IVF and abortion

In an Sun Times op-ed, Leah Thomas (Sept. 13, 2022) warns that abortion restrictions may restrict in vitro fertilization [IVF] procedures, especially those procedures that create several embryos with the intention of trying to bring only some of them to term. 

On the passing of Queen Elizabeth II

I've never been that interested in England's royal family. But I find I'm oddly saddened, shocked, surprised (I'm not sure of the right word) about Queen Elizabeth II's passing.

Declaration of Dissent

 [Reprinted and edited from earlier version(s). https://ordinary-times.com/2014/07/06/declaration-of-dissent/.]

When, in the course of another year, Americans again laud an unjust war, a decent respect for these otherwise decent people requires me to declare the reasons I dissent from the general celebration.

Coming to grips with Dobbs

Through most of my adult life (I am almost 50), I have claimed to be pro-choice. I usually voted in the pro-choice direction when it came to ballot measures. I usually voted for pro-choice candidates for office.

I took that position on the cheap. Roe v. Wade created a distance between me and whatever abortion policy I claimed to endorse. As long as Roe was the law of the land, my pro-choice position mattered less. How I voted affected the policy along some margin, but it was a very slim margin.

For me, that mattered because in spite of my professed support for the pro-choice position, I also hold a deeply felt sense that human life begins at conception. If I carry that deeply felt sense to one logical conclusion, then it requires me to hold that the decision to abort is the decision to kill a person. I'm not quite there yet, and my never get there. But I'm almost there, and I cannot escape the implication at any rate.

To be clear, mine is not an absolute, rock solid belief. I cannot articulate exactly why I hold it or exactly how I came about it. I have no strong evidence or arguments. For any point I might offer to support that deeply felt sense, I can think of  counterarguments, contradictory evidence, and reductios ad absurdum that challenge my belief at every turn.

But still: I can't or won't forsake my deeply felt sense about when life begins. I can't do it in the same way I can't will myself to be who I am not. I won't do it in the same way that if I claim to have a disposition to the truth, I must follow where the truth, as I'm given to see the truth, leads me. How I act on that belief; when, whether, and with whom I choose to share it; what tone and what degree of understanding and compassion I bring to any discussion--those I can change as the circumstances warrant. But absent some sea change on the order of a religious conversion, my base belief won't change.

As long as Roe was the law, I could debate abortion with myself as a mostly abstract proposition. I could explain to myself that however we settle when life begins, abortion should be legal as a matter of policy. And going beyond the question of policy, I could explain to myself that I supported a woman's near absolute prerogative to choose an abortion. I have indulged in some heroic mental gymnastics to get to that second point. And frankly, I fear my reasoning is ad hoc and motivated. But while Roe was the law, I could engage in such musings and call it a theoretical exercise.

Now, Roe is not the law.

Now, how I vote affects abortion policy more than before.

Now, I must consider how much and in what ways I support the pro-choice position.

Now, I must ponder the, for me, terrible and terrifying prospect of taking a more active stand, of more directly causing more abortions to happen that otherwise wouldn't happen. I could--I have the means--donate money to those who would help women obtain abortions.

(Of course, I could also do nothing. That's probably what I shall do. But I hold seriously to my other belief that abortion is and ought to be a woman's prerogative, that impeding that prerogative is a deep wrong, and that the primary and secondary effects of criminalization make for a dangerous and unjust policy.)

I always knew that under Roe, taking the pro-choice position enabled abortion. I never agreed, as a factual matter, that "people will just get abortions anyway, just not safe ones" even though some will get indeed risk getting unsafe abortions, especially if abortion is banned nationally.

But now any stance I take is of more consequence. The margin along which my actions can affect the outcome is larger. I can no longer outsource my supposed pro-choice convictions to the Supreme Court.

Book buying online

When I look at a book advertisement on, say, Amazon, most of the time two key pieces of information are missing or very difficult to find. The first is the date of publication. The second is the table of contents.

Those two items are, in my view, very important for judging whether I'm inclined to want to read or buy the book. The date of publication tells me the approximate historical context. The table of contents says a lot (not everything, but a lot) about, well, the content of the book.

What perplexes me is why it's so hard to find this info on the book-selling sites. I would have thought those would be disclosed by default.

To be clear, it's not impossible to find that information. Book-selling sites usually have a "read an excerpt" and that excerpt usually includes the title/copyright pages and table of contents. But not always. And it's one extra step.

Twelve thoughts on covid

#1. For most of my adult life, I knew that I could carry diseases that may not be harmful to me, but fatal to others. And yet, only during the covid pandemic was I admonished to protect others by, for example, wearing masks or staying away from others. That's a good lesson, and I'll try to abide by it.

Why I might not resubscribe to Astral Codex Ten

I've said before that I'm a fan of Scott Alexander, his current blog, Astral Codex Ten, and his former blog, Slate Star Codex. Last year, I paid for a subscription to his current blog. Now that the subscription is expired, I probably won't renew. Here, I'll explain why.

The main reason is that he doesn't really write that much content. He offers lots of open threads and "rationalist community meetup" events. He also offers what seem to me to be unending reader submitted book review contests. I'm sure they're good reviews (I actually haven't read them), but I didn't subscribe to the blog to read other people's work.

Another reason is that what he does write, now, seems to lack the heft of his earlier pieces. Frankly, his pieces are shorter than before. He wraps up his essays a bit too quickly for my tastes. What I used to like about his writing is that he seemed to devote a lot more time in each essay exploring whatever issue he was exploring. And he tends to wrap things up too neatly. In that, his writing style reminds me of Richard Roeper's film reviews at the Chicago Sun-Times.

A third reason, not a major one, is that I suspect he wasn't completely honest about the controversy with the New York Times that led to him cancelling his former blog. I don't think he lied about anything. But I suspect he portrayed the situation as a bit more dire than it was. That said, I do believe him when he says he's gotten death threats. And even if the threats weren't credible, they're still freaking death threats and I don't blame anyone who gets concerned about such things, especially because that's never happened to me.

It's possible all my reasons are off base. Maybe Scott always posted so little content, but because I wasn't paying to read it, I wasn't inclined to (and didn't have any standing to) complain.

While it's probably true that his essays are now shorter, I can't promise his longer essays were necessarily better. I usually skimmed huge chunks of his essays. It's quite possible that when he wrote (to make up numbers) 2,000-word blog posts, I read only 1,200 words and skipped the rest, while now he writes 1,300-word posts and I read everything.

For the New York Times thing, I obviously don't know the whole story. I'll never know the whole story.

I should say that I don't bear Scott any ill will. In fact, I might even re-subscribe to his blog. But for now I'm taking a break.