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Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

I'll be the begrudging devils advocate for a decision that is sure to have devastating consequences for poor women in red states.

It is good for unelected bodies like the Supreme Court to allow such dividing issues be figured out democratically. The US house has bled power to the other 3 institutions and of them, the judiciary is the least democratic. Ofc, my support for this change assumes that this Supreme Court will show restraint towards political activism (in either direction) in general. Call it naive, but I'll wait and see.

States rights has always been a double edged sword. You can't have your cake and eat it too. The same state rights that allow gun control and homosexuality to be locally legalized before national concensus; also now lead to abortion legislation being a state issue.

The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the views of the voting majority. If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give them the mandate needed. Now, the rural republican votes counting for more in the senate is a huge issue and threat to democracy that the US needs to figure out if it ever wants to represent the views of the people. But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other branches of govt.

My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both sides to be completely antagonistic towards each other. 'Own the libs, fuck the deplorables', no compromise. The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are willing to strike compromises. Crazed jesus Republicans and hyperprogressive activists are terrible people to put into national office. They gain power by antagonizing and being unhelpful roadblocks for change, all while asking for the most stubbornly impossible outcomes.

In the long run, history will have a dim view of this era of global polarization with all political sides to blame.

View on HN

Where you see delegating to the states, I see a minority (less than 30% of Americans agree with this) enforcing social views on the majority- and it will not stop here. Other things the Supreme Court has blocked state law using the same logic as roe v Wade (due process of the 14th amendment[0]) on are blocking contraception bans (grisewald), overturning anti-sodomy laws (lawrence), and giving equal protection to gay marriage (obergafel). Several states still have laws on the books banning those things and there could easily be a situation in 4 years where gay couples, legally married in California, are arrested for sodomy after the border to Texas when traveling. There are already laws on the books seeking to do this for abortion providers or people seeking abortions.

This is a small minority that just needs 51% of voter turnout in a particular state (or not even that in a heavily gerrymandered one), and they can control the lives of anyone living in or even traveling through an entire region of the US with apparently very little federal protection (and certainly no representation for the travelers)

This ruling is disastrous and shows the capriciousness of the current court in interpreting precedent to mean whatever is popular with their party. The 14th can amendment be limited but the second cannot, the first can mean infinite money in politics but the 5th does not mean Miranda warnings are required anymore.

Edit -[0] this link is not hypothetical, Thomas’s solo concurring opinion calls these cases out by name to be reconsidered by the court in light of this recent decision, and shows members of the court are absolutely interested in returning these to the realm of the states.

I think it would be wise to look beyond today's issues.

Earlier this month in Egbert v Boule, the Supreme Court said you have no right to sue a federal employee or the agency for which they they work over violations of your 4th amendment rights, as long as the agency has a complaint procedure (operated by that same agency). Yesterday in Vega v. Tekoh they decided that you don't have a cause of action against a police officer who doesn't read you your rights (although such testimony remains inadmissible).

In the months and years to co come, ultra-conservatives aim to eliminate birth control and install an overbearing theocratic government. They are not shy about saying so, nor are they a marginal fringe lacking influence. There was already one serious (albeit poorly executed) effort to interfere with the constitutional transfer of power. Conventional politics are very much over in the US.

If shops actually stop selling birth control moderate Americans might be galvanized into voting :)

I think that would affect a lot of people.. they might be shy to speak out, but if suddenly it's not available they might vote.

This statement can be measured against historical data. Democracies have regressed in the past. Prominent examples are in Russia and India, but also in Poland (as courts were made political) and Hungary.

I do wonder if those trends actually deliver more turnout or less. I suspect less actually, as non-results are actually pretty demotivating in altering behavior.

I’m not a historian but hopefully someone here is, and is able to make an educated guess of what the actual trends are.

So, are you suggesting that only when something directly affects them or maybe a family member, do they start to care? Otherwise, little to no empathy or compassion for those "others".

What is voting going to use in gerrymandered or "stronghold" areas, which most of the US effectively is?

US democracy, at least from an European POV, is completely and fundamentally broken, to the point that it will need a civil war to reset it to at least somewhat sane levels:

- The GOP as a party is so far gone off the rails, so many actual Conservatives have left that there is barely any intra-party resistance left to the Tea Party, Trump and QAnon ideologues.

- A large enough part of the GOP voter base is similarly radicalized after decades of brainwashing. Seriously, the kind of stuff that Fox "News" airs daily is scary. They will keep preventing reasonable politicians to challenge people like MTG.

- The Democrat Party, which is center-right in its actual political doings from an European POV, has other issues: gerontocratic people like Feinstein or Biden who have long ago lost touch with the 99%, corruption, incompetence, and most importantly the lack of backbone. There have been many chances to codify access to abortions, everyone knew how thin the ice was, and the Democrats let many chances pass to permanently close that risk - only because they were scared of losing one of their major selling points.

- Wealth disparity. The US is just plain shocking - you have people like Musk and Bezos worth hundreds of billions of dollars, money they can't ever truly spend even if they have a dozen children... and at the same time people die because they have to stretch out their expensive insulin or can't afford an epi-pen. Or they freeze to death because even while employed they cannot afford a home.

- Climate change, assuming that the US will be able / willing to do anything past November, will need an awful lot of investments to handle. The Republicans won't grant any money (either because of "financial stability" or because "electric cars are for woke softies"), and the young people see the clock ticking. Some of them will radicalize, up to and including terrorism - why else were there snipers on the Supreme Court?

Add on top of that the aftermath of covid - which still isn't over! - and the costs of the Ukraine war... and there's a perfect storm scenario of enormously destructive potential.

Birth control is a wholly different issue than abortion and not nearly as galvanizing. There is of course some hard core Catholic groups opposed, but beyond that it’s generally a scratch issue among other evangelicals. Most folks moderate to conservative just don’t give a shit about it. They just aren’t big on tax dollars paying for it. So you won’t see state laws being created specifically to challenge its legality and big money funding the activism in the same way as abortion.

Same for same sex marriage, there is just not enough moderate political people against it. Repealing it won’t have the legs.

Pro life support spanned the political spectrum, I think you can even fairly argue that despite her rhetoric to the contrary, Speaker Pelosi’s deliberate inaction may have been due to her faith and passive action against something she wanted to publicly appear to be “for” for wholly political reasons.

I don't know if it would. There are a huge number of people whose political views are basically incoherent [1], and on top of that "moderates" are an actually mostly nonexistent byproduct of the many people who don't fit neatly into the current political order [2].

[1]: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5891765/millennials-incoherent...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5878293/lets-stop-using-the-wor...

This reminds me of all the educationally highly credentialed people I knew confidently predicting in 2016 that Trump would jail all democrats, declare martial law, and ‘women would be raped in the streets’.

I would recommend looking up American history, in the 70s, 50s, 20s, 1800s etc. Today is a milder form of the political polarization that is endemic to America, and ironically America’s strength.

If there was a betting market on a theocracy, I would bet the house in the opposite direction, but frankly so would everyone.

Relax and enjoy the weekend, America is going to remain America for a long, long time.

>In the months and years to co come, ultra-conservatives aim to eliminate birth control and install an overbearing theocratic government. They are not shy about saying so[...]

Since you were kind enough to provide references to your other statements of fact, would you mind doing the same for this one? Because I've been seeing that exact sentiment repeated ad nauseum for a long while now and yet every attempt I've made to figure out where it came from, so far, has been from the claimant imputing intent upon a nebulous Other, with all such claims assuming the most malicious version of a strawman possible... and we all know that's against the rules, here. The sole argument I've seen sourced, in this specific case, hinges upon a very uneducated misinterpretation of a (relatively unimportant) concurrent opinion by Justice Thomas in which the hyperbolic clearly don't understand the concepts of "substantive due process" and are mixing it up with something else entirely.

How are small conservative states enforcing their social views on the majority?

In states where there is a majority for abortion, abortition is legalised by law, not by court, i.e. the way it should be. It is in states where there is no majority for abortion that it is not. How is it not democratic?

For things to be done at the federal level, it needs a broad consensus across the country, not a 51% majority where the 49% is dead against. The EU has similar safeguards where you need effectively 3 keys to enable a law (European parliament, European commission, and the Council), not a simple 51% majority. Nothing prevents you from legislatating at a state level, but if you want to impose your views on other states, it needs to be a broad consensus. What you seem to complain about is that voters in California cannot impose their social view on the inhabitants of Utah.

The Texas law forbids people from getting abortions in other states, where people have no representation in the Texas legislature by giving Texas citizens the right to sue them in Texas courts.

More generally problematic, your view would let any state persecute a minority of voters in that state and bind the federal government from guaranteeing equal protection to all Americans. We’ve run this experiment and found a long history of enforcing slavery, segregation, and persecution of gay people. Minority rights need special protections from the local majorities in states, and the 14th amendment is in no small part representing the will of the majority recognizing the rights of minorities are vulnerable here. Restricting a women’s ability to get a medical procedure a heavily gerrymandered state legislature finds distasteful is the latest in the long line of states rights consequences here.

I think you may need to take a closer look at these numbers, there is no poll indicating that anywhere near 49% of US citizens are "dead set" against abortion being legal.

My understanding is that the number of US citizens who believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances is less than 15%.[0] Indeed, looking at this poll more than 75% of the people fell short of believing abortion should be illegal ("legal in only a few circumstances").

With the percentage so low, I find it hard to believe that the people in _any_ US state would like abortion to be banned. Again, it would be interesting if you had any data to back up this statement.

[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/393104/pro-choice-identificatio...

Abortion access is not a social view. It's a health necessity, as is contraception.

I'd understand if "the left" was trying to take away some other person's right, but this is the opposite. They're trying to preserve rights.

A tyranny of the majority in conservative states is now restricting rights, it's going to cause death / suffering.

He's talking about the US Senate, which legislates national issues. Because each state gets two votes, the more rural, conservative states end up acting as a bloc, giving them (often vastly) disproportional power over the majority.

78% of Texans believe abortions should be allowed to some degree (https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/04/texas-abortion-ut-po...)

Texas, like most "conservative" states is gerrymandered to all hell. So it's very very simple how conservative minorities are enforcing their social views on the majority.

You’re assuming the legislatures of the states reflects the views of the majority. Which gerrymandering and voting suppression has long since assured it does not.

> How are small conservative states enforcing their social views on the majority?

It only takes the support of 5.1% of US voters to filibuster a bill, 8.1% to appoint/block a supreme court nominee and 12% to defeat a filibuster:

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/2jnmbe/i_did_the_...

> The EU has similar safeguards where you need effectively 3 keys to enable a law (European parliament, European commission, and the Council), not a simple 51% majority.

It's even more than that. In the council (where the governments of the member countries are present) you need majority based on number of citizens in the countries and also votes from a number of countries, so that few big countries can't overrule the small ones, but you always need support from small and big countries.

