Would legalizing gay marriage, pot and abortions and banning religion make America great?

America is 'not bad' but may be devolving because of corporate greeed  (shrinking middle class) and religious fundamentalism/extremism.

@O-know -- Nope, sorry.

The only way you could test this premise is if you had a bunch of IDENTICAL states which only differed in political system. Otherwise, any POLITICAL advantages you want to tease out get intertwined with differences in population, climate, natural resources, presence or absence of trade infrastructure (California has ports, West Virginia does not) and dozens of other factors which influence whether or not a state "prospers" or not.

So even if we could settle upon a common definition of the highly contestable notion of what makes a political jurisdiction "great", we would have no way of establishing what political structures (except in very broad contingent terms, e.g. SOME form of market economy consistently works better than most command economies) produced that "greatness."

NYS has medical on it's books, but it is so neutered and overly bureaucratic it barely counts.  It's basically a lip service at best.
Albany and NYS government likes to act like it's open minded and progressive but in reality it's not.  Only when it comes to telling people what to pay for and what they cannot do.  It's only that way when it comes to regulating.
(Rant over)

When the  Federal law still trumps the state laws you can't really say it basically legal. The regulation just isn't as well enforced these days by the Feds.

I think America is already 'great' actually.  Maybe I should have said 'greater'.

Well arguably there's something to be said for abortion the right and freedom and liberty associated with being able to choose to terminate a pregnancy which would cause significant harm to the mother.. While it's a huge debate on it's own, the freedom to choose and the liberty I'd have thought would be approved of by a nation that values freedom of choice in most other things... no one should be forced to carry a child and give birth in all circumstances. 

@Daydream -- I'll let you in on a little-discussed secret of American politics.

While it is undeniably true there is a significant segment of the American population which would like to see abortion banned or heavily restricted, the right wing of the political establishment does not. The evidence for this is how little effort the GOP/right wing establishment has put into passing a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court decision which made abortion legal nationwide).

What the establishment political right wants is for abortion to be legal (so they can use it as a campaign issue) and to pass incremental restrictions on it which disproportionately affect poor/urban/ethnic people (who overwhelmingly vote Democratic anyway). That way the establishment can say to its base, "Look, we're doing stuff about abortion. But it's still legal, so you still need to vote for us!"
The establishment political right knows that if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned, MILLIONS of women voters who might otherwise vote GOP on the basis of other policy issues will flee to the Democratic Party.  Hence, the somewhat bizarre political reality we have today.

Thank you... I genuinely find some things that are said and done hard to understand.. but you seem to be able to put things are they are and cut through all the propaganda and hype

Agree 100% it is an issue neither party wants to be solved it is a cash cow for both.

If you don't want to have a carry a child and give birth, you do have a choice...use birth control or don't have sex. 
If there truly is a medical issue..you do not have to kill the baby. The baby can be removed with the intention of trying to save the baby. Then the Mother is saved and the baby is possibly saved as well. 

Aww 2cents..  I respect your right to have different views. but i am old enough and wise enough to know that here in the real world things aren't black and white.. there's a million shades of grey and a million shades of human frailty... I am making the assumption you hold both the man and the woman equally responsible so we won't debate that...

So let's discuss reality and btw I am happy to do so via PM if you prefer.. but I'd like you to consider this:-

rape.. that's one.. the obvious one.. there is no choice in rape and pregnancy IS a huge thing that impacts very significantly both on the mind and the body.. it's a choice you should take your time to make.. in rape you don't have that choice...and you shouldnt be made to carry a baby you really don't want.. fwiw you would have to carry that baby for a long time, with all the mental and health implications before it could be removed safely... 

Lets talk about the more obvious ones then.. examples..true ones.. I was married, we were using contraception.. I got pregnant.. I wasnt wild about the idea, I was MUCH older and already had 2 kids with disabilities... I didnt do anything wrong in getting pregnant.. unless you think I shouldnt have had sex.. I imagine there aren't many people who'd condone a wife not having sex with her own husband! In that case I had the baby.. she's my angel.. she drives me mad, makes me OLD but i love her insanely.. in that case my choice, was that I didn't have sufficient reason not to have her..I've never regretted that even though she also has disabilities.. far worse than her siblings...

Don't forget NO form of contraception is 100% effective... and condoms break! What happens then? No men get sex cos women are too scared to get preg?  anyway that wasnt what i wanted to reveal...read on please..

But i HAVE KILLED A BABY.. it died. it lost it's  right to live... and so under your terms you would judge me.. you would say I shouldnt have had sex or something...even though again I was married...it's all my fault.. I am selfish right under your definition... so this brings us to our next bit of life isn't always clean and neat.. it's messy... again I was much older.. this was before my third child the one I mention above...  but there's somethng you didn't consider in your tendency to think everything's black or white, right or wrong..  the pregnancy was an ectopic one.. I am a TOUGH lady.. i battled through excruciating pain without complaint.. until... I had no choice but to go to the doctor... and within hours I was at the hospital.. they were telling me that I had an ectopic pregnancy.. they were telling me it had to be terminated NOW.. so within hours I went from expecting a baby to killing one.. Because the pregnancy had progressed quite far they had to perform a cesarean..under anesthetic.. I had no choice.. this was a healthy baby.. one who deserved to live.. one who would have been loved but it was killed - they had no choice.. I had no choice.. the baby had no choice...it was on the verge of killing me... I asked them to please try and save the baby... When i came round not even knowing what happened.. I found... I was in the ward with all the mothers who had had their babies... how cruel is that? But I had none.. 

