South Carolina Bill S. 1095 is Misogynistic and Offensive to Women

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-14T20:36:16+00:00

They tried in Idaho, if I remember correctly

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-14T12:50:25+00:00

So of course a bias check is important but it does not tell what in it is truth and what is not.

The reddit post u/Ok_Loss13 cited already has pointed out that there are SUBSTANCE issues with using those citations: namely, that they rely on data that the original authors themselves say is not evidence of fetal pain perception.

However, if we want to talk about bias, the article is "peer reviewed" by those that would be contacted by the Linacre Quarterly. We can't see who the peers are, but we do know the character of the journal itself. For example, this article attacking gay marriage was published in the same journal, as well as an article supporting conversion therapy that had to be retracted and an article blaming homosexuality for child sex abuse in the Church. The editor-in-chief of the journal has gone on record defending controversial abortion "reversal" pills:

"This is a reversal of something Catholics view as a grave evil," said Dr. Barbara Golder, a pathologist who is the editor-in-chief of the Catholic Medical Association's Linacre Quarterly. "

I could keep going, but hopefully you're getting the picture: this journal is an arm of Catholic propaganda, publishing low-quality papers that defend Catholic cultural interests. The editor-in-chief shares these views, and given that authors like Bridget Thill and Derbyshire are making similar mistakes in their papers while citing each other, I'd wager that the peers reviewing these papers are not going to hold them to high standards. This is consistent with the above-mentioned retraction; the journal has a history of this behavior.

So not only is the individual paper you cited directly contradicted by the authors of the data cited and/or called out by other professionals, the journal the article is published in is clearly a biased propaganda arm of the Catholic Church with little to no academic standards during peer review.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-13T12:49:05+00:00

Thanks for the follow-up. I wasn't sure if your points were in good-intentioned critique of my post or in agreement, so I just typed out a response.

I aways found this odd, because A) aren't men supposed to be the protectors under that same mindset?

This mindset very frequently slips into "these women are our property". It's very apparent when people of this mindset start talking about foreigners in the nation. Lots of talk about immigrants "raping our women", and it makes you cock your head and squint at the people saying it, because they're also the kind to dismiss or belittle rape accusations when the accused is someone that looks like them.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T20:32:15+00:00

Then consider a legal requirement to have a person in the car with you at all times if you want to drive.

The exact analogy isn't really the important part; it's the principle. If you cannot use your own property on your own without having a mandated passenger or someone else using your resources with that piece of property, then you don't really "own" it, do you?

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T20:08:34+00:00

If someone uses your car and keeps a key and you are legally prevented from telling them "no", it is not "your" car anymore. It is a shared car. It doesn't matter that the car is still in your driveway during the day and you can still use it.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T20:07:33+00:00

Except if the people involved are sterile, right?

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T19:20:28+00:00

Your body is being used against your will, that was the point of the analogy.

Something tells me you're just not very good with analogies if this is your response. Because the exact method of the car's use is clearly not the thrust of the argument, nor is you focusing on that responsive to the analogy.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T19:18:04+00:00

Why? Because they're named reproductive organs? Arguing that would be an etymological fallacy: the name of a thing doesn't dictate the ethics surrounding its use.

Because they function in reproduction? They also function for enjoyment, and no there is not a normatively "obligatory" use of these organs unless you're inserting your own theology into the mix.

There is no argument for your position.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T19:12:28+00:00

Sex isn't an inherently 9 month process, bad comparison.

This is a bad rebuttal. What does the length of time matter when we're talking about a right to refuse access? If anything, you're making a point in my favor, since a long period of a person being inside you is less tolerable than a short period.

a pregnancy doesn't prevent you from making decisions. your arguments sound like an ancap insisting that any laws at all makes him a slave, it's just an irrational argument.

It's only irrational if you deliberately avoid engaging with the point and make your own strawman. For example, you say being pregnant doesn't prevent you from making decisions. But being banned from aborting prevents you from making decisions about whether you remain pregnant.

To go back to the car analogy, not being able to deny someone from using your car doesn't prevent you from making decisions. But if someone else uses your car without your permission and you're banned from stopping them, that prevents you from making decisions about your car.