> What you seem to complain about is that voters in California cannot impose their social view on the inhabitants of Utah.

What nonsense. This is not about state's rights.

Just yesterday the Court decided that no, California doesn't have the right to restrict guns. That's the inhabitants of Utah imposing their social view on the acceptability of guns on the residents of California.

It's about states rights when it comes to things you don't support, like abortion, and it's about the constitution and the rights it gives everyone, when it comes to things that you support, like the right for every nutjob to kill children with AR-15s.

There is no logical reasoning behind these decisions aside from a vindictive, right-wing court, imposing its social will onto the entire country.

That view was NOT reflected by this same Supreme Court the other day when they threw out New York’s concealed carry limiting law.

States rights? Ha. Hypocrisy and blatant power grabs by the Federalist Society .

Shameful and likely the downfall of America.

Such extreme power grabs continue to be railroaded through by an extreme right wing unconcerned with the 300 million living Americans whose rights they are stomping upon.

1) we must eliminate the filibuster.

2) we must eliminate the electoral college

3) we must impeach the seditious conspiracy and cut the head off the snake that spawned it. The federalist society must be investigated for installing Supreme Court judges and we must impeach every last one of these criminals. Clarence Thomas and Kavanaugh are also both subject to serious sexual crimes accusations that were steamrolled right over by the Republican juggernaut.

We cannot allow this theocracy-in-waiting gain absolute power, and to ignore their machinations to this end is no longer possible.

California needs to separate into more States, or people should move to help turn Red States purple.

Edit: Since HN is rate-limiting me. There have been proposals that try to either give a Red State advantage, in particular, the electoral college. However, California could reasonably be split into 7 states (2 Red, 5 Blue) that would still have greater populations than Utah, netting +3 sets of Senators.

> I see a minority (less than 30% of Americans agree with this) enforcing social views on the majority- and it will not stop here

It depends on how you define "this." Polls that ask "do you support Roe v. Wade are useless because it's a legal decision and the public doesn't necessarily understand its legal effect. More granular polls show that the public is on both sides of Roe. Most Americans support some sort of abortion right, but most Americans also think that right should be narrower than Roe: https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abort.... In particular, 2/3s of Americans think that second trimester abortions should be generally illegal, but under Roe's trimester framework, there is a nationwide right to elective abortions in the second trimester.

> This ruling is disastrous and shows the capriciousness of the current court in interpreting precedent to mean whatever is popular with their party. The 14th can amendment be limited but the second cannot

The difference is not the Court's "capriciousness" but instead the text of the Second Amendment, which specifically addresses the "right to bear arms," versus the text of the 14th amendment, which says absolutely nothing about "privacy" or "abortion" or anything of the sort.

It's disingenuous beyond belief to try and make a false equivalency between an expressly enumerated right written into the Constitution 233 years ago, with one divined from "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitutional text in the mid-20th century.

> It depends on how you define "this." Polls that ask "do you support Roe v. Wade are useless because it's a legal decision and the public doesn't necessarily understand its legal effect. More granular polls show that the public is on both sides of Roe.

None of this supports that the 14th amendment’s right to privacy under the due process clause doesn’t exist though?

> It's disingenuous beyond belief to try and make a false equivalency between an expressly enumerated right written into the Constitution 233 years ago, with one divined from "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitutional text in the mid-20th century.

Sure, we can ignore the well regulated militia clause as meaningless, everyone seems to. Then, to pick another example of capriciousness, my understanding is that this court ruled in Egbert v. Boule and that the explicit right against unreasonable search and seizure in the 4th amendment should actually be interpreted that there is no right to sue the government for redress of these violations, only the complaint processes that government agencies provide to decide the unreasonableness for themselves. There is another 233 year old amendment being so narrowly interpreted to slowly defang it while another “shall not be infringed”

> ...under Roe's trimester framework, there is a nationwide right to elective abortions in the second trimester

Dobbs overturns both Roe and Casey, which replaced Roe's trimester framework with the undue burden standard [1]. Trimesters are completely irrelevant. Please learn this; I feel like half of your abortion comments push this in order to setup your 2/3s Gallup stat, which is also problematic.

> and something 2/3s of Americans oppose

We've also talked about this before. Here are some countervailing stats from the same poll [2]:

- Would you like to see the Supreme Court overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision concerning abortion, or not?: 53% No, not overturn

- If the Supreme Court were to overturn its 1973 Roe versus Wade decision concerning abortion, it would mean there is no constitutional protection for abortion rights and each state could set its own laws to allow, restrict or ban abortions. Do you think overturning Roe versus Wade would be a good thing or a bad thing?: 63% bad thing

- Do you favor or oppose [A ban on abortions after the 18th week of a pregnancy]?: 56% oppose

18 weeks is well into the 2nd trimester. Again as we've discussed before, polling on abortion is very difficult. Mostly they show Americans' ignorance of the issue, which you even acknowledge.

In particular, most Americans don't know that providing elective abortion access is crucial as so many things can go wrong--especially in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters [3]--and you really can't enumerate them all.

Why do people have second trimester abortions? Ironically, it's mostly an access issue [4], but there are other reasons [5] [6]:

- microcephaly and other fetal anomalies are typically only detectable in the 2nd trimester

- many people can't get the time off or can't get the funds (abortion is expensive for many people)

- waiting periods can force people into the 2nd trimester

- delayed recognition of pregnancy and delayed confirmation of pregnancy with a pregnancy test

- logistical delays occurred in arranging insurance to pay for the abortion

- problems locating a provider and time lost due to an inappropriate initial referral (abortion clinics are busy)

Your argument is that Dobbs moves the US closer to what Americans want by making "that right... narrower than Roe." But in truth, we already mostly have what Americans want [7]:

- 79.3% of abortions were performed at ≤9 weeks’ gestation

- nearly all (92.7%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation

And the other 7.3% aren't due to evil or cruelty, they're the result of the US' restrictive abortion regime and intense tragedy.

And what Dobbs does is not to preserve the right to abortion in the first trimester, but to give States the power to proscribe it. Here's what the dissent says [8]:

"Today, the Court discards that balance. It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs."

This is plainly not what Americans want. If your argument against Roe is that it was out of step with public opinion, mustn't you also level that argument against Dobbs?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey

[2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

[3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10426234/

[4]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22176796/

[5]: https://www.self.com/story/why-people-get-second-trimester-a...

[6]: https://journals.openedition.org/eces/248

[7]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm

[8]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf

"Other things the Supreme Court has blocked state law using the same logic as roe v Wade (due process of the 14th amendment[0]) on are blocking contraception bans (grisewald), overturning anti-sodomy laws (lawrence), and giving equal protection to gay marriage (obergafel)."

One odd thing about this is that there is another case with the same 14th amendment reasoning which no one seems to be discussing: Loving v. Virginia (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395).

I wonder if that's because Clarence and Ginni Thomas have been committing miscegenation for years?

No, it's because Loving v. Virginia has a clear textual basis in the 14th amendment's Equal Protection Clause, while Roe and Griswold are divined from "penumbras" and "emanations" using the hook of the 14th amendment's Due Process Clause. Loving v. Virginia relied on both bases, but the Equal Protection rationale would have been adequate standing alone.

If Slaughterhouse is reopened, do you think the right will see the attempt to resurrect privileges or immunities (as per RBG) and raise (counter) with the holding against birthright citizenship in it?

The equal protection clause is different from the due process clause, and Thomas can easily split his decision over that. As an originalist too, he would likely ask if the 14th amendment was meant to protect the rights of black people to at the time, and it was clearly meant to protect the rights of recently freed slaves so it isn’t much of a stretch, you can basically trip into this interpretation.

So I think he would be wholly unbothered making that distinction, knowing that _his_ rights are protected under a different clause. I guess it does show some of the fragility of judicial precedent, you could imagine an even more conservative justice who was not Thomas restricting the interpretation of this clause to mean only the narrow rights the majority of people in 1868 would have liked and not include miscegenation through some horribly tortured logic. But Thomas can draw the line before that and after himself.

Keep in mind in 1992 when WV amended its state constitution to remove the miscegenation prohibition 25% wanted to keep it.

The 14 amendment was also used as justification for granting "personhood" to corporations. Not likely that this court would consider reversing this.

> I wonder if that's because Clarence and Ginni Thomas have been committing miscegenation for years?

Please, I'm eating. Besides, there's no evidence of this.

Do you mean no evidence of his motivation, or no evidence that they've been committing miscegenation?

> Other things the Supreme Court has blocked state law using the same logic as roe v Wade (due process of the 14th amendment[0]) on are blocking contraception bans (grisewald), overturning anti-sodomy laws (lawrence), and giving equal protection to gay marriage (obergafel).

Also, non-discrimination in public schooling, with mandatory integration (Brown) but even before integration was understood to be essential (Plessy, permitting “separate but equal” education.) Without substantive due process, state public education which is separate by race and makes no pretense of equality would be fine. Also, the incorporation of much of the Bill of Rights as applicable against the states, as a whole.

Substantive due process is enormous, and Thomas has explicitly stated that the entire jurisprudence in that domain should be uprooted in his concurrence on Dobbs.

(Ironically, this includes the applicability of the 2nd Amendment to the State.)

"This is a small minority that just needs 51% of voter turnout"

I'm unclear what definition of "minority" you are using here. That sounds like a majority to me.

Comparing with poll numbers is not an apples-to-apples comparison. A lot of polls are highly motivated to support a particular outcome, but when you look into the details and ask questions a number of different ways, you get a more complex picture.

For instance, if you ask "how long should elective abortions be legal?" you may get an answer that seems to contradict "do you support Roe?". And then if you start to define "elective" (or even use different words) you might get a different answer still. I'm not saying which one is the "right" question to ask, but I am saying that it's not reasonable to reject actual vote totals in a free and fair election.

> I'm unclear what definition of "minority" you are using here. That sounds like a majority to me.

It is a majority of a smaller area but the minority of the larger area. Majority of a gerrymandered district for state representation. Majority of a purple state senate race, or one that has winner take all electoral vote allocation, as most do.

And of course, majority in Texas when the views held there are a minority for the overall country but they still pass laws letting people bring charges in Texas courts for abortions, even performed outside of Texas by people without representation in Texas state legislature, though I have some hope that this is a bridge too far even for the current partisan 6-3 court. No reason they wouldn’t allow it here while saying it couldn’t be used as precedent as many members for the current court argued in Bush v Gore.

> "Where you see delegating to the states, I see a minority (less than 30% of Americans agree with this) enforcing social views on the majority".

That's not true, only 26% of Americans support abortion in almost all cases. Most support some sort of restriction. This ruling forces the States to determine what those restrictions are.

