a test were administered in such a way? Once again, however, you can rely upon the litany of other tests to estimate population intelligence. Nearly every scholastic child receives dozens of standardized tests in his scholastic experience. These tests are given in quiet environments. The data is no different than would be expected from our knowledge of IQ scores. I know this because I was a teacher and I aggregated a ton of data.
September 7, 2011, 9:17 amreadery says:
I referred to the constitutional rights specifically because the government can waive some of its prerogatives on aliens by treaty.
My whole point is that Roe’s language about the word “person” lacking “prenatal application” as being a statement about the nature of a fetus rather than a statement about the nature of the constitution, the jurisdiction of the courts, etc. has been radically undermined by the enemy combatant cases, which in recent years have given this language the latter interpretation, not the former.
Roe contained a test for whether the word “person” applies which, at the time, it purported to be general and conclusive (that is, it purported to reach its conclusion because of a general test faithful to the constitution’s text, rather than come up with a test that would reach a predetermined conclusion in this one case only). The court went through the places in the Constitution that the word “person” is used and noted that none of them were historically thought to apply to a fetus. They aren’t counted in the census, they can’t vote or hold office, etc. etc. But all this is equally true of extraterritorial enemy combatants as well. If Roe’s test really represented a general precendent and wasn’t invented for the specific subject of abortion only, we’d have to conclude extraterritorial enemy combatants fell outside it also.
Moreover, Stephens’ and Ginsburg’s language in Stenberg v. Carhart is also suggestive:
The U.S. Constitution also guarantees a right to raise armies, conduct war, and engage in self defense. Given these rights, is it rational for anyone to be concerned about the allegedly “gruesome” procedure of torture given that the way people die on the battlefield is often equally gruesome? Is it rational for the courts to prevent a military professional from following any procedure he or she thinks reasonably necessary to defend Americans’ acknowledged fundamental right to exist as a nation?
The problem with all this rhetoric is that it purports to be making general propopsitions, yet if one attempts to generalize it it immediately brakes down. An argument that a fundamental right implies that the ends necessarily justify the means would seem illogical, indeed horrifying, to any person whose mind was not wholly consumed with attempting to defend a criticized institution by any means necessary. It’s rhetoric, not logic. It’s propaganda, not argument. And it’s rediculous. The fact that torture is no more gruesome than battlefield wounds doesn’t mean that thinking one is less legally justifiable than the other irrational. It’s an absurd argument! No reasonable person would buy this argument for even a minute. Its supporters on abortion accepted it only because they fervently agreed with the conclusion and hence weren’t inclined to scrutize what the argument actually says. As Stephens and Ginsburg’s later behavior showed, they themselves didn’t actually believe this logic.
The fact arguments like this absurd are concocted in support of the abortion cases suggest that something is wrong with them.
September 7, 2011, 9:20 amloki13 says:
Justin,
I will repeat my very first comment. GIGO.
First, the existence of G as a single concept (as opposed to multiple ways of manifesting, for example different abilities in different mental capacities) is still in dispute. But assuming it exists, your second followup point is nearly complete nonsense.
Yes, a lot of people work very hard to design neutral tests. This is extremely hard to do within one culture. Designing these tests to work across multiple cultures is notoriously hard. Your casual dismissal of these problems (they’re killed at it!) shows an amazing disregard of the work needed and the literature on the subject.
An example of this is your casual invocation of the SATs. First, it is well-known that SATs can be improved through prep courses and study, which means that they aren’t measuring *only* G (if it exists). Second, they are *very* culture and language specific. If they did measure G, they would measure it, at best, for America. Third, you have never addressed the points raised, infra, about your hero’s inclusion of discredited stats (see the Equitorial Guinea stat on IQ) which has been widely disavowed in the literature, and takes (as I noted) a half-second of thought to understand why it’s invalid.
Finally, La Griffe’s use of stats are wonderful if you don’t bother trying to understand what it is that he’s proving. The one article I read (and that was all I could take) uses this approach, with unwarranted assumptions “proving” his smart fraction hypothesis to per capita GDP.
The reason he doesn’t peer review his work isn’t because it’s controversial. There’s a lot of similar academic work.* It’s because his work wouldn’t stand up to any rigorous analysis. You earlier said he needed to be a part of any serious intellectual conversation. From what I’ve seen, there’s a good reason serious intellectuals (as opposed to people who want to confirm what they already know) don’t know about this guy.
