I hope that I can some day misunderstand a situation so thoroughly that FAIR will give me a platform to tell everyone about it. There’s so much to disagree with here, but I’ll just mention two.
First, as Elizabeth said below, SCOTUS did not ban abortion. Melissa says that Alito is hungry for power, but what the court essentially decided w…
I hope that I can some day misunderstand a situation so thoroughly that FAIR will give me a platform to tell everyone about it. There’s so much to disagree with here, but I’ll just mention two.
First, as Elizabeth said below, SCOTUS did not ban abortion. Melissa says that Alito is hungry for power, but what the court essentially decided was that it wasn’t up to them to decide for the whole nation on the abortion issue. There’s this weird thing going on right now where people think that it’s “authoritarian” that the whole country now gets a say on the issue, instead of 9 people.
Second, running throughout the whole essay is this idea that everyone is thinking about this issue in black and white, but Melissa has a more nuanced view. It’s quite a selective nuance, however, as she takes on a more black/white stance when it’s convenient. For example, she links to a study that says the majority (61%) of Americans favor the right of women to choose. So, pro-abortion, right? No. Here are the two choices from the study: legal in all/most cases vs illegal in all/most cases. In other words, those who want abortions without exception are grouped with those who want abortion with exceptions, and those who want no abortions whatsoever are grouped with those who want no abortions, with some exceptions. This distinction is fundamentally meaningless because most Americans are somewhere in the middle. Most Americans have a more nuanced view, despite what Melissa says.
Based on the essay, her “more nuanced” view involves misunderstanding jurisprudence, straw-manning the entire populace, and dragging out every exceedingly rare pro-abortion trope. Nuance is also lost when she repeatedly talks about getting pregnant as something that just seems to “happen” to women.
She begins the last paragraph with, “By disallowing abortion, the court fails to protect those who need protection the most”. As stated above, they didn’t “disallow” abortion. Beyond that though, one thing I’ve noticed more recently is that pro-abortion people used to at least mouth the words that the unborn child exists and should be considered, but that time seems to be long gone. Now there is never any mention of the unborn child (or fetus, if you want to conveniently dehumanize it). Its worth is literally nothing in today’s discourse. You could argue that the unborn child’s life is worth less than that of the mother, but to ignore it entirely is the sort of black-and-white thinking that Melissa is taking part in while simultaneously railing against.
I could go on and on, but the sort of sloppy thinking displayed in Melissa’s essay gets us nowhere. She should have a right to say it, and I appreciate that FAIR allows for diversity of thought, but this is particularly weak. I look forward to seeing more worth reading in the comments section than the article itself, which seems to be happening more and more around here, as of late.
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This Substack piece reflects one perspective. If you’d like to join the discussion, we welcome and encourage you to send your own to submissions@fairforall.org.
I guess the question I would have here is: how are you defining “good-faith”? I would say that a “bad-faith” argument would be one where the author attributes to others arguments or beliefs without providing any evidence to back it up. Alito wrote a long, long opinion in the Dobbs decision. If she thought his reasoning made him like Shylock, why not quote something, anything, that he said which supports this claim? That would be one thing. It’s a whole other thing to assume intent on his part without any evidence. Alito wasn’t the only one misrepresented in this essay but I’m not going to spell out every instance in which Melissa presumed to be a mind-reader. See the other comments for that.
Second, is it an example of “good-faith discourse” to ignore critical comments (even clearly respectful ones) and virtually only engage with those with whom you agree? It would be one thing if Melissa didn’t look at the comments to her essay at all, but you can find her liking one-sentence comments that amount to, “great essay” while not even touching the majority of comments which disagree with her. Is this an example of the FAIR standard of good-faith discourse?
Third, a good example of how it should be done (so far) is in today’s essay on the same topic. That author quotes people and takes them at their word, based on those quotes. I would say that’s in good faith. In the comments section you see quite a number of people who strenuously disagree with him, but they disagree with his POINT, and in a way that is enlightening to readers. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, both the essay and its comments have interesting perspective. Contrast that with Melissa’s essay, where most of the comments are focused on the various parts where she was factually incorrect.
In sum, the issue isn’t that a voice such as Melissa’s shouldn’t be heard, but I believe that her essay was written in bad-faith, based on her lack of evidence, lack of understanding, and routine mischaracterization of those with whom she disagrees. This essay doesn’t add to the conversation, it just rehashes already-common misunderstandings. FAIR should not abide such bad-faith, mushy thinking.