This is an extremely complicated and nuanced cultural issue. The debate that's happening now is one that was cut short by Roe—one that the rest of the West has had. Few other countries allow abortion with "no restrictions". States should be allowed to decide, individually, where they want to draw the line.

I'll add that this is in no way an endorsement of an anti-choice position. But there's no way to view this as "a minority enforcing social views on the majority."

The primary civic problem in this country is the neutering of our State and Federal legislatures. The Courts should not be legislating. The Executive should not be legislating. Force our Representatives to do their damn jobs.

> The primary civic problem in this country is the neutering of our State and Federal legislatures. The Courts should not be legislating. The Executive should not be legislating. Force our Representatives to do their damn jobs.

This is just another symptom of the disease of the disproportional representation everywhere in our systems, most importantly the senate. The senate confirmed (or in the case of Garland, refused to confirm) these justices, and the senate refuses to pass laws the majority of Americans want.

> But there's no way to view this as "a minority enforcing social views on the majority."

How can you interpret the Texas law as anything but? This decision and those laws are all the product of concerted and focused lobbying and maneuvering by conservative Christian groups that make up a minority of Americans.

> This is just another symptom of the disease of the disproportional representation.

Hard disagree. Those issues have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Legislators have learned that the best way to guarantee re-election is to loudly wring your hands and ask "won't somebody do something" every election season. If they actually do their jobs, people might hold them accountable. It has zero to do with "disproportional representation".

> ...the senate refuses to pass laws the majority of Americans want.

This is by design. That's literally what a Senate is designed to do. Preventing the mob from ruling the country by popular decree.

> How can you interpret the Texas law... that make up a minority of Americans.

Because a majority of TEXANS support it: only 28% of the state thinks abortion should be legal in all or most cases [1]. You can't look at nationwide polls and make statements about local politics.

1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/355034/texas-aligned-red-states...

Claims about disproportional representation are almost always based on presidential election results, ignoring the midterm elections, even though the midterms are equally important for the Senate.

The 2014 election shouldn't be ignored, because it explains why Garland wasn't confirmed and Trump's appointments were. That year, Republicans won the popular vote by a margin of almost 6%, and won 9 seats in the Senate.

That election gave them control of the Senate until 2020, and that outcome was representative of the popular vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_States_elections

Nobody is enforcing social views on anybody. The Roe decision invented a Constitutional right where one did not exist, and today's decision corrected that. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg was on record saying that the decision was flawed!

The real tragedy here is that it took 50 years for this egregiously bad ruling to be thrown out. And despite your fear mongering, today's decision went out of it's way to say that it is not meant to apply to any of those other issues that you mentioned.

The Supreme Court's job is to interpret the Constitution, not to invent rights.

> The Roe decision invented a Constitutional right where one did not exist

Bodily autonomy is not a constitutional right, but self defense is?

> Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg was on record saying that the decision was flawed!

A misrepresentation of what RBG was getting at. She was very much of the opinion that legislatively it should have been codified as a right. She's right, but it's pie in the sky, as much as her desire to be replaced by a woman President.

> today's decision went out of it's way to say that it is not meant to apply to any of those other issues that you mentioned.

Thomas specifically called out those decisions as being up for review. Alito mentioned it in his leaked opinion. (it may have been bargained out of the opinion, or maybe he chose not to be explicit as to not raise pressure in the political sphere, which seems likely given the nature of this court) Four of the justices who voted against Roe today within the past decade are on the record as saying that this was settled law. They are liars, and people are right to mistrust the court.

> Nobody is enforcing social views on anybody.

Actual that’s what all these cases were about. Roe v Wade- some states wanted to treat abortion as murder and control women’s bodily autonomy. Lawrence was about keeping sodomy laws which could be used to legally discriminate against gay people. Griselwald is clearly about social views on contraception.

> egregiously bad ruling to be thrown out. And despite your fear mongering, today's decision went out of it's way to say that it is not meant to apply to any of those other issues that you mentioned.

The main opinion did not rule this out, or if I did I absolutely missed it. Thomas’ solo concurring opinion calls these cases out by name as worthy of reconsideration by the court - “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

It’s hard to take this argument seriously at all. It feels like you are not paying attention, saying everything is fine while the 14th amendment is on fire.

> today's decision went out of it's way to say that it is not meant to apply to any of those other issues that you mentioned

Thomas's opinion pretty specifically cited some of those other cases. It wasn't joined by all the others who voted with him, but then again, Kavanaugh claimed that Roe v. Wade was "settled law" during his confirmation hearing, which clearly doesn't seem to be what he's saying now. I'm not surprised that this is his real view, and I won't be in a few years if suddenly he also votes against some of those other rulings.

Explain this:

"The right to abortion is not explicitly defined in the Constitution, and therefore does not exist."

"The right to _purchase_ firearms is not explicitly defined in the Constitution, but somehow must also exist, because how could you bear arms without it?"

The sad reality is that this shit is all just twisted to convenience.

Why did Thomas exclude interracial marriage as a state decision, while calling out same-sex marriage as being a state decision?

Why do several Supreme Court Justices state that they are originalists, and the Constitution is sacrosanct, when the people who wrote it said that it wasn't, and was to be "reviewed and updated to the needs of the times as a living document"?

There's no way to interpret the Constitution without "inventing rights" since time moves forward. The founders knew we had progress so they built in ways of accounting for that such as the 9th amendment. The problem only comes when people ignore progress and ignore the parts of the Constitution they don't agree with to dismantle rights they don't like.

> The Roe decision invented a Constitutional right where one did not exist,

So did the ninth amendment, FWIW: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Appelate courts decide on what a "right" is. That's arguably their most important function. Huge, huge chunks of modern constitutional law are based on subjects not enumerated in the constitution. The constitution doesn't speak about miscegenation laws, or miranda rights, etc... Yet those are still "rights" that you'd be awfully horrified to have destroyed, right?

This argument doesn't really work, basically. The argument you're making is, if you really think about it, not what you actually want.

> And despite your fear mongering, today's decision went out of it's way to say that it is not meant to apply to any of those other issues that you mentioned.

Oh you read the whole judgement?

Perhaps you missed this nugget on page 118

> For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell.

Are you going to amend your comment now?

Thankfully the founders had some thoughts on "inventing rights".

"Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Bodily autonomy is more complex than just womb to birth. So, at what age is a mother no longer required to use their body to provide life for a child? ie. If a 4 year old needs a blood transfusion, can the state force the mother to provide their blood for their child? What about a kidney transplant? When does the states interest in the potential life of a child end?

Bodily autonomy aside, since Rowe v. Wade was primarily a decision about medical privacy, and was part of the foundations of many other precedents and laws, is HIPA still valid? What is the new line between medical privacy rights and free speech rights.

Thomas’s concurrence specifically says those precedents should be revisited.

You don't understand how law is made. Legislation is only one source of law. Others include judicial rulings, customs and expert testimony accepted by a court.

rights not already enumerated are not invented - the burden is to argue why a right should be curtailed or not recognized

They are. The constitution explicitly stated that rights outside of those explicitly listed exist. The right to chose is one of those rights. There was nothing wrong with the ruling except that the supreme court majority personally disliked it

> The Supreme Court's job is to interpret the Constitution, not to invent rights.

This.

All this controversy could end right now by simple having congress... pass a law.

That's what they are supposed (and paid) to do. Maybe if they spent less time trading stocks...

The US Constitution is so thin and void of specifics that many modern ideas can be considered "unconstitutional". To interpret that is by definition inventing rights where it's not written down.

But then they invented a right to concealed carry when the constitution only talks about militias and muskets? I'm not sure your point carries.

> The Roe decision invented a Constitutional right where one did not exist

Nothing in the constitution says this is a problem.

It's important to note that 4 of the 9 justices on the court, and 4 of the 6 who voted in favor of this decision were appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote.

Literally appointed by minority governments.

To say nothing of the M. Garland nomination defeated by shameless parliamentary tricks, simply refusing to bring it to a vote while rushing ACB’s nomination through in the last year of the Trump presidency.

It's important to note that most Americans don't agree on letting the states enforce this because abortion is a particularly sore issue for everyone. Pro life people believe abortion is literally murder, and therefore, no state should allow it. Pro choice people believe that banning abortion is oppression, and therefore, no state should be allowed to ban it.

That kind of suggests that the states are the right place to handle the issue.

As I wrote elsewhere, states rights has long been the motte of all kinds of minority social opinions in the Bailey. The broad consensus is being held hostage by a minority in some state legislatures, and in the senate, and has now trickled into a 6-3 Supreme Court with lifetime appointments of comparatively young justices.

One member since it is a Solo opinion. Also all those other cases have a real right to privacy aspect to them because they involve acts between consenting adults. There Isaac point in pregnancy where an abortion ceases to be an act between consenting adults and instead becomes a conspiracy to kill a minor and where that point is needs to be legislated rather than conjured out of thin air by the judiciary. I say this as someone who is a big fan of abortions (they have killed so many future criminals if skewed the crime stats, which is awesome.) because I am an even bigger fan of the constitution.

> Where you see delegating to the states, I see a minority (less than 30% of Americans agree with this)

Provide the source and the question that was asked on it. The majority of Americans think it should be up to the states, whether the state is for or against

CNN reported the number has never been above 36% for “should roe v wade be overturned” https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/24/politics/americans-roe-v-...

Gallup puts the number of legal under all cases at 35% of Americans and legal under some conditions at 50%.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

Trigger laws in places like Oklahoma make it illegal in basically all cases after fertilization. Texas law is going to let Texans sue people for providing or getting abortions out of state. Framing this as a states rights issue didn’t work for slavery, segregation, gay rights, etc and it won’t work for women’s reproductive rights either.

Trump won white women in both presidential elections, and Trump got to stamp the court with three justices.

98% of black women voted for Clinton.

In 2016, 55% of voters were women, which trump won 47-44. By three points, which is a solid win in a presidential general election.

So Trump won the largest voting race+gender demographic.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/892859/women-support-ove...

For republican-leaning women (which will be white women based on the female black vote numbers), it is basically 50-50 in support/opposition for Roe V Wade. For Dem-leaning it is 85-15 roughly.

Roe V Wade is the most important women's right won in the courts in the last 50 years, and women voted to overturn it effectively.

Finally, this is the culmination of the liberal justices refusing to step down or retire. Ruth Baider Ginsburg is held up as a pinnacle of feminism, and yet her stubbornness to continue serving despite health problems and battles with cancer resulted in Trump getting a crucial third justice.

The most stalwart feminist justice handed the overturn of Roe V Wade to a president with a known record for sexual impropriety if not outright assault.

Obama sat on Merrick Garland.

The baby boomer generation ushered in sexual freedom when it was their time to be young and free, and then shut the door on it in their old age crapping over all the other generations.

What a world.