SO the reason I am telling you this is.. because I am a great believer in that the older we get the more we understand and tolerate people.. we learn that what we thought was simple or black and white really isnt.. and sometimes life's messy.. people get raped, people get pregnant when married but perhaps to a man who abuses them.. and they know they cannot cope with another child.. adoption ISNT always a guarantee the child will be loved or happy. there is damage to the body and mind of carrying a child you know you cannot love.. and many people just shouldnt have kids FULL STOP so better to not be born than born to a life of abuse... I honestly say this respectfully to you.. can you see I am desperate to help you see that sometimes its the right answer to terminate.. and sometimes there's little real choice.. and sometimes a mother has to choose between another baby and the ones she has already...and sometimes they are raped..all kinds of things happen they have happened to me as you can see...abortion is never an easy choice.. 

Now tell me please.. do you judge me? AM i  a terrible person? I killed a child that I created... 

@Daydreamer -- Let me share another little-discussed secret about American politics: a huge plurality of people who are opposed to abortion actually, deep down, have the attitude "THE BAD PEOPLE MUST BE PUNISHED FOR HAVING SEX!"

The evidence for my assertion is found in societies similar to America which have comparable or higher rates of sexual activity (especially sexual activity between unmarried participants), but significantly lower rates of unwanted pregnancies than Americans have.

If the "pro-life" advocates REALLY wanted to eliminate unwanted pregnancies (and, hence, people contemplating abortion as a choice), they would advocate for policies which reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies, such as those found in the high sex/low unwanted pregnancy societies I mentioned above. They don't. In fact, those very same "pro-life" people often advocate for policies (such as abstinence-only sex education) which are PROVEN to not have the effect they want.

The above pattern of behavior implies there is something more important to "pro-life" advocates than stopping unwanted pregnancies (i.e. their Authoritarian desire to PUNISH THE BAD PEOPLE!) This post was edited by OldSchoolTheSKOSlives at November 27, 2016 4:30 PM MST

Thank you for your patience and the way you put things.. yes, you are right. I posted, on another site, how the teenage pregnancy rate, as in unwanted pregnancies, in the UK had gone down markedly.. I think it was a third or so.. and this was good news.. I wanted to share it.. I think that's how i got into a discussion wth a young latino woman in America who had had friends who had had several illegal abortions.. I couldnt figure out WHY they needed to have illegal abortions in America where it was *legal* - you helped me see that even though it's legal theoretically there is so much against it, so much stigma people often have little choice but to turn to illegal abortion.. 

And again you are right here.. UK is no paragon of virtue, we aren't always right, we aren't any better than anyone else.. but we DO have legal abortion, and yes, realistically ALL can access it, it's free and open to anyone and everyone...and yes we are a high sex nation, (lol no explanation needed)  but this isn't resulting in more unwanted pregnancies .. we don't see an increase in abortions.. we see less young people getting pregnant unplanned.. 

You make excellent points and I am so glad to have found you and people like you on here

@Daydreamer -- Card-carrying member of The Reality-Based Community, at your service...

In the case of rape, if you go to the hospital and there will be no pregnancy. But regardless most laws that would forbid abortion allow exceptions for rape and life of the Mother. Also less than 3% of abortions are for these reasons....in fact most pregnancy from rape the Mother decides to keep the baby. 

As far as a ectopic pregnancy....that is not an abortion or at least not what people are talking about when they are objecting to abortion in general. An ectopic pregnancy is a miscarriage. Because of where the egg implanted it is not a viable pregnancy...ie If allowed to continue on its own it would not grow to full term. 

I don't know where those statistics come from. I found them unbelievable so I looked up the stats.
According to USA government archives, the U.S. National Library of Medicine:
"The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion."

Please note, when rape-pregnancies are not aborted it is most frequently because the child or victim did not know she was pregnant.
Not all girls or women get the opportunity to get to a doctor or hospital after the event.
Now I need to be careful, because we are getting to a topic that is not permitted on the main board.
So I will say no more.

What stat are you disputing? That less than 3% of abortions are for rape/incest/health of the Mother....? Because what you posted does not dispute the fact. But since you seem to want to concentrate on rape/incest portion.  There are approximately 12,000 abortions for rape/incest. There are well over 1,000,000 abortions yearly= .12%  
So if you are fusing of my 3%, I will stand corrected abortion rates for rape/incest is much less at .12%

1. Fewer than 1% of all abortions take place because there has been rape or incest involved to create the pregnancy.
2. Up to 85% of the women who become pregnant through rape or incest choose to have their children.

http://healthresearchfunding.org/18-shocking-abortion-statistics-rape-victims/ This post was edited by my2cents at November 28, 2016 4:56 AM MST

A national probability sample of 4008 adult American women took part in a 3-year longitudinal survey that assessed the prevalence and incidence of rape and related physical and mental health outcomes.

RESULTS:

The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester....

Interesting something happened to the sentence in your answer above stating that the research only involves 34 instances of pregnancy by rape.... hardly a broad sample to draw any kind of conclusion from. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8765248