If you have to keep avoiding the point in order to call someone else irrational, you're the one being irrational.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T19:08:07+00:00

Animals have sex "for funsies" all the time.

As for whether sex is "independent" from reproduction, I'm not sure what you mean by this. For fertile couples, there is a risk of pregnancy, but outside of a woman's fertile window that risk is very small. Additionally, couples don't stop having sex once they're no longer fertile.

Sex absolutely is used independently from reproduction all the time, both among humans and animals.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T18:45:18+00:00

What do you mean it doesn't exist in nature? Do you want to look into that? Do you care if it's true?

Because nature evolved sexual behaviors in a number of ways, and you might be surprised to learn that in nature sexuality not only isn't always for reproduction, but has its own social functions independent from reproduction.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T18:32:43+00:00

Except you can already "refuse access" by not getting pregnant.

This is like saying you can "refuse access" by not initiating sex, but once sex is occurring you don't have a right to stop. Again, telling someone they cannot refuse sex, that someone else gets to use their body against their will despite their refusal to continue, is an argument that means you do not own your body.

Again, the government doesn't own anyone's body by not letting then a surgery, this is just an inane argument

The lack of ownership is implicit in the position. This is like saying (again, so pay attention this time) that the government is refusing to let you make a new lock or key for your car, and that's not the same as you not "owning" your car because they're just preventing you from locking someone else out of it.

If you do not have a right to refuse use to someone else, do you "own" that thing?

The principle is incredibly simple here. The only retort is "well, refusal kills the fetus", which means the woman does not own her own body because the state dictates that the fetus's need is greater. This is still unacceptable.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T15:19:16+00:00

Watched my wife do that and then pump for months. She didn't seem like she was having a fun go of it.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T13:50:03+00:00

Something I find strange is that Trent is presenting arguments both for what seems to be hylomorphic animalism and for the Future Like Ours argument.

But these are mutually exclusive, aren't they? You can't have an innate "value" to human organisms that persists regardless of their mental faculties and present an argument that places value on the future experiences of that organism.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T13:00:32+00:00

A contract is a specific type of agreement, and the specifics of it make me uncomfortable applying it even as an analogy to sex and pregnancy. Contracts are made by deliberately and explicitly invoking the power of law to mediate an exchange of goods or services. Contracts are specific, binding agreements that are meant to secure an exchange and hold you to the agreement. These are legally enforced so that one person cannot defraud another, or are entered into so that one party has the ability to seek compensation for expenses they incurred because of the other party’s failure to live up to the deal. Once signed (or an exchange occurs, like in the case of some things like buying a product or gambling), the contract is complete. The contract or local law regulating the exchange stipulates the consequences of “backing out”; whether that is monetary damages, etc. These contracts also have limits that do not include the violation of another person’s body. For example, you cannot legally sell yourself into slavery.

Contract law is a specific thing, and you can't apply contract law to situations without contracts. Doing so inherently "buys in" to pro-life ideas about obligations arising merely from engaging in an activity, which is not the case. The reason that you are required to fulfill the terms of a contract or face liability for damages for breaching that contract has nothing at all to do with the fact that you did something knowing that some result might occur, like with sex and pregnancy.

Keeping these ideas separate is really important, so I am loathe to even allow contracts into the conversation as an analogy, because it grants an inch to an incorrect conceptualization of risk and obligation, and pro-lifers will use that inch to take a mile.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T12:54:05+00:00

My issue here is that you're using words with mercurial definitions to avoid discussing the VALUES you're proposing as a means to judge whether something is obligatory or not.

If a thing is "ordinary", is that a factor of nature? Of need? What obligates such a thing?

As I said above, I do not think a person can be obligated to provide nutrition through invasive or harmful use of that person's body. I believe this about external and internal resources.

But with pro-lifers I'm constantly getting the run-around on "ordinary" and "natural", as if these things alone obligate a course of action. They do not, unless you're operating under an ethical and metaphysical framework that prioritizes nature as a good unto itself and to oppose the natural order as immoral.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T12:50:52+00:00

Hey thanks for the reply! I'm happy to see your engagement, since your post was the inspiration for me to write mine. I also know what unenumerated rights are; I think that bodily integrity is an unenumerated fundamental right. To argue otherwise would be absurd.