For the record, Ginsburg thought that Roe vs Wade was a mistake, for this exact reason. Momentum was lost to get actually good legislation in, and the vulnerable Roe vs Wade was put in instead.

> In 2016, 55% of voters were women, which trump won 47-44. By three points, which is a solid win in a presidential general election.

You're quoting stats for white women only, Trump lost the female vote 54/39.

Which makes this claim factually incorrect:

> Roe V Wade is the most important women's right won in the courts in the last 50 years, and women voted to overturn it effectively.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examinati...

I'd imagine if you combined the age demographic information, the female vote that may actually be able to get pregnant and so be affected by this is going to swing even harder away from Trump.

The combined male and female vote swings 30% to the red between the 18-29 and 65+ demographics.

> I see a minority (less than 30% of Americans agree with this) enforcing social views on the majority

Can you clarify what social view is being enforced on the majority?

while less than 30% support it, I wouldn't be surprised if the share of that 30% vote more than the other 70%. remember something like only 35% of eligible adults vote in midterm election. apathy toward our civic duty is killing our country just as much as radical polarization.

So, aren't you reinforcing his point, that the court is not a reliable place to make law? Today's decision is exactly that: the court acknowledging that its prior decision was an overstep in its power.

No, it's not. The Court has "acknowledged" no such thing.

This court will use its power however it wants. It recognizes absolutely no concept about "overstepping". It will do what it wants. That has been made abundantly clear.

Are they having sex at the border of Texas? They should probably be arrested for that. Your assertion is obviously ridiculous, traveling gay men will not be arrested simply for being gay. It’s the young gay men trapped in the state we should be concerned about. It’s really not just as easy as moving to whatever you state has the laws you like as most of us are trapped by the locality where our support networks are.

> Your assertion is obviously ridiculous, traveling gay men will not be arrested simply for being gay.

Your assertion is oblivious to the modern sensibilities of "Law and Order." Gay men will be arrested on "reasonable suspicion" of having had gay sex. And even when the suspicion is not found to be reasonable, there will be zero ramifications for the arresting officers.

Are you like....completely unaware of recent(last century) history? Like....at all??? Gay people were being arrested on charges of sodomy all the time, even if they were never caught in the act.

That is definitely a bigger problem, but the original poster seemed already ready to write those people off when talking about the impact of poor red state women as a sacrifice for a democratic process. I am arguing that doesn’t give the gay couple traveling through any democratic rights and absolutely does restrict their rights. The abortion bans in Texas has ample precedent for criminalizing behavior that occurred in other states. Sodomy laws also have a history of selective enforcement specifically to persecute gay people.

While I personally have strong pro-choice views I think this was correctly decided for the reasons you state.

Abortion is a case where there is genuine disagreement among the public and at its core exists a genuine moral question. Most partisans talk past each other, but the core of it is about the rights of the unborn and at which point that becomes relevant.

It's different because of this from gay rights and contraception which don't have this other element in question (for contraception specifically those against abortion because of rights of the fetus should be in favor of easier access). It's also why European laws around this are more strict, Denmark allows abortion without cause up to 12 weeks and with cause after.[0]

It's better for these questions to be decided by states and democratic process than SCOTUS - the latter which we've seen cause extreme polarization. If you hold the view that the fetus at some point is a life with rights than the political activism here is consistent. Where this occurs I think is a legitimate question (big difference between zygote and day before birth).

There is a lot of bad faith, sloppy reasoning, and motivated reasoning arguing here from partisans across the board.

There are also real tradeoffs and young women will be the most harmed in states with bans because they have the least autonomy, but I can at least understand the strongest arguments from the other side [1]. Something like the laws in Denmark being passed at the congressional level is probably the desirable compromise outcome. At the moment at least SCOTUS thinks states cannot ban the ability to travel to a different state for abortions, the ability to exit is important.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Denmark

[1]: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/3ELrPerFTSo75WnrH/p/PeSzc9JTBxha...

Don't you think it's better if morality issues are left to individuals?

Don't want an abortion? Don't get one. Care about fetus rights? Start help centers for pregnant women, engage in education and activism, provide social nets for new mothers and children. It's not like we have mandatory abortions.

To me, the abortions is similar to the right to chose to end your own life, ultimately, you can't outlaw killing yourself.

The critical difference is the individual rights of the fetus.

If you hold that at some point the fetus has rights of its own then this becomes more difficult.

I think that’s the fundamental question and what makes this issue challenging.

For a provocative example, we don’t allow infanticide to be left up to the individuals moral decision, and then suggest those that care about it engage to help stop infanticide. We decide at that point the infant has rights and we care about suffering.

I think for societal pragmatic reasons women should retain the right to terminate pregnancy even though it does result in ending a life and in some cases suffering of the unborn (depending on stage). But I don’t pretend that tradeoff isn’t a real thing, I just think that’s the best outcome on net.

I also think contraception should be widely and easily available to reduce the likelihood of this happening generally.

I can understand how a reasonable person could disagree and have stronger views about when the fetus’ individual rights should kick in.

> Abortion is a case where there is genuine disagreement among the public and at its core exists a genuine moral question.

That is not true, at all. It is a small minority that want abortion to be illegal. And of course it's a moral question. What isn't? Quit legitimatizing these minority political groups, as if they have ever considered a moral position in their life or can even describe what morality is.

The U.S. is not a democracy by definition, and certainly not one in practice. The problem with people hiding behind this as a "democratic process decision" is that that they are ignoring the fact that the Republicans absolutely refuse to participate in democratic proceedings and work to pass a law in Congress giving people the rights they deserve. Republicans, with the support of a minority in this country, are holding the U.S. hostage. What's insane, is that the Republicans make life harder for this very minority and blame it on everyone else.

Abortion is actually not a complex issue. It is a tough issue but not a complex issue.

The U.S. is reaching Middle East versions of extremism.

I feel like you may be a bit out of touch with rural / conservative America. Pro life is not an extreme minority opinion.

You're free to argue it's an immoral or unjust opinion, or argue it's an opinion that is not internally consistent with their other political opinions....

But to downplay the size of the cohort to diminish the opinion is unproductive in reaching an amenable outcome.

In European democracies - typically not dominated by bible thumping Republicans - these things have been decided democratically, like any other law.

As a result abortion is a very minor political issue. Some people want more or less restrictions, and occasionally rules get adjusted.

If the Supreme Court hadn't suddenly decided to commandeer this issue in 1973, I think the US could also have been like that, and hopefully after a few dramatic years we can get there.

Roe and Casey recognized and dealt with the competing interests involved in abortion. That's why it allowed some restrictions on abortion while declining to do so for similar issues like contraception, interracial marriage, and gay marriage. The status quo did not ignore the interests of the unborn child, while the new status quo completely ignores the interests of the woman.

Reproductive rights are fundamental to women's liberty and equality. They should be protected by the courts like many other fundamental rights, not subject to the whims of political majorities.

Fair enough. But then we get back to the core issue. Why should the unelected courts be the ones making this determination of what the appropriate balance is?

I know the argument gets overplayed, but there is something to be said about the fact that Roe was decided by nine white men.

Personally, I am against abortion.

But even then, up to 12 weeks, no questions asked, 12 - 18 weeks under very specific circumstances (incest, rape and such) and afterwards pretty much limited to if the mothers life is at risk (altough, preferably a C-section or something similar) seems like a good compromise.

The repeal of RvW allows states to implement no questions asked abortions for up to birth, along with allowing states to ban it altogether, rather than the previous state of the law.

Yeah - this is also the consensus a lot of law has landed on in Europe, I think it's also reasonable (especially as a baseline compromise to prevent total bans).

The vast majority (~80%) are within the first 12 weeks anyway, the later ones usually have extenuating circumstances and third trimester was already banned (without cause) in most cases anyway.

I'm pretty sure polling also shows most Americans have some nuanced view on this that sits somewhere in this range.

It's simple, fetuses don't have rights. Roe was the right decision. The current SCOTUS went off the farm and are now just an extension of the RNC because of the 6-3 supermajority and recent ruling show they just do whatever the republican platform is wrapping it up in "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution.

Excellent post and well reasoned. I agree that the root of the issue here is one that will never have a definite answer.

Germany has roughly the same laws as Denmark, and now after this decision many states will continue to have the same abortion laws they have had for the last 50 years, many will have on par with Europe, and some will outright ban.

There is no making everyone happy, but 50 options that are easier to change seem like a compromise to a binary split that will always be under attack.

The other point that I think is salient is what justice Ginsburg noted back in the 70s I believe. She said that abortion rights were trending towards a more “liberal“ direction. And then Roe came and galvanized the pro life movement dramatically.

We can only guess and hypothesize. But one has to wonder if the pro-choice movement would’ve been better off without row, and with the passage of time.

Except the goalposts have now been moved. We should anticipate that Republicans in the US Congress will attempt to codify a federal ban on abortion in all 50 states. Indeed, many are already advocating this. We should also anticipate that other freedoms once thought protected by the US Constitution and Supreme Court will come under threat. Justice Thomas writes in his concurring opinion in Dobbs that he would like to see Obergefell, Lawrence and Grisword overturned. These decisions protect same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships, and contraception.

The overturning of Roe comes just days after another ruling by the same Supreme Court in which they took away states' rights to regulate the possession of guns. States rights has always been a rhetorical tactic used by conservatives as a convenient ruse to achieve their aims. When the argument from states rights is helpful to their political aims, they rely on it. When it's harmful, they ignore it.

> It is good for unelected bodies like the Supreme Court to allow such dividing issues be figured out democratically.

Speaking as an outsider on American politics, it seems to me that it won't be figured out democratically. If it was done democratically, on a nationwide vote, abortion would easily stay legal.

What will actually happen is that the decision will be referred to states, where government is elected on small turnouts, in gerrymandered divisions, heavily influenced by untrue TV propaganda funded by billionaires, and in many cases elected based on supposed economic reasons, not any moral ones.

The effective result is that vulnerable young women will be forced to carry unwanted babies to term at the cost of great suffering to themselves and the resultant children.

> with all political sides to blame.

I can only see one side to blame here.

As far as I am aware, every state in the US has a democratic government.

> If it was done democratically, on a nationwide vote, abortion would easily stay legal.

Direct democracy is not the only form of democracy. It has many problems.

What is a democracy called when:

1. legislative lines for the state and federal areas look like a kindergardner drawing squigglies

2. When many states do everything they can to find reasons to disqualify valid voters

3. When felons are not legally able to vote, even after their time is served

4. When massive amounts of money come in from republican businesses to significantly sway elections

5. When massive lies and half-truths are put out in the media thanks to the massive money

That just doesn't look like a democracy. What it is? I don't know.

Agreed.

This weakening of civil rights at the Federal level allows those Americans who are sexist to enact sexist laws where they have concentrated power within State boundaries.