I hope that I can some day misunderstand a situation so thoroughly that FAIR will give me a platform to tell everyone about it. There’s so much to disagree with here, but I’ll just mention two.
First, as Elizabeth said below, SCOTUS did not ban abortion. Melissa says that Alito is hungry for power, but what the court essentially decided was that it wasn’t up to them to decide for the whole nation on the abortion issue. There’s this weird thing going on right now where people think that it’s “authoritarian” that the whole country now gets a say on the issue, instead of 9 people.
Second, running throughout the whole essay is this idea that everyone is thinking about this issue in black and white, but Melissa has a more nuanced view. It’s quite a selective nuance, however, as she takes on a more black/white stance when it’s convenient. For example, she links to a study that says the majority (61%) of Americans favor the right of women to choose. So, pro-abortion, right? No. Here are the two choices from the study: legal in all/most cases vs illegal in all/most cases. In other words, those who want abortions without exception are grouped with those who want abortion with exceptions, and those who want no abortions whatsoever are grouped with those who want no abortions, with some exceptions. This distinction is fundamentally meaningless because most Americans are somewhere in the middle. Most Americans have a more nuanced view, despite what Melissa says.
Based on the essay, her “more nuanced” view involves misunderstanding jurisprudence, straw-manning the entire populace, and dragging out every exceedingly rare pro-abortion trope. Nuance is also lost when she repeatedly talks about getting pregnant as something that just seems to “happen” to women.
She begins the last paragraph with, “By disallowing abortion, the court fails to protect those who need protection the most”. As stated above, they didn’t “disallow” abortion. Beyond that though, one thing I’ve noticed more recently is that pro-abortion people used to at least mouth the words that the unborn child exists and should be considered, but that time seems to be long gone. Now there is never any mention of the unborn child (or fetus, if you want to conveniently dehumanize it). Its worth is literally nothing in today’s discourse. You could argue that the unborn child’s life is worth less than that of the mother, but to ignore it entirely is the sort of black-and-white thinking that Melissa is taking part in while simultaneously railing against.
I could go on and on, but the sort of sloppy thinking displayed in Melissa’s essay gets us nowhere. She should have a right to say it, and I appreciate that FAIR allows for diversity of thought, but this is particularly weak. I look forward to seeing more worth reading in the comments section than the article itself, which seems to be happening more and more around here, as of late.
EDIT: fixed typos
Thank you for reading and responding. We are committed to including diverse voices and encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse on all topics, including this one.
This Substack piece reflects one perspective. If you’d like to join the discussion, we welcome and encourage you to send your own to submissions@fairforall.org.
I guess the question I would have here is: how are you defining “good-faith”? I would say that a “bad-faith” argument would be one where the author attributes to others arguments or beliefs without providing any evidence to back it up. Alito wrote a long, long opinion in the Dobbs decision. If she thought his reasoning made him like Shylock, why not quote something, anything, that he said which supports this claim? That would be one thing. It’s a whole other thing to assume intent on his part without any evidence. Alito wasn’t the only one misrepresented in this essay but I’m not going to spell out every instance in which Melissa presumed to be a mind-reader. See the other comments for that.
Second, is it an example of “good-faith discourse” to ignore critical comments (even clearly respectful ones) and virtually only engage with those with whom you agree? It would be one thing if Melissa didn’t look at the comments to her essay at all, but you can find her liking one-sentence comments that amount to, “great essay” while not even touching the majority of comments which disagree with her. Is this an example of the FAIR standard of good-faith discourse?
Third, a good example of how it should be done (so far) is in today’s essay on the same topic. That author quotes people and takes them at their word, based on those quotes. I would say that’s in good faith. In the comments section you see quite a number of people who strenuously disagree with him, but they disagree with his POINT, and in a way that is enlightening to readers. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, both the essay and its comments have interesting perspective. Contrast that with Melissa’s essay, where most of the comments are focused on the various parts where she was factually incorrect.
In sum, the issue isn’t that a voice such as Melissa’s shouldn’t be heard, but I believe that her essay was written in bad-faith, based on her lack of evidence, lack of understanding, and routine mischaracterization of those with whom she disagrees. This essay doesn’t add to the conversation, it just rehashes already-common misunderstandings. FAIR should not abide such bad-faith, mushy thinking.
Agree with a lot of what you said.