I agree that it's not usually fruitful to go on this long, but I'm also glad that we finally got to a place of better understanding and I'm always up for learning something new. I don't agree with you that Dancova made good points because I don't think he actually cares about abortion rights and he said too many things that were either counterfactual or inflammatory, but I do now have a deeper understanding of where you are coming from (which I see as vastly different from where he is coming from) but in any case...
I do think you need to continue to be careful about assuming you know what people think and mean when they haven't actually said that. I've repeatedly pointed out that I (and really everyone I know or had ever heard of prior to this discussion) respected and accepted the balances delineated in Roe. There is a contradiction there between absolute body autonomy and this position, but I see it as the Court intended, for it to weigh the emerging rights of the fetus as it obtains viability with the the rights of the mother.
Overwhelmingly, women who wish to terminate their pregnancies do that as soon as possible, in the first trimester and the statistics bear this out, so for me the pragmatics of the situation are not in really any sort of conflict with the modified body autonomy rights as spelled out in Roe. And, as per the polls that you linked me, this is what most people agree with as well.
The 20% who don't agree apparently favor absolute body autonomy at any stage, although I really see that as more taking a stand for women's rights as human beings than something that is actually going to go into practice should it ever become legal. It's hard on your body to be pregnant. It's hard to sleep, you get heartburn and your feet swell. Some people get nausea, and there are other sorts of health issue that can arise with pregnancy such as gestational diabetes. For these reasons (and many others), saying "Oh, just give it up for adoption after its born" does not take into account how dangerous and uncomfortable that it is to be pregnant and why it's a human rights violation to force someone to do that against their will.
So, who exactly is going to prolong all that when they don't have to just so they can go through a late stage abortion - which will be much more of a production and probably a lot more uncomfortable? Could it possibly happen? Yeah, I guess so, but we could have a plague of locusts as well. I don't think we need to spend a lot of time and money worrying about that. What we know and see time and time again in the pragmatics of the real world (what I care about) is that women who don't want to be pregnant deal with that ASAP - in the first 8 weeks usually.
What I also see is a lot of hate and vitriol directed at women who just want to have a say in their reproductive lives and who are heartsick and gut-punched at what is happening right now. And Dancova piling on and essentially saying that the women who are hurting and who are fighting for their lives and their futures are the actual problem because they aren't being "nice" enough means that he is actually the one who is a part of the problem. He is the one who is making things worse and being an extremist in a way that is, as a practical matter, is much more destructive and hurtful. Any activism by pro-choice proponents, even if it is in some rare case, extreme, is not turning the opinions of the core 70% away. We got proof of that that last week in Kansas.
The people who believe in absolute body autonomy are in the minority and as I said before, I think that is overwhelmingly a philosophical stance and not a practical one - because I don't think a woman would do that (for reasons that have nothing to do with ideology) - because it's not pragmatic. All the polls show that close to 70% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in the first trimester - even if they also believe that life begins at conception. This is the moderate block that is made up of so called political conservatives as well as liberals. I don't see that going away for any reason, and I therefore don't see the need to fret that people who believe in absolute body autonomy are ever going to make a dent in that.
I see focusing on that as a distraction that allows the nuts and bolts issues that real women are facing right now to be glossed over and I'm not OK with that. I get now that you are as someone who has concerns in good faith, but I'd much prefer to see you put your energy into things that are a problem now, rather than extreme contingencies that almost certainly will never be an issue. We're hurting now; we're suffering now at losing these fundamental human rights, we're being bounty-hunted, and denied necessary medical care right now for things that are not our fault, like miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and women are dying. Yes, these cases are relatively rare, but they are actually taking place and will keep taking place, where as what you are concerned about it not taking place and will almost certainly never take place because these people are a small minority that doesn't have public opinion behind them - and if they ever did, no women would do that anyhow because it's not fun to be pregnant and no-one would prolong that if they didn't have to.
I'm way, way more worried about bad things that are actually happening. I encourage you to read the stories of the women who desperately wanted their babies and when something went wrong, how they were treated, how they suffered physically and emotionally and how many of them almost died. One woman had to carry her dead fetus around inside her for over 2 weeks. It's a miracle she didn't die of sepsis. Everyone should be up in arms about that sort of thing, not harassing and vilifying the people who very resonably are and telling them to calm down because you know what has never, ever made a difference in the history of the world - congeniality in the face of evil. The idea that if the oppressed are just a little bit nicer, they will eventually be listened to is a pipe dream. And those who are not being “nice” are not driving so called moderates away. There’s no actual evidence of that and so it’s really just Dancova looking for an excuse to be hateful — so he can bitch about “angry white women” and those who are not sufficiently in the thrall of the Catholic Church, which has and continues to do some good things in the world, but also perpetrates a lot of hate — against LGBTQ people, and which sometimes stands in the way of children being adopted because they’d rather they have no homes than have same sex parents.
Here’s an excerpt from a story I wrote a while back about why “niceness” never accomplishes anything when it comes to asking for better treatment.
"Not only are those with more historic access to power unlikely to be willing to just give something to someone else because it may disturb their interests, but due to the elements of stratification that are inherent in a dominance-based hierarchy they undoubtedly don’t see why they should have to concede anything to someone “weaker.” A dominance hierarchy is a might makes right system. No one in such a system is going to just voluntarily cede some of their authority or privilege to someone who hasn’t taken it from them by force or by exerting concerted pressure over time."