*Yes, there’s a fair amount of serious academic work both on G and on race. Strangely, the results are a lot more equivocal than this. It’s fairly difficult to tease out nature v. nurture.
September 7, 2011, 9:27 amJustin says:
Laura,
You got me. I should not have written it is likely 100; but rather with a modal frequency of 100. It is often difficult to maintain B.S. controls when trying to relate which way the current is moving. Waves may move in any direction as dictated by the wind, but the current moves in one direction. I am focused on the current. You are the one who was surprised that men possess higher IQs than women thus indicating your lack of curiosity in the world and the outcome of society. We can now agree that the average man is more intelligent than the average women when chosen at random, and we can agree that while declaring the correct direction of the tide, I made a mistake analogous to declaring a wave to be moving in the wrong direction, and we can agree that throughout your life you have failed to notice the current, but in this case noticed someone else’s mistake with regards to the declaration of wave movement. I can live with that.
For the record, your work in Excel is not really important. IQ is a subject that challenges you from a perspective of self-awareness because most people like to think they are brilliant, but they are not. All of your confusing comments about frequency were nothing more than you trying to come to terms with irrefutable data, proven across billions of points, that you don’t like. What is sad is that so few women thank the so many men that built the modern world and so often for the benefit of the women they love.
September 7, 2011, 9:35 amloki13 says:
Yep. You self-describe well!
Here it is.
In Roe, the Court briefly thought about when life began. There were submissions from religious and medical experts. Then they ducked the question (from a constitutional perspective) since they decided it wasn’t their job. Instead, a person is a person (from a constitutional perspective) when they’re born. So before that, it’s a shifting balance (woman/state) in what could be done.
In B., there is no question about whether an enemy combatant is a “person.” Do you doubt it? The question is whether they are afforded constitutional protection (extra-territoriality of the Constitution).
One case was about “persons.” One case was about how far the Constitution extends.
So yes, your argument is rediculous. :)
September 7, 2011, 9:36 amloki13 says:
Wow. And here, we get to the heart of the matter (in both senses of the word). It’s no wonder you found something that proved what you already knew.
September 7, 2011, 9:38 amJustin says:
Loki,
La Griffe is a leading researcher in this field; someone on the level of Jensen (but he is not Jensen). You have no idea if his posts are peer-reviewed or even collaboratively written, but it doesn’t matter if they were or were not. One of the worst aspects about forced diversity is the rise of credentialism to counter charges of disparate impact. In this case only the accuracy of the data matters. IQ is a raw nerve, everyone wants to be part of tribe and to think their tribe is best. Maybe you are familiar with Bruce Lahn, the Chinese-American research who attempted to study the intersection of genes and intelligence and other characteristics. Well, he ended his quest by saying that such a line of study is a great way to end one’s career since everyone is so PC. To call for peer-reviewed data on La Griffe’s work is to call for someone to commit career-suicide.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/06/bruce-lahn-moving-on-to-non-iq.php
Maybe you are disputing the results of IQ tests because black Americans score 1 SD from white Americans and you find this data difficult to accept. The problem is the predictive power of IQ is just as strong for blacks as it is for whites. Moreover, the SAT is an over predictor of success for blacks and under predictor of success for whites. This knowledge makes it difficult to cast dispersion upon the tests. La Griffe’s work is most useful for his use of thresholds and his fundamental constant of sociology which shows that the 1 Sigma gap between whites and blacks remains for all g-loaded tasks. As this is a law blog, I am sure you are already aware of that passages rates for the Bar differ by about 1 SD between blacks and whites; the same general difference for firefighting tests such as those in question by Ricci.
You write: “The reason he doesn’t peer review his work isn’t because it’s controversial. There’s a lot of similar academic work.* It’s because his work wouldn’t stand up to any rigorous analysis.” Your comment is inaccurate in the extreme. James Watson is one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century. What happened to him? What happened to Bruce Lahn? Bringing up IQ is the best way to be crushed by the PC brigade. Moreover, La Griffe’s work does stand up to scrutiny. If you could show it to be false, then you could make millions of dollars per year giving everyone the good news. However, despite this massive incentive to make millions upon a foundation of a mere few thousand hours work, you cannot do it, nor can anyone else. That is because the data holds for all g-related tasks.
Linda Gottfredson on what happens to professors who study intelligence:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicfreedom.pdf
Linda Gottfredson on logical fallacies used to undermine IQ testing:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009fallacies.pdf
Everything that you write of substance has been disproved by the researchers in the field. Unless you find them to be out to get certain people, how can you deny their work so easily? If you feel so strongly about this, and the growing volume of data that accumulates with each administration of a standardized test, why don’t you go into the field and try to prove these people wrong?
