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Comment by aaomidi | Hacker News Reader

To borrow an observation from Matt Stoller[0], SCOTUS is only powerful because congress refuses to legislate.

[0] https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/150627311232057754...

I thought the government which governs least, governs best?

The Supreme Court isn't banning abortion. It's moving the issue from the federal level to the state level. It will be members of state legislatures and their governors who will be banning abortion and obviously not in all states.

This is such a bad faith argument I don't even know how to cover it.

People are gonna die because of this and you're here AXTUALLTIing this?

I think you’re the one making a bad faith argument. “People are going to die” because democrats let the ETC expire. That’s the nature of legislation. Pretty much all of it is impactful enough that you can come up with a body count.

But at the end of the day the rule of law and the process matters. Roe prohibited Americans from banning second trimester abortions, which most Americans think should be banned, and which most liberal European countries do ban. It was substituting the moral views of an elite against the judgment of the public on a fundamental moral line drawing issue.

> Roe prohibited Americans from banning second trimester abortions, which most Americans think should be banned, and which most liberal European countries do ban.

It's even worse than that. As the brief for petitioners [1] notes, only three countries in the world do not ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The US is one. The other two? China and North Korea.

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/184703/202...

> Banning abortion is a death sentence or worse for so many people.

Why?

(And why is abortion itself not a death sentence for the aborted fetus?)

Do some reading on the subject? The arguments here are very well documented. If you don’t want to read non-fiction, try Harlan Ellison’s Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine.

> try Harlan Ellison’s Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine

If you're referring to having to get an illegal abortion, the Mississippi law under review in this case does not make abortion illegal until after 15 weeks of pregnancy (and even then there are exceptions like the health of the mother). 15 weeks is more than enough time to get a legal abortion. (Note also that the abortion clinic that challenged the Mississippi law only provides abortions up to 16 weeks of pregnancy anyway, so we're only talking about a difference of one week in the time women have to get an abortion.)

> The arguments here are very well documented.

What arguments? The parent to my post didn't make an argument, they made a claim unsupported by argument. If the claim is so obvious, it should be simple to post a sentence or two of supporting argument instead of me having to guess what they're talking about.

I think it's self evident. When abortion is made illegal it's not eliminated it's just made unsafe. People resort to unsafe abortive methods which will result in more dead women along with the fetus. Banning abortion also means that when one does need an abortion for medical reasons, it's difficult or expensive to have one, which will result in fewer women seeking a lifesaving abortion. That America lacks socialized healthcare compounds the problem.

Also it means that someone other than a doctor will be deciding on whether the abortion is medically necessary, and that decision will not be made on the basis of the woman's health (because if it were, the woman and the doctor would be the only ones to make it, and the government and the supreme court would have no say whatsoever). Life and death decisions related to a woman's health that are not grounded purely in actual medicine rather than politics and religion will necessarily result in more deaths (otherwise then I think we should make lawyers and priests into doctors because they are more effective at saving lives).

> the Mississippi law under review in this case does not make abortion illegal until after 15 weeks of pregnancy (and even then there are exceptions like the health of the mother)

I don't think you understand what's happened here. The Mississippi law was written for a world where Roe is still active. This opinion eviscerates Roe. Mississippi has a "trigger law" already on the books for just this occasion, and it will place a total ban on abortion as soon as the opinion is issued. Total abortion bans are going to be a thing very soon, even in the case of rape, even in the case of incest, and yes, even in the case where the health of the woman is threatened. That is all currently on the table.

> The Mississippi law was written for a world where Roe is still active. This opinion eviscerates Roe. Mississippi has a "trigger law" already on the books for just this occasion, and it will place a total ban on abortion as soon as the opinion is issued.

Ah, I see. Thank you for providing these critical details.

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