Welcome to "The Divided States"

People (at least currently, I don't have much hope after 2024) have the right to vote still, they could overturn this all in November if they wanted to instead of wailing and gnashing teeth, just simply go vote. The majority could easily toss out republic senators and representatives if they truly want to do something about this. I think people are too lazy though. It's a fkn shame.

I don’t believe that’s accurate. The Congress is already talking about passing nationwide legislation to protect the right to abortion. Such legislation would still be constitutional even after this decision.

Having said that, I think national legislation is probably not the most effective way forward for the pro-choice movement. All that will do is continue to galvanize the pro life side.

> The Congress is already talking about passing nationwide legislation to protect the right to abortion. Such legislation would still be constitutional even after this decision.

Please cite the Constitutional power authorizing this, restricting it to powers that will hold up under the present Court against a state asserting the absence of Constitutional federal authority and infringement of powers reserved under the 10th Amendment.

It can't be the power to enforce the 14th Amendment, because abortion as a right within that has been ruled out.

A hyperexpansive view of the Commerce Clause?

No, codification is a fools errand.

> If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give them the mandate needed

The problem is we have an electoral system that forces us into a two party system. One of those parties is beholden to religious ideologies. If any republican votes for abortion protection they will get primaried. So we end up in a situation where a healthy majority of the country wants some level of abortion rights, but because we need 60 senate votes it's impossible to implement.

When Obama was running in 2008 he claimed to want to codify Roe as law his first day as office, and was elected with a super majority. Never once tried. This was not the only opportunity in the last 50 years.

It’s not JUST about means, motive, opportunity. There has to be the desire to spend the political capital. I think it’s interesting no one in 50 years with all the majority make ups have put the effort in.

I don’t speculate a reason other than it seems more expensive than the media might have me believe?

What do you mean he never tried? How do you know that? Obama never had the votes to overcome the filibuster for abortion rights, he was struggling to even get the ACA passed. Why publicly focus on legislation that's impossible to pass, especially when it's already the law of the land?

> When Obama was running in 2008 he claimed to want to codify Roe as law his first day as office, and was elected with a super majority. Never once tried. This was not the only opportunity in the last 50 years.

The cynic in me thinks that neither party wants this issue to go away because it fills voting booths.

Democrats have had multiple chances to codify it and didn't even try. They could also get some buy-in from on-the-fence people and maybe even a few very centrist Republicans in bluish states with a compromise that codifies protection for abortions in the first trimester but nope.

If Republicans really were serious about adoption as an alternative they'd make reforming and funding adoption and foster care a huge priority. They'd also entertain medicare coverage for uninsured women giving birth even if it's to be given up for adoption so as to remove the financial incentive for abortion. But nope.

Why solve a problem or find a viable compromise when the controversy gets you elected? Culture war controversies also distract from incompetence and corruption.

Codifying Roe is double sided sword. If Congress has the power to legalize abortion (under some commerce clause interpretation), it likely has the power to ban abortion nationwide.

No one put the effort it because it would be completely meaningless. The same Supreme Court that upheld the Mississippi law would obviously toss out any federal “codification”

> So we end up in a situation where a healthy majority of the country wants some level of abortion rights

some level of abortion rights != Roe and the extent of Roe

I'd imagine an easy majority supports it in cases of threats to the mother's life, but does an easy majority support letting Roe stand without any sort of weakening? I doubt it

I've seen your comments in this thread questioning what the American public actually wants. You don't need to wonder - there have been countless polls over the past fifty years that will tell you in detail:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/393275/steady-americans-not-roe...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-i...

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099844097/abortion-polling-r...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/393104/pro-choice-identificatio...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/upholding-roe-v-wade-is-support...

I mean, look no further than the law that was being decided for this case. It banned abortions after 15 weeks, unless there’s a severe deformity or life of the mother.

This seems like the type of abortion “rights” that would get broad-based support across the aisle.

I imagine there will be a few states that outright ban abortion. But I think it will be a very small number, less than 10. And I think they will quickly change that position over the next 10 years.

I know that doesn’t help the people who live there now who want an abortion. But this ruling is not going to end abortion in America. That’s a guarantee.

That doesn't stand up to examination, currently Republicans are seeking to ban all abortions including of those involving rape or incest, some even go as far as forcing women to give birth even if it could be deadly to the mother. I suspect soon they will go for declaring it as 1st degree murder. They really have no shame and feel completely empowered by their cultish adoption of MAGA principals.

> The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the views of the voting majority.

Except in the US where it is the rule of the minority:

* https://www.vox.com/2018/9/12/17850980/democracy-tyranny-min...

* https://harpers.org/archive/2017/03/tyranny-of-the-minority/

* https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-...

* https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/the-tyranny-of-the-mi...

You're the problem. Seriously. I mean no disrespect. But people like you are thought-experimenting our rights away. The women in my country are less free than they were yesterday. You're playing rhetorical games and sympathizing. One party tried to over turn a free and fair election. You probably say "both sides" to that, too. One party is trying to ban teaching any sort of realistic depiction of slavery in our history. One party presses their way of life on the nation. Roe was decided based on a right to privacy. That benefited us all. We're all less free. You go ahead and wait and see. This luke warm, middling, "devils advocate" nonsense is the problem. It's why we'll gradually lose everything.

Ah, just put anyone who disagrees with you into the "bad people box". You are the problem

when your position robs people of their bodily autonomy you're not necessarily a bad person, but you have a bad and morally indefensible position and that's "the problem" people.

> My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both sides to be completely antagonistic towards each other. 'Own the libs, fuck the deplorables', no compromise. The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are willing to strike compromises. Crazed jesus Republicans and hyperprogressive activists are terrible people to put into national office. They gain power by antagonizing and being unhelpful roadblocks for change, all while asking for the most stubbornly impossible outcomes.

This take is completely divorced from reality. "Moderates" are the roadblocks. "Moderates" already have the system they want and love re-litigating culture war issues like this, because it makes it easier to continue roadblocking. Give me one example of a "hyperprogressive activists" blocking something that needed to get done, and I will give you a laundry list of "moderates" actors blocking ensuring no progress gets made in this country. Progressives don't even say "deplorables" that came from "moderate" HRC. "Crazed jesus Republicans" I would say this classification bisects several groups with in the republicans, however they seems to be affective at driving change given the post we are commenting on.

> States rights has always been a double edged sword

No, “states rights”, in the US, has only ever been invoked for state-sanctioned repression. There is no other edge.

(Both sides of the tighter/looser federalism argument can be viewed as double-edged, but “states rights” has a very particular history.)

The reason you didn't have slavery in the north (and thus a north to fight the south in the civil war) was because of states' rights. California changed the environmental law of the land - because of states' rights.

It goes both ways. There is nothing intrinsically good nor bad with it. It's part of how the system is designed to operate.

> The reason you didn’t have slavery in the north (and thus a north to fight the south in the civil war) was because of states’ rights.

No, it wasn’t. “States rights” is a later pro-slavery slogan. It is not and never has been the same thing as loose federalism.

And there were, in fact, slaves in the North until it was abolished nationally (in more states at the time of the Revolution than at the time of the Civil War, and even fewer at the end of the Civil War, but the last three states where slavery existed until terminated by the 13th Amendment were Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey.)

There may be nothing intrinsically bad but it tends to be associated with bad ideas and cause bad outcomes.

There was the Nullification crisis, wherein South Carolina attempted to secede as a consequence of Jackson's government applying heavy tariffs on Southern states.

> My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both sides to be completely antagonistic towards each other.

This opinion is about as uninformed as it can be. Currently the US is run by "moderate" Democrats, and extremist Republicans; the Right cries wolf every time the moderates do anything, and the moderates capitulate. If we look at American politics through your lens it makes zero sense.

We no longer live in a democracy and haven't really since 1978 with Buckley v. Valeo; increased by the recent supreme court decision in favor of Senator Cruz. There's a strong disconnect between what voters want and what happens in the halls of power, and it is increasing. The reality is that if you can donate to a senator enough you get "democracy".

Not to be too hyperbolic, but for the average person we really do live in a plutocracy.

Both sides believe they are the moderates and the other are the radicals. Until you zoom out and stop playing tribal politics, you will realize both sides are batshit insane and nothing really matters except being civil to one another and trying to connect with others in ways other than politics.

Connecting with others in civil ways is great. The two sides are not equivalent, though. "Batshit" left opinion: people should be able to require others to address them with novel pronouns. "Batshit" right opinion: liberals should be rounded up and shot (or the South was the noble side of the Civil War or segregation should be legal or Old Testament should be the law of the land, etc.). These are not in the same neighborhood of crazy, and this is setting aside the prevalence of the respective opinions and the political power of those who espouse them. Trump endorses the overthrow of democracy. Biden doesn't.

Promoting the both-sides falsehood could help bring the sides together, but it amounts to letting the looters keep their loot to stop the rioting.

The Supreme Court Justice who wrote the court's opinion on this issue just publicly stated he believes the Supreme Court should reconsider all of its prior procedural decisions, including Gay Mairage, legalized gay relationships, contraception and privacy in sexual or relationship matters.

You don't get to claim you're potentially naive, you're outright ignoring what they've publicly declared they intend to do. This isn't a group of well reasoned individuals removing power from the court, they're just doing whatever they hell they want to make the laws reflect their own religious beliefs.

Fuck this country, the only thing we're the best at is pretending we're the best.

> I'll be the begrudging devils advocate

There are plenty of devils out there, they can advocate for themselves. This ruling can be as technically correct as anyone likes, but it is disastrous in every conceivable way. All this ultimately demonstrates is how feeble rights - real, natural rights - are under the American conception of federal constitutional rights.

Edit: there are a lot of people who are clearly very clever advocating for the devil. The devils have the best lawyers money can buy; all I can really suggest, as someone who is not American and not a woman, is that you advocate for human beings for a change.

> All this ultimately demonstrates is how feeble rights - real, natural rights - are under the American conception of federal constitutional rights.

Another devil's advocate here...the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. This isn't an open and shut case.

Granted, I think Roe v Wade struck a fairly nuanced balance and I also think this is a disastrous decision. It's unfortunate RBG didn't quit when she had the chance and also unfortunate the dems ran Abuela in 2016. This could have been avoided, along with 4 years of complete buffoonery and international embarassment. It sucks our one-party-with-two-factions system has one faction that's consistently spineless and lacking foresight.

The relevant quote on the subject, from David Barnhart ( https://www.facebook.com/dave.barnhart/posts/pfbid0qt4dXV6kK... ):

----------------------------------------

"The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.

Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

----------------------------------------

> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child.

This is a nice fiction but it doesn't hold up to any level of scrutiny most of the time. Largely the "pro-life" people also believe in things like self-defense laws and the castle doctrine, which require that you not believe anyone has a real right to life.