As for results being more equivocal than La Griffes, that too is inaccurate. His data holds for all g-related tests. As for genes and IQ, it was already known that intelligence was largely hereditary, but the data is coming fast and furiously: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20110809/genes-play-big-role-in-intelligence
September 7, 2011, 10:15 amloki13 says:
1. You don’t understand what “peer-reviewed” means, do you?
2. Yes, it does matter if something is peer-reviewed.
3. No, they’re not. Well, I can ask my wife to look at what I just wrote, and say that this is peer-reviewed, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
But wait, comedy gold!
Stop and think about that for a second. If the test measures the exact same thing (G) in the exact same groups, in the exact same way, and G had predictive power for success, then the fit would be same.
Of course, there’s a lot of problems with this. Not everyone takes the SAT. The people within each group (black and white) that take the SAT are different. There may be other variables that confound the results (for example, the SAT could be measuring something, like “drive to succeed” instead of G, that has a better fit for predicting future success).
One last thing-
Kool-Aid much? I am sure this guy is a legend in your (and perhaps his) mind. Is Stormfront offering a cash prize for debunking his work? I wasn’t aware that there were millions of dollars to be made for doing a critique of some crank on the internet that doesn’t even warrant a wikipedia page, and has never had anything published. I’ve never heard of this guy. And I don’t get paid to write comments. I do get paid to write this motion, which I need to do.
Good luck with those women problems. I have found it helpful to look within- if I find that it is my belief that the world just isn’t appreciating me enough, then the problem is usually me.
September 7, 2011, 10:28 amSarcastro says:
Well this for sure proves that SAT scores are an inherent trait of race and gender! No way could there be some kind of external factor, it’s gotta be that there is a genetic hierarchy of success.
We’d better quickly make policy based on statistics. I can’t wait to be assigned my place in society!
It’s a bit tricky, though. On the one hand, I’m white. On the other, I live in DC so statistically I’m black.
September 7, 2011, 10:32 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Justin, I’ve been aware of the data on the male/female IQ split for probably 30 years. My surprise was at the way you formulated your first sentence on the subject. Having been supplied with multitudinous examples of your sloppy language, and with your admission that you are more interested in ideology than with either data or the proper use of statistics, I am no longer surprised.
And there it is.
September 7, 2011, 11:04 amSarcastro says:
[justin, at first I was annoyed by your digression as this thread promised both the tangy familiarity of abortion debate craziness layered with a richer constitutional policy discussion, but if this is where things are going, it's fun too.
So your thesis seems to be that there are studies which show IQ is correlated with race and gender, which means men, and some races, are smarter. This thesis is not uncommon, and has a number of problems.
1. The studies you site are not uncontested. I'm far to lazy to click on links or anything, but reading the comments, you seem to concentrate on one study as the be-all source. This smacks of results-oriented sample bias.
2. Correlation does not imply causation. There may be external reasons for some sets doing worse on the test. The most common one put forth is cultural norms backed into the test. You point out that Asians do well on IQ tests, so cultural norms cannot be influential. But the cultural hypothesis is not disproven by counterexample - just because one race/culture is not hindered does not mean others won't be.
3. IQ may be the best heuristic for intelligence we have, but it isn't great. You can point to IQ being correlated with 'g' and therefore future success, but this runs into correlation/causation problems, as well as the assumption that success and intelligence are congruent.
But more fundamentally, intelligence is far to multifaceted to quantify. Intuition alone may be visual, verbal, logical, or something beyond easy description. And that doesn't count deduction, synthesis, creativity, and countless other facets of mental ability. I myself am much smarter when talking than when writing. IQ won't capture that.
4. Finally, so what? Even if everything you say is true, are there any implications, policy or otherwise, to the slight variation you posit? As Laura(southernxyl) has been laboring to point out, statistics don't tell you much about individuals. Are you just saying disparate impact regulations are dumb?]
September 7, 2011, 11:31 amzuch says:
Can’t wait until they start aborting stoopid people retroactively.
</SNARK> [for the hard of reading around here]
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 11:48 amzuch says:
He quotes Blackstone’s Commentaries:
Oh. Nevermind…. ;-)
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 12:03 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Roe v. Wade didn’t overturn federal prosecutions, but state prosecutions.