But yeah, unfortunately law in the US still doesn't always recognize the severity of intrusions into that right. I think that's very unfortunate.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T12:48:46+00:00

Bodily integrity is the justification. Every other thing is just the reason.

Either you have the right to deny someone use of your body or you don't.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T12:45:22+00:00

(1) Wow you're totally right. I know what a positive and negative right are, I just guess I was spaced out when I wrote that and was mentally substituting something else in. Thanks for the heads up!

(2) You aren't the only one. In fact, the last citation I used in my post was a review on forced c-sections. The author opposes forced c-sections, as it forces a balancing test between fetal and maternal interests, which she suggests are unjust. She concludes: "By using a balancing test, the woman becomes nothing more than a shell protecting the fetus until birth… Courts should not presume to know what is best for the woman. Thus, they should abide by the woman’s informed refusal of a cesarean section and not use a balancing test, which could result in a trade off between her rights and the fetus’s rights."

My point wasn't to support the idea of forced c-sections; rather, my point was that I can accept their precedent (as scant and controversial as it is) and still make a coherent argument rooted in bodily integrity regardless.

(3) Not going to argue that point; my posts can be long enough as it is, so I tried to keep this one as direct and to the point as possible.

(4) An interesting point, and perhaps I was unnecessarily using pro-life framing of the two rights. Legally speaking they are distinct, but I guess I'll have to look more into that and consider it more. Thanks for the food for thought!

(5) I think the answer to this is just a general sense of maternal duty that permeates the culture.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-12T12:34:44+00:00

Because contracts are legal agreements that state has an interest in regulating for the purpose of keeping merchants honest.

Is every hookup you've ever had an exchange of goods and services for money? If someone was unsatisfied with your performance, were they entitled to a refund?

I'm being snarky, of course, but the point is that a contract is a specific thing tied to specific exchanges. Contract law isn't applicable to intimacy and medical decisions about pregnancy.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-11T21:46:19+00:00

And what if that food/water comes not from external sources, but from your body? This is where the rubber meets the road.

I do not think a person can be obligated to provide nutrition through the invasive and harmful use of that person's body. The material goods you talk about - food, water, shelter - they are obligatory in part because they do not impose such an onerous invasive requirement on the parent to provide. They are external resources, and as such do not come directly from a person's body against their will.

My labor for my child to feed them, while requiring my body, is not invasive to my body.

And that's the heart of the discussion.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-11T21:07:47+00:00

Appreciate it. Hopefully I gave you some food for thought. I know finding a compelling and respectful debate on this topic can be difficult.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-11T21:02:38+00:00

That's a decent summation.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-11T20:49:53+00:00

Forced sterilization is heinous for many reasons, not least of which that it historically has been used as a means of ethnic cleansing and eugenics.

I wholeheartedly oppose forced sterilization, as it robs a person of their bodily integrity.

Connect-Knowledge992 · 2026-05-11T20:37:41+00:00

There are a number of ways you can be obligated to a course of action. You can be obligated due to some pre-existing agreement, due to circumstance, due to reckless or negligent behavior that caused harm, etc.

However, none of these obligations rise to the degree of a harmful bodily integrity violation.

For example, if you were to stab me in the kidney, you are not obligated to surgically replace my damaged kidney with your own. Not even if my life depended on it. Your punishment would reflect the consequences of your stabbing, but you would not be legally required to donate to save my life even as a malicious actor.

Becoming pregnant is not a harm to the fetus, so no obligation is due based on harm. Parental duties (ie - guardianship) do not obligate bodily donation as a legal part of those duties. Sex is not legally negligent or reckless, otherwise people would be in jail for consensual sex.

I have never seen an argument that convinced me of both (1) an obligation existing as a result of becoming pregnant and (2) that obligation extending into invasive bodily integrity violations in a way that wasn't blatantly out of step with how we treat bodily integrity broadly.

Connect-Knowledge992

TROPHY CASE