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Comment by nobodyandproud | Hacker News Reader

Any nuance is met with vitriol.

Explaining why taxes, redistribution of wealth, and allowing government to oversee certain services is actually beneficial to a market is a sure fire way to get called out as a communist and radical leftist.

Pointing out why historically, conservatives were deadset against abortion —in order to have a more productive discussion using pure history, not Bannon-style nonsense—is met with a absolute refusal to acknowledge the evidence.

Having a nuanced view makes no friends and just generates suspicion by all sides.

Secretly, I like it.

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Why have conservatives been historically against abortion?

They haven't. It's a political alliance with the anti-abortion crowd. The 1976 Republican party platform was the first to include a stance on abortion.

They haven't been, in the long view. Historically abortion was a Catholic issue, and sometimes liberal Protestant[1]. It generally wasn't an issue for Evangelicals, who were also mainly on the political left. Then in the late 60s the teenage son of a popular Evangelical pastor/author[2] became concerned for the rights of the unborn, convinced his father to take that message to the masses, it worked, and Republicans figured out that it would be a way to build a new coalition.

If you look at the extreme countercultures of the 60s, you see one side who hated "the system" that produced mass affluence, but loved the fruits of it. The other side loved the system, but hated the fruits. So one way to look at it is as a sort of political shibboleth indicating that you were definitely on one side and not the other.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=cf5RFWIMJugC&pg=PA42&lpg=P...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer

US evangelicals had a mix of indifference or outright support. However it’s a mistake to confuse “conservatism” with religious organizations and even a party.

The anti-abortion position needs to be looked at in the context of eugenics, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/culturalanthropology/chapt...

That it really took off in the 1960s+ isn’t surprising with Nazi death camps fresh in everyone’s mind, leaving a very bad impression with anything tied to eugenics and its proponents.

While I don’t agree that abortion is equivalent to eugenics—-sorry, if my wife were to die otherwise I’d choose abortion—much of the revulsion has its moral roots in the argument against eugenics.

> sorry, if my wife were to die otherwise I’d choose abortion—much of the revulsion has its moral roots in the argument against eugenics.

As far as I know that case isn't even considered abortion by any mainstream pro-life organization.

I was surprised they didn't mention this case until I realized it didn't even count in their view.

This is true.

Some pro lifers want zero exceptions, but it’s extremist.

I’ve answered elsewhere, but note that conservativism isn’t one and the same as the Republican party; nor is it the same as the evangelical crowd.

But tl;dr; answer: Modern abortion has its roots with a founder who was also strong advocate for eugenics.

She was a product of her time and really believed she was advocating for improvement of society, but the ideas took a dark turn.

The only notable opposition were from the conservative religious circles; but as noted even there the record is spotty.

Still, credit where credit is due.

Whether more modern evangelicals are rooted from the same opposition is irrelevant.

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