September 7, 2011, 12:09 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
You might actually look up primary sources, instead of relying on an advocacy group.
September 7, 2011, 12:12 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Then there’s insurance paying for Viagra while the Rethuglicans try to strip any payments for birth control.
Cheers,
There’s a difference between what private insurers choose to pay for and what the government, representing all taxpayers, chooses to pay for.
September 7, 2011, 12:13 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
I am pointing out that the slave owners and the pro-choice forces have much in common, including not only the same political party, but the same willingness to engage in self-serving bafflegab to avoid confronting the moral implications of their actions.
September 7, 2011, 12:17 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
By this reasoning, murder is a constitutionally protected activity.
September 7, 2011, 12:20 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
It depends on where you live. In California, it is. See Cal. Penal Code sec. 187:
September 7, 2011, 12:24 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Just because something is lawfully the state’s business doesn’t make it sensible for them to do so. I can’t take liberals seriously whining about how the state shouldn’t be telling married couples whether to use birth control or not, when liberals certainly support telling a couple whether to send their kids to school or not.
September 7, 2011, 12:31 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Some aspects of sex roles are, but far less than was liberal orthodoxy a few years ago.
September 7, 2011, 12:33 pmOrenWithAnE says:
If abortion opponents would permanently concede quickening (18-20 weeks) as the defining point, I think we could wrangle supporters to get behind it. Recall that 97-98% of abortions happen before 18 weeks.
If you want to argue about the marginal 2-3%, fine, but I would let it go in exchange for a comprehensive settlement of the abortion issue by returning it to the pre-1820 situation.
September 7, 2011, 12:39 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
It’s outdated, though. If you’ll permit me to quote from Wikipedia:
September 7, 2011, 12:49 pmloki13 says:
Clayton,
Just to make explicit what was previously implicit-
1. You started with the claim:
After some hemming and hawing and backtracking, can we agree on the following:
-Abortion was not criminalized by any statutes in 1789.
-”Abortion” was not criminalized.
-There were some common law restrictions on killing the fetus back then; after a certain date, the state’s interest was paramount, before that, there was no crime (their date was measured differently).
-The crime was never murder, even after the quickening (btw, I love that word- so Highlander). Which means that for all the talk of infanticide, even those upright colonials had a more nuanced view.
Precision matters.
September 7, 2011, 12:49 pmloki13 says:
You just lost Scalia and Thomas. ;)
September 7, 2011, 12:51 pmOrenWithAnE says:
The interesting thing for me is not that roles are, in aggregate, biological but what we want to do with those that prefer to take on different roles. I have no issue with, e.g., women that want and chose to be homemakers or other traditional roles. At the same time, I want to create the social space for women that want and chose to do something outside those traditional roles.
That is, there is something perverse about hardcore liberalism where it seeks to destroy gender roles any more than hardcore conservatism that seeks to embed them in stone. There is a middle ground between those positions.
September 7, 2011, 12:57 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Yes.
I didn’t push pink stuff and lacy stuff and dolls and so forth on my daughter. I gave her access to a variety of toys. When it turned out that she did like the girly stuff, I was able to enjoy that with her with a clear conscience, neither thinking that she’d been forced into it, nor thinking there was something wrong with her for liking it or that her liking it pointed up some kind of failure on my part.
September 7, 2011, 1:22 pmConnie says:
And you missed this one: “cast dispersion on”!
September 7, 2011, 2:29 pmjames goswick says:
Row is null and void:
“All human laws and null and void if contrary to the Divine Law.”
Alexander Hamilton (through Blackstone)-Farmer Refuted
Every Governnor should ignore it. The decision violates the Declaration and the Constitution.
September 7, 2011, 2:38 pmzuch says:
These aren’t “culture-neutral”.
Perhaps (and perhaps not). But WTF is “IQ”? It’s a manufactured construct, of little practical use along the lines you suggest for it (the WAIS-R is intended as a diagnostic tool for evaluation of individuals, generally those in need of evaluation for some reason).
They may be (or they may claim to be). But that hardly means they’ve succeeded. Particularly at what might be intrinsically an impossible task.
But I note you have no response to my claim that one of the foremost and most respected “IQ” tests, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Revised), is obviously culturally loaded.
I really don’t care whether it’s been “proven to correlate with increased ‘g’” or not. Particularly since I don’t think that “g” has been shown to even exist outside the heads of wacky ‘psychometricians’ with small penises ["do you think that maybe they're compensating for something?"].