Unless you think they'd all be ok with a squatter coming into their house and demanding food and that they wouldn't use their guns on them. But they think a mother should be required to literally risk her life in order to support a being she may not have chosen to create.

You don't need to give the benefit of the doubt here. You don't need to believe disingenuous arguments just because people say they're what they mean. Dig a little deeper and understand what they really believe: women with unwanted pregnancies deserve to have it carried out against their will because they think they've sinned.

I think the real problem is your two party system. You don't have a real democracy, you have two gangs of career politicians competing to ruin your country.

> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child.

Then authority shouldn’t be given to the states, right? Presumably those people will be proposing a federal ban soon, right?

He that knows only his side of the case, doesn't even know that. -John Stewart Mill

If you can’t steelman any topic, you don’t understand the topic.

I don’t pick begrudge Republicans that actually believe and really feel the abortion has been terminating a human life unfairly.

I’m more begrudge Democrats that refuse to understand this is a nonfalsifiable issue. That we will never understand truly the point of which a thing becomes a human.

There will never be agreement. You need understand and accept that.

So given the choice between federally legal and federally illegal, where there will always be conflict, you could do worse than 50 state rules.

For all the rage that “some number of weeks abortion bans” in the certain state received, that is Germany’s every day. They have a 12 week ban with mandatory counseling. I have difficulty understanding how the same pitched here would get red eyed outrage from most Pro-Choice but Germans seem to be getting along.

I don’t think the issue is abortion, I think it’s just like everything else hyper-polarization.

I think it’s absolutely stupid that if I see you still wearing a mask in a store, that I can pretty much determine your views on abortion. We’re being played.

> If you can’t steelman any topic, you don’t understand the topic.

This fundamentally misunderstands the actual Republican position, and it does so in the way that they are intending to trick you into doing.

If they cared about lives, they would protect schoolchildren. If they cared about lives, they would protect the poor. If they cared about lives, they'd care about death from car accidents, from Covid, from lack of medical care. They don't.

So it's not about caring about lives, trivially.

> There will never be agreement.

If you don’t want an abortion, don’t get one. Can it be simpler?

> All this ultimately demonstrates is how feeble rights - real, natural rights - are under the American conception of federal constitutional rights.

Natural rights are a terribly shaky concept to begin with—hardly "real".

He is advocating for human beings, by taking the defense of democratic processes and institutions, even when he disagrees with the specific decision.

Your plea is exactly reducible to: “thou shalt support the Right Thing, always”. It’s almost disturbingly naive.

>all I can really suggest, as someone who is not American and not a woman

Why do you think your nationality and gender are relevant to your opinion?

Not the OP but as a fellow non-American who likes to dabble in American politics I try to always mention that detail when I’m commenting on a hot/intense socio-political subject (like this one), so that the other people involved in the same conversation (presumably most of them Americans, both here and on Reddit) can judge for themselves how valid my opinion can be seeing that (most likely) I’m not directly involved or affected by the subject being discussed.

> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. This isn't an open and shut case.

Does the decision at all call out the rights of the unborn child? If so why would it be left up to the states and not outright banned? Why are contraception and gay marriage called out as comprable rights?

That edit is a nice but ultimately impotent statement.

What matters is the mechanics of how we're in this situation. They're complicated and thankfully this decision doesn't mean an outright ban for all Americans. Providing access for the rest is what should be discussed, over shaking fists and platitudes.

If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give them the mandate needed.

They do [0]. We haven't.

'Own the libs, fuck the deplorables', no compromise.

I'm tired of this false equivalence.

Let's not forget that each of the recently appointed justices that voted down Roe V Wade lied to congress before they were approved for the supreme court, saying that they wouldn't. How can one truly compromise with people who aren't honest in the first place? What is even the compromise here? Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others? The vast majority of Dems are the moderates and have acted in good faith, as you're suggesting, for decades and have nothing to show for it. The Overton window has been moving right for what seems like my entire lifetime.

0 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/393275/steady-americans-not-roe...

You actually believe that the right lies, but the left generally acts in good faith? That's...cute. Your lifetime must not be very long. Both parties are full of dishonest slimeballs. If you only see one side of it, you are being tricked

Conservatives are straight up reactionary, and are putting people's rights back decades, using any means necessary. For all of the mainstream Dems' failures in executing the will of their constituents, they aren't doing anything close to that.

If you see these things as equal, you should try to put the snark aside and engage the world in an honest way.

The game theory of this situation is bleak. If one side chooses hardliners, then the hardliners can pull the center closer to the hardline. In the past this worked out as most hardliners were hardlined on different topics. Now, the right has unified into a solid voting block that increasingly picks up all or nothing stances on most issues.

If democrats elect moderates into such an environment, the center is hopelessly pulled to the right. If Republicans vote in a moderate, they still get pulled into voting with the majority. If you are a democrat, increasingly your only option is to vote in your own set of hardliners who will take all or nothing stances - as getting nothing done is better than the alternative.

The anger in this decision is partially a sign of what's to come. The Supreme court is now vastly out of sync with the national population center - or their own precedent for the last ~70 years. Barring court reform, I'd expect that we're on the way to a constitutional crises where a state decides to overrule the supreme court's decision.

How would a state overrule the supreme court's decision? What do you mean with that? If In understand correctly, abortion has been legalized by law in several states and forbidden in several others, neither of which conflicts with this decision.

It is a shame that the USA hasn't been able to enact federal legislation on abortion in the past 50 years.

Massachusetts just barred interstate extradition requests, and other interstate attempts to enforce abortion bans for patients who travel out of state for abortions. How long before that goes to the Supreme Court?

There is zero chance that any elected or appointed official in Massachusetts blocks an abortion in Mass for any person regardless of residency.

The court is now firmly playing in political topics which it is Ill-equipped to handle.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/supreme-cou...

> If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give them the mandate needed.

I’m sorry but this feels entirely divorced from reality. The nature of the senate, the continued erosion of voting rights… we’re not going to see democratic traction in a system that actively opposes it.

Perhaps what they meant is that it could gain democratic traction within the states where abortions are restricted.

So much of our constitution is designed to protect us from the abuse of the majority. The idea that the majority should be able to dictate everything is NOT what democracy means. Mob rule is scary, and the framers knew that a government that is solely dictated by the will of the majority is ripe for abuse of the minority. So we have all sorts of restrictions on what the majority is allowed to do.

I feel like people have this view today that whatever the majority says is how things should be. That is not justice.

And it is also not democracy. (Adding to your last sentence)

you can't say "figure it out democratically" with the Senate and electoral college

saying "its the other branches problem" doesn't work either as SCOTUS is appointed by the undemocratic president and Senate

Many of the judges on the bench were literally pushed through undemocratically through the deep state cabal known as the Federalist society. The idea that the US can fix things by just voting better is laughable.

Also why is everyone playing “devils advocate” on this thread? It’s clear what the majority sentiment is here, why bother pretending to take a middle of the road “nuanced” position?

Steelmanning is probably more helpful than ever on such a provocative topic

you know some technically minded folk love being "technically correct" on a subject

How is the presidency and senate undemocratic? If they are, it would be through the lens of direct democracy and I'm not sure direct democracy would result in significantly different politics.

The issue the GP is referring to is how the way our electoral process is set up people with more land have more voice in government. In effect, if you are rural your vote is worth more. This is an extreme in the Senate where a single person's vote has 1.5% of the power of a person in a different state (California vs. Wyoming).

And why do we give more voice to the rural vote? Sure they would be a minority otherwise, but so are left handed people and we don't give them more vote. Are they better informed politically than people who live in more densely populated areas? It doesn't really make much sense and I've never heard a argument stronger than "but then the cities would have a lot of political power" without explaining why that is a bad thing.

Sure it would. The changed outcomes in 2 recent presidential elections alone would have resulted in a completely different supreme court, which would have changed all of this. If the senate had proportional representation everything Dipshit McConnell hamfisted through wouldn't have happened either, which would also create a very substantially different political landscape.

Senators hold power completely dissproportionate from the population they represent - the senators from Vermont hold the same amount of power as the senators from Texas, while representing orders of magnitude fewer people.

The senate is, by design, an inherently anti-democratic institution (it represents the rights of the states instead of the rights of their populations).

The presidency I think is at least elected quite democratically, so I'm not sure what GP meant there.

Direct democracy would have meant one republican presidential term in the last 25 years and the SCOTUS would be highly liberal

We have had two presidents in recent history that did not win the popular vote or are you forgetting that?

because the president is elected through the electoral college and the senate gives equal representation to states regardless of population

While somewhat true at the national level, the issue is actually pushed back to the states. Their legislatures are democratically elected.

Your argument is an excellent argument against the Supreme Court having originally decided Roe v. Wade the way that they did. It is not an argument for overturning it now.

Our country is based on rule of law. And a lot of that body of law is established by a body of past precedent. These precedents extend back nearly 1000 years, and are part of a web of what is called Common Law. The Supreme Court's unique authority and main job is continuing to add to and clarify that precedent.

What the Supreme Court is doing now is overturning long-established precedent. Originalism can be used to overturn virtually any past precedent you don't like. It is hard to overstate how much. Let me quote one of the current supreme court justices on the topic (see https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi for the full context):

Adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. Originalists have been pressed to either acknowledge that their theory could generate major disruption or identify a principled exception to their insistence that judges are bound to enforce the Constitution’s original public meaning.

Her solution to this is:

No one is likely to ask the Supreme Court to rethink arguably nonoriginalist decisions like the constitutionality of the Social Security Administration, paper money, or segregated public schools—and if anyone did ask, the Court would deny certiorari.

In other words, the limit on how much of the fabric of current law the current court can dismantle is to be found in the restraint of the justices in being willing to avoid hard questions, and not in the reasoning process that they apply to their decisions. But these things tend to be a slippery slope. The more of our rule of law that they undermine, the more that they will come to see it as reasonable to undermine more rule of law. And the more chaos that they create, the less willing everyone else will be to go along with what they said.

At face value, all sides are not to blame. A president who lost the popular vote got to appoint THREE justices to this court and literally got a list of candidates from the religious right. This is the minority imposing their will on the majority, plain and simple.

No, all sides are not to blame. The USA is a Constitutional Republic so your comment regarding the popular vote is irrelevant. The popular vote is not used to elect a president in the USA and never will be. Additionally, the seditious person you're advocating for is the source of the Russia collusion rumors that the left steam media ran with for 3 years.

> The same state rights that allow gun control and homosexuality to be locally legalized

This is the same court that, just a few days ago, also denied New York's right to decide their own gun laws. Devolution might be great in theory if done consistently. What we actually have is a supreme court that will step in when it suits one minority faction and step out likewise, in both cases ignoring sound (often their own earlier selves') legal reasoning. That's not healthy.