Leaving aside whether it’s a waste of money, the fact remains: Head Start improves scores. At cessation, the scores tend to fall off again. Almost a classic, “treatment/no treatment” type effect. Hard to deny. Yet you maintain that scores can’t change over time. Guess you’re wrong.
I’m thinking: “single … permanently“. I’m also thinking: “All around jerk and d*ckwad”.
Is anyone listening to this ignerrent, racist, apparently pencil-pricked nimrod any more?
How can passage rates differ by “1 SD”? “Passage rates” are probabilities [or measures of such], not interval measurements, and they are already a group statistic and not a measurement such as would usually be described by “SD” or other such metrics of sample variability.
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 2:43 pmMDT says:
Joe,
Lest I “whine” too much for your sensitive ears, I’ll address just this:
The support involved there is for the child. If an unmarried couple has a child, the man isn’t required to provide spousal support or something. It is for the child. To repeat myself, such support is attached to the child, and both sexes pay.
Fine. Then let’s document that child support goes to the child. Let the one who spends it — say, the custodial parent, whoever that may be — document where the money goes, in the same way that the IRS would have you document business expenses. If custody is shared, but one parent owes child support to the other, let the use of that money likewise be documented.
Not such a great hardship, right? Even common sense, you might say.
September 7, 2011, 2:47 pmOrenWithAnE says:
Amen.
September 7, 2011, 2:55 pmMDJD from NY says:
Just becaue a test was developed in the West, it does not mean that people in other cultures will definitely perform worse. They might perform better or worse, depending on the circumstances of what they did or did not experience.
Well, the WAIS has a verbal and nonverbal component. Don’t you supose the verbal score has a smidgen to do with the vocabulary of the test-taker? Even the non-verbal component is related to the experience of the person being tested. Bell Curve suggests that IQ scores in the US are influenced about half by hereditary and half by environment.
Do you know WTF you are talking about? The WAIS is administered by one person to another using various instrumetns. The scores are demonstrbly influenced by the setting, and by the way the test is given. My wife, who is a PhD school psyuchologist from a highly regarded program, has taught and done research using the tests. It is not easy to give the WAIS without providing inappropriate cues.
Even so, do you have any data to show the change in scores from one setting to another?
I don’t, but I’m told by people I trust that it exists. People who believe in the validity of the test as a measure of important information. I don’t have the ime to gather data for you.
Tests such as the WAIS are designed and validated to determine differences among populations within a culture. Especially on the verbal section, they have not been validated to measure intracultural differences. I don’t know how hyou would do this. I don’t know what comparisons of the mean IQ of people from Cambridge Massachusetts and people from a rural African community without a school would show about the cognitive potential of people from these communities if they were removed in infancy and reared in the same household in a third environment. Do you? How do you know? A fortiori, if you think the SAT given to HS seniors form Cambridge and 17 year olds from rural Equitorial Guinea measures the cognitive potential of people from these communities, you are delusional.
If you’ve read this far, you’ve figured out that the issue isn’t the noise level in the room. And that giving a scholastic test to people who haven’t gone to school, or who have gone to poor schools will predict how they do in college, but not how their kids will do if they all went to the same school.
September 7, 2011, 3:18 pmMDJD from NY says:
Few doctors would perform abortion because (1) it was dangerous back then, and (2) it was specifically prohibited by the Hippocratic Oath and was considered unprofessional. So lomited technology and the presence social controls guaranteed that it would be rare.
September 7, 2011, 3:24 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I assumed that “passage rate” was Sloppy Speak for score, about which you could discuss SD. But it’s a problem, with sloppy language, that people can realize that what the speaker says makes no sense, and adjust it to something that does, risking making the speaker look more intelligent than he is.
September 7, 2011, 3:36 pmloki13 says:
Few “doctors” did anything back then, because “doctorin” was dangerous.
Of course, the early termination of pregnancies was fairly widespread, and the different ways to do it was well-known by mothers and mid-wives. While those histories are mainly a men’s story, there’s plenty of primary evidence, as well as secondary evidence (see also Blackstone, heh). There’s even… books about it. Finally, it was the widespread advertisement and commercialization of many of the abortificents in the early 1800s that lead to the statutes in question (most around 1857). So- not sure what you’re getting at.
Personally, I don’t really care about this argument. But it’s funny to see- first, abortions were all illegal. Then, they didn’t exist. I mean, we have written records of abortions that predate the birth of Christ, but they couldn’t have happened in America. ‘Cuz of doctors, and things. They must have been discovered right before they were criminalized. Or advertised. Or something.
September 7, 2011, 3:42 pmzuch says:
You might want to look up primary sources to back your assertion, rather than rely on Blackstone’s commentaries on English law prior to the American Revolution. But, as I pointed out, even there Blackstone sez you’re full’o'it.
Cheers,
September 7, 2011, 4:27 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Except it was criminalized, as Blackstone points out in calling it a heinous misdemeanor. And Blackstone also points out that it used to be considered murder. Not criminalized by statute did not mean that it wasn’t a crime. Common law was still enforced.
September 7, 2011, 4:42 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Blackstone’s Commentaries describes the state of English law immediately before the American Revolution–hence the state of American law when the Revolution happened.
And as I have pointed out to loki13, Blackstone is very clear that this is a crime.
September 7, 2011, 4:44 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Uh, wrong. They prescribed all sorts of drugs, most of which were useless and some of which were dangerous. But doctors did much: the expression “heroic measures” describes what happened when they could not leave well enough alone.
If you are arguing that increased commercialization of abortificients caused passing of statutes on this, I don’t find that hard to believe. But that is not an argument that abortion was therefore legal beforehand–and Blackstone is clear that it was not, at least for the late-term pregnancies that abortionists seem intent on defending at all costs.
No, you are constructing a strawman argument. Abortion was a crime. Not under all conditions, but certainly the conditions that NARAL insists now are a constitutional right. That something is illegal does not make it go away, of course. There were murders back then, but that doesn’t make murder a constitutional right.
September 7, 2011, 4:50 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Even if not rare, certainly strongly discouraged by both professional standards and prohibitions on late abortions.
September 7, 2011, 4:52 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
Keep in mind that progressives play a much bigger part in recent times in embedding gender roles in law. Look at West Coast Hotel (1937) for an example of this.
September 7, 2011, 4:56 pmChris Travers says:
Ok, let’s look at this carefully. I think any consistent interpretation of the Constitution ensures that abortion will be generally available, or else that the federal government has a general police power.
So, a few questions:
1) Is there a right to abortion protected in the 5th and 14th Amendments? Let’s say reasonable people disagree on this and let’s assume for the purpose of this post eventually the Supreme Court reverses course and says “no.”
2) So if we answer “no” to question 1 above, then the states are free to pass their own laws, right? What about the federal government? Is there an enumerated power which the federal government can use here to ban abortion? The obvious one to think about is the commerce clause. If the commerce clause can reach this, why not mandate health insurance, or any number of other laws whose baldfaced purpose is to ensure the safety and security of the general public? I don’t see how you can get from even Wickard and Raich to an abortion ban because there is no “leaking” of a tangible, fungible good into interstate commerce since the procedure is wholely intrastate.
3) Does federalism protect an individual right to travel? If so, doesn’t this mean that a pregnant woman has the *right* to travel from a no-abortion state to a pro-abortion state, and that the state can *not* condition her exit on obeying the laws of her state of residency when in other states?
So….. It seems to me that if the individual mandate (or even the Violence against Women Act) is Unconstitutional, then a general federal abortion ban should be seen as such too, and abortion itself couldn’t go away.
I think the issue for Gingrich, Bachmann, etc. is they want a restrained federal government except when they don’t, and they don’t really have an articulated principle other than their own views of morality and religion for distinguishing the two cases.
September 7, 2011, 5:07 pmloki13 says:
See, you keep shifting. “Abortion” wasn’t a “crime.”
Infanticide, in some circumstances, was a crime. But it wasn’t murder. This is why precision matters- because you keep shiftin’ around.
In other words, “abortion” prior to the quickening, was allowed.
“Abortion” after the quickening, was a misdemeanor (this is important, since there is a *huge* difference between felonies and misdemeanors in the common law).
But every time you start to acknowledge this complexity, you go right back to your talking points (like NARAL etc.). Either you are curious about the history, which is interesting and complex (and has bits that support both sides), or you just want to pick ‘n choose to support your current world view.
I think I know which is happening here.
September 7, 2011, 5:12 pmJoe says:
Then let’s document that child support goes to the child.
I already said child support rules are not ideal in various ways. The “whining” was not about that but the stuff about men not having rights or being so unfairly treated in that respect here. I realize the word “whine” is a bit rude, but you went a tad too much into the ridiculous, as I repeatedly pointed out.
September 7, 2011, 5:39 pm