You also seem to be ignoring the fact that "leave it to the states" is a bit of a sham when states that want to ban abortion seek to punish those who travel out of state for it. (Much like the way that states with lax gun laws undermine the efforts of neighboring states that have voted and legislated otherwise.) The actual availability of abortion services to women in Texas, for example, is practically zero for many. Like it or not, the US is supposed to be one nation, but "full faith and credit" has - like supreme court decisions - become a one-way street favoring the minority. Wyoming ideology is affecting Colorado much more than vice versa, contrary to what the majority position is across the two, and that's starkly un-democratic.

> The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are willing to strike compromises

How do you compromise on issues like same sex marriage? It's pretty binary: gay people have the same rights as straight people, or they don't. With Justice Thomas's suggestion to relitigate Obergefell, this is exactly where we stand.

Thomas is champing at the bit to overturn gay marriage, civil rights, and other civil liberty guarantees. He has indicated as much in his writings.

The Supreme Court has allowed gerrymandering and dark money, both of which serve to make the American government completely unbeholden to their constituents. There is no recourse in the legislative branch as long as elections are decided by who writes the map and who pays for the ads.

And I’m not sure you don’t know that. I’m not sure that this ain’t a ploy. “States rights!” You say. “Solve it in the legislative!” You say. And when those efforts fail because the systems for choosing those representatives is rigged, what will you say? You will blame the voters. And all the whole more and more goes away and all the while you blame the voters.

> I'll be the begrudging devils advocate for a decision that is sure to have devastating consequences for poor women in red states.

The devil already has 6 seats on the supreme court, he doesn't need you to advocate for him

You'll have to forgive me if I'm not feeling the "begrudging" nature of your statement.

> Ofc, my support for this change assumes that this Supreme Court will show restraint towards political activism (in either direction) in general. Call it naive, but I'll wait and see.

Your comment seems naive. It should be pretty obvious the us Supreme (Being) court is not going to show restraint towards political activism, they literally destroyed 50 years of American bodily freedom and struck up a massive victory for the gun lobby in a day.

> The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the views of the voting majority. If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give them the mandate needed.

American democracy doesn't represent the majority as gerrymandering has stolen the voice of our people, and guess what issue this court absolutely won't be addressing: voters rights. Because it should be absolutely clear right now that this court wants only one thing: to execute their political agenda without care or thought to the consequence of their actions. And the consequence will be dire indeed, American is already divided and this will be the final push to forever sever the left from the right, affecting creating two separate countries, not in law perhaps (yet) but certainly in spirit. In one stroke, the court has done more damage to our country than our enemies ever could.

If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give them the mandate needed.

The problem with this reasoning is that the democratic process has been successfully gerrymandered in many states to a point where "the voting majority " is longer in a position to truly decide.

I get the foundational point you're trying to make (about states' rights having value), at least as a concept. But if you're of the belief that "if the voting majority truly cares" then over time the situation will mostly right itself -- and millions of women of all income levels (not just the poor) will not have to suffer the direst of consequences, while you sit back and wait for your prediction to come true -- you are very tragically mistaken.

But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other branches of govt.

Simply put, you are imputing a motive to the 1973 Court that wasn't there. The 1973 decision was made on foundational grounds (having to do with a certain constitutional amendment which, something tells me, you also believe very strongly in the value of), and in view of competing interests.

You can question the wisdom of the decision all you like, but the idea that it was handed down to "manage the dysfunction of other branches of govt" is supported neither by the factual history of the case -- nor by the Court's own writings at the time the decision was made.

The Constitution is a negative rights document, meaning that it enumerates all the actions that the federal government cannot do to you. The Supreme Court should not be in the business of legislating, as you mention it should be the Congress that legislates. The Constitution is clear on what the judiciary is meant to do, review if an existing law or executive action is in violation of the Constitution. Anything else is a gross overreach of power.

> The Constitution is a negative rights document, meaning that it enumerates all the actions that the federal government cannot do to you.

No, the Constitution is an affirmative powers document first and foremost; it enumerates all the things the federal government can do. The amendments (and a very few provisions of the base Constitution) include some negative rights as well, some directly applicable against the federal government, some against the State governments (and some of the former have been found to be implicitly included in some of the latter, though that is fairly explicitly under attack right now.)

"both sides"...

sigh...

one side is calling the other side pedophile child groomers sex trafficking children in the basement of pizza parlours....

And the top comment goes to... a progressive pretending he can represent "the other side" while constantly taking side shots at them and stating that and why he doesn't agree with them... all with empty rhetorical gestures towards "moderates" and "compromise." Yep that sounds like hacker news to me: as little information and as much inoffensive pandering as possible.

> I’ll be the begrudging devils advocate

Did the Devil somehow run out of enthusiastic advocates?

Because it doesn’t seem that way, on this issue or more generally.

Ultimately, I don't feel this is really about reproductive rights.

It's part of a long term disenfranchisement of groups of individuals in a way which secures GOP electoral college votes. As you say, the power of rural Republican votes is significant and depopulating those areas of democratic votes is a significant part of the GOP strategy.

I do hope that this will motivate us to get some amendments passed to codify some of the rights that we've gained from court rulings. I hope this turns into blowback against the Republicans but I think there's a long road. I guess people just don't believe things will get "that bad" and now we'll see.

With the current Supreme Court the literal text of the constitution doesn’t matter. For example, the text of the second amendment is pretty clear that the right to bear arms is in the pursuit of a well regulated militia. Our militia has since been regulated into the national guard. The second amendment is nothing more than a constitutional right to enlist in the national guard, but it’s used to promote/codify extreme ideologies.

> The second amendment is nothing more than a constitutional right to enlist in the national guard, but it’s used to promote/codify extreme ideologies.

A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to a healthy diet, the right of the people to grow and eat food, shall not be infringed.

Who has the right to grow and eat food?

A) The people (with no other condition)

B) The people (after a waiting period and background check)

C) A well balanced breakfast

D) A healthy diet

E) The police

I say this as a lefty: the US defines the militia as essientially including every able bodied man. Since it was written before the 14th amendment, it probably would be interpreted now as every adult.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246

In fact the first weapon ban to hit SCOTUS, US v Miller, hinged on the fact that sawed off shotguns had no military application, which was legal basis allowing them to be banned. The court at the time considered bans of military weapons unconstitutional.

>Our militia has since been regulated into the national guard.

The national guard is controlled by the government, it's not a militia. The last 20+ years or so it's pretty much regular army.

Along a similar line, do you think a free press would be free if the government was the one who decided who was press and who wasn't?

Well, that may be clear to you. I don't think either of us are constitutional scholars but I think if we really want some meaningful gun control we should replace the 2nd amendment with something clearer.

You are wrong about the Second Amendment. It clearly states the rights for both militias AND individuals, it's not hard to suss out if you know anything about the period in which it was written.

This argument comes up a lot, but clearly there's some textual basis. To pretend there isn't is to just put your head in the sand.

"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" sounds like it's referring to exclusively a militia to you? Preposterous.

people are very disorganized and afraid and bombarded by social media and news media that distorts reality. no one thinks they can do anything and the only people who act in an organized way tend to be antisocial types who just want to take things and control others for their benefit.

Gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the senate ensures that it isn't a majority whose views are represented, but rather the distribution of voters in states/districts (disproportionate voting power) that influences who becomes our representatives. This is compounded with how flawed First past the post voting is.

> In the long run, history will have a dim view of this era of global polarization with all political sides to blame.

Actually, in the long run, history takes a dim view of the people in the center.

People on one "extreme" side are vindicated. And everybody else gets flagged as supporting the wrong position.

As I put it to one friend: "When the issue was Catholics marrying Lutherans, your church and everybody in the "middle" were on the wrong side of the decision. When the issue was racial intermarriage, your church and everybody in the "middle" were on the wrong side of the decision. Now that the issue is gay marriage, why do you believe your church and everybody in the middle are on the correct side of the decision this time?"

The truth lies in the middle is, in fact, generally wrong.

The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are willing to strike compromises

Suppose I come along and assault you, you defend yourself, and then someone comes along and tells you that you are as much to blame as the person who assaulted you. Are they accurate, or just squeamish?

Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity, and so contribute mightily to shifting of overton windows and ethical drift, where increasingly flawed outcomes are excused in the name of avoiding controversy. Consider the the atrocities perpetrated pursuant to the Iraq war, for which nobody but the very lowest ranks (and only a few of them) have ever been held accountable.

I respect my ideological enemies more than this panglossian excuse-making. At least those people stand for something.

I like to differentiate between "moderate" and "centrist". A moderate is, by my definition, someone who has firm convictions and anchoring principles and those just happen today to plant them in the center of the political spectrum. If the Overton window shifts, today's moderate will become tomorrow's conservative or liberal.

By contrast a centrist always takes the middling, compromising position at the middle of that Overton window. It's centrists that contribute to ethical drift.

> Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity

That's one way to put it. Here's another to think about: moderates lack rigid principles and avoid ideological convictions.

People on the extremes of both sides have a tendency to "paint." They paint the opposing view as monsters, and they paint people with independent views as "lacking convictions."

It is not accurate.

By no means am I arguing that those at the extremes are always right. I'm saying that if you have no other principles than 'compromise' then you will simply let yourself be pulled around by the most powerful force in a go-along-to-get-along fashion.

Moderates are simply conflict averse and don't consider that there is anything worth fighting for, ever. Unscrupulous extremists rely on them as a strategic buffer, because they are easy to manipulate. Neville Chamberlain was a moderate.

In the United States, a political moderate typically acts according to principles that the extremes of the large political parties don’t prioritize. They are only in the middle because we use a one-dimensional political spectrum in our discourse.

Nonsense. If moderates believed that they would form their own party and stake out territory. Instead they say 'the two party system forces this on us', and do nothing about it. There is no 'two party system.' It's just a bistable equilibrium state that arises out of the winner-take-all voting system. Moderates find it profitable to ride that oscillation without worrying too much about where it takes them, and prefer stable mediocrity to chaotic uncertainty.

> Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity

Idk about this. Maybe they just think things are currently pretty good, and that the other options would be worse. I think democrats are largely on the right track. Just enough regulation to ensure market failures are fixed, broad social policy to do what you like as long as it doesn't harm others, a safety net that helps those who are down while encouraging everyone to work hard for the better of society.

I have frequently participated in an extreme version of this discussion.

Think about a situation where your race was being genocided in a neighboring country. The fastest way to stop it would be to engage in war. Now if you lose, genocide goes on, you have no recourse and your country is vulnerable to exploitation.

Instead, you can use economic levers. Maybe wait for your armed forces to be strong enough to go to war. Wait for winter and destroy food reserves. Maybe strike a deal to have your race only be 'persecuted' instead of genocided. Maybe fund militia instead.

All of these are suboptimal moderate outcomes. All of these lead to some loss of life or huge losses of freedom.for the people you want to save. But it avoids the worst case outcome. Majority of your race stil lives.

Moderates aren't spineless. Rathe, they understand that their agency is limited and you pull levers that are within said agency. If you try to climb a mountain that's too tall, it will lead to your demise.

Idealists want to be olympic gymnasts at 30. Moderates make peace with being a Yoga teacher. That's not spinelessness, that's wisdom.

What you're describing isn't moderation, but strategy. What I'm talking about is people who have agency but choose not to exercise it because it's inconvenient.

> Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring principles beyond maintaining equanimity, and so contribute mightily to shifting of overton windows and ethical drift, where increasingly flawed outcomes are excused in the name of avoiding controversy.

the point of being a moderate is picking and choosing which policies from which party you support and which ones you don't. The insistence that everyone decide between one of two party lines is what's driving this country towards civil war

So form a third party with middle-of-the-road policies that large numbers of people could get behind, because your buffet politics approach is clearly not working.

> You can't have your cake and eat it too

Actually I’m not sure this is 100% true. One option is to, say, only appoint SCOTUS judges that have an extremely broad reading of the Constitution on things you like, and a very narrow, textual reading on things you don’t.

Hypothetically, of course.

> The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the views of the voting majority.

No, not this "democracy." The supermajority of supreme court justices were mostly seated by presidents who lost the popular vote. This ruling is incredibly unpopular among citizens of the US, but the court is also pro-gerrymandering, so the unpopularity is unlikely to have any real impact on elections. The country is rapidly hurtling towards religious authoritarianism, and the checks and balances to prevent that have largely been dismantled.

> but the court is also pro-gerrymandering

See the redistricting of North Carolina

> so the unpopularity is unlikely to have any real impact on elections

Or maybe it isn't as unpopular as you think?

> The country is rapidly hurtling towards religious authoritarianism, and the checks and balances to prevent that have largely been dismantled.

Yes of course, because religious authoritarianism == allowing democratically elected state officials to determine their own state laws

If anything is authoritarian, it's the insistence on the court creating federal "laws" where there is no majority in congress. If you want abortion protection, pass it through congress

The GOP now has in place in several red/swing states legislatures that are ready to overrule electoral college votes determined by the popular vote and handing it over to those determined by republican legislatures. Lots of states have promoted Big Lie proponents to the highest election positions in their states, they now have a 6-3 super majority SCOTUS who will back up these decisions in the next Presidential election. Once that happens authoritarian Trumpists will take power because they have control of the military via Presidential power. If you can't see that then you've been living under a rock. That's when the American experiment fails.

> But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other branches of govt.

This is the only statement in your take that I disagree with. In the checks and balances system, the supreme court is exactly supposed to protect the balance between federal, state, and individual rights.

One consistent court might have protected gun rights and abortion rights this week. Another might have permitted restrictions on both. Instead we got gun rights and body control. The apolitical ship has sailed.

In every other democracy, voting laws and systems that mean individual votes are unequal (and even more absurd, the popular vote keeps losing) are of course unconstitutional and dealt with by the Supreme Court. How else could it be; guaranteeing one person one vote is the basis of democracy.

That's before we get to other design flaws like "winner takes all", which of course neither possible winner out of a guaranteed 2 is ever going to change.

> States rights has always been a double edged sword. You can't have your cake and eat it too. The same state rights that allow gun control and homosexuality to be locally legalized before national concensus; also now lead to abortion legislation being a state issue.

Except when the same court in the same week strikes down a state law that makes it marginally more effort to carry a concealed weapon in public.

That is a egregious misrepresentation of the law struck down in NYSRPA v. Bruen. In New York City, it was effectively impossible to get a permit to carry a concealed firearm in public unless one had connections and influence in the police department. Whether or not that is desirable from a policy perspective, it was far more than "marginally more effort" to obtain the permit.

> In New York City, it was effectively impossible to get a permit to carry a concealed firearm in public unless one had connections and influence in the police department.

Did the law actually require connections, or was the law being applied unfairly? If the latter, the correct solution would be to force the law be applied fairly, not just throw out the entire law. Of course, the people who complain about "activist judges" are fine with judges legislating from the bench as long when it's in a way that furthers their agenda...

Don't forget them making a decision to force Maine to pay for religious indoctrination "schools".

FIRST: If SCOTUS should stay out of big, divisive cultural decisions, then they should do it point-forward and not by hopping right back in the fray.

SECOND: Abortion is seen as a fundamental right for womens' health, and there are many documented reasons for getting abortion that are not merely "convenience". There are things which should not be prohibited by the democratic process, since they are human rights.

THIRD: There is no scientific basis for restricting abortion; I would place a large bet that more than 95% of people who are against abortion rights base their opinion on faith-based teachings.

FOURTH: We need to abolish the two party system via *ballot reform* and move to Ranked-Choice or approval voting. This will weaken the two parties, allow citizens to vote /for/ someone rather than against, and will be a more accurate gauge of popular sentiment.

> FOURTH: We need to abolish the two party system via ballot reform and move to Ranked-Choice or approval voting. This will weaken the two parties, allow citizens to vote /for/ someone rather than against, and will be a more accurate gauge of popular sentiment.

Yes please. The current system is completely dysfunctional.

Requires either 50 states to change state law, or 3/4 of the states to ratify a federal constitutional amendment. And any of these requires the cooperation of the two parties to make it happen, or voting in their replacements. So it's a really tough nut to crack. It's hard to change the constitution. If 85% of the country had any damn idea how the current system works let alone a modern alternative, it would be straight forward but they don't. And any states that think they will lose their inflated advantage will refuse to cooperate.

I guess the Supreme Court shouldn’t have ruled on segregation then.

Also most anti-abortion people I talk to have more developed views than just faith based. There is actually no scientific argument for abortion

Except of course for all the medically necessary abortions which are extremely scientifically justified. This decision will almost certainly kill thousands of women annually.

It's not tenable to hang your fundamental rights as an individual on a political process. While it only takes one decision to remove a right, preserving the right becomes a constant, grueling battle. These legal protections are the sin-qua non of a functional democracy.

>But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other branches of govt.

In a better system it shouldn't be, in the system we have really should be but isn't.

I have little doubt Clarence is only a little less crazy than his wife. Republicans put these people into positions of immense power. They might not have known how much power at the time, but they put shitty people in power for shitty reasons and they can now totally own that failure.

>Crazed jesus Republicans and hyperprogressive activists are terrible people to put into national office.

Got some enlightened centrism at work here. I'm willing to entertain that the left is way too woke, but they aren't sending crazy people to congress my dude.

Democratically? I hope you’re kidding. This court doesn’t have the thinnest of veneers to hide behind. They have a pretty obvious agenda (e.g., Thomas’s concurring opinion) and show no deference to either precedent or the Constitution.

We’re in uncharted waters here. I can’t think of a parallel in our short history where SCOTUS has shown such complete disregard for anything but their own political and religious beliefs. I think what’s getting lost in this is that Roe doesn’t just apply to abortion but the broader right to privacy. Others have pointed out the logical implications of what the government can and will do with these powers.

Amen. I posted similar in a shorter form. The ineffectual legislative branch has ceded power to both the Executive and the Judicial over the last fifty to sixty years. Until the legislative branch stands up, this won't be resolved.

> my support for this change assumes that this Supreme Court will show restraint towards political activism (in either direction) in general. Call it naive, but I'll wait and see.

That is naive, given that we've already seen over the past several years that this has already been shown to be true. When the GOP is in power, new justices are appointed solely based on political appointment. Their qualifications as judges seem to be irrelevant, as long as they support the party platform. When the GOP controls the Senate, they invent "rules" around which president gets to earn confirmation, and then break their own "rules" when it suits them.

> The same state rights that allow gun control [...] to be locally legalized before national concensus

Look again: SCOTUS is getting more brazen in overturning state gun control laws. This is just a consequence of what I've said above: the politically-appointed justices loudly cry "states' rights!" when it suits their platform, and quietly ignore state sovereignty when it suits them. Consider also that the GOP has been even more loudly talking about legislation for a nationwide abortion ban. Same playbook: claim the removal of a federal law is a victory for states' rights, but then turn around and try to enact the opposite law at the federal level in order to block the states from making their own choice.

> Now, the rural republican votes counting for more in the senate is a huge issue and threat to democracy that the US needs to figure out if it ever wants to represent the views of the people.

This is the key issue. The US government will never reflect the will of the people as long as the Senate is composed as it is. Procedural garbage like the filibuster make the body even more ineffective and useless. My prediction here is that as soon as the GOP regains control of the Senate, once they get another taste of obstruction, they'll hypocritically kill the filibuster, despite all their current rhetoric around how it's essential to the Senate.

> The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are willing to strike compromises.

The issue here is that what you are calling "hyperprogressive activists" are not really all that "hyper" anything when you consider the rest of the democratic world. A US "moderate" would be considered fairly conservative in many other Western democracies. When I talk to friends who are members of various minority groups about this, they dismiss more "center-left" candidates immediately: none of these candidates have the courage (or desire) to work on civil rights and equality.

I absolutely agree with you that political polarization is at an all-time high, and most far-left/right politicians seem to be more interested in stoking outrage and provoking their opponents than in actually creating positive outcomes.

I don't really know what the solution is. It's hard to just tell everyone, en masse, to just calm the fuck down and stop assuming anyone on the other side of the aisle is an evil demon who wants to destroy the others' way of life. I'm guilty of this sometimes myself, but I'm really trying to understand where some of these people are coming from. It's hard. It's really hard.

> In the long run, history will have a dim view of this era of global polarization with all political sides to blame.

I understand the sentiment here, and what drives it, but I think it's bad to ignore that there are differences between how the two sides act. They're both terrible, and have many terrible policy platforms, but I think it's worth considering that one party seems more interested in taking people's rights and equal treatment away (or denying "new" rights that should have been rights all along) than the other.

If they actually believe you're killing babies, and thinly veiling it by calling them a 'foetus', their actions make more sense.

Democracy is great but hundreds of thousands of the impacted can't vote.

> the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other branches of govt.

Hard disagree here. The Supreme Court acting as a vehicle for rights the majority of the population thinks should be enshrined, but can’t due to Senate dysfunction, is what is preventing the USA from sliding into another civil war. The Constitution is an extremely buggy first draft and originalism is a sick joke. Abortion isn’t in the Constition? Of course not, it was written by men in the 1700s. Judicial review isn’t in the Constitution either.

However only one side is hellbent on wrecking peoples' lives.

This ruling will also let us democratically figure out whether sodomites should be jailed, whether interracial marriage should be banned, and whether contraception is legal. All of the prior court rulings on these topics stem from the principles that were overturned in this one.

And then, two years later, after we democratically figure those questions out, we can flip-flop on them, because we voted in a new legislature.

> And then, two years later, after we democratically figure those questions out, we can flip-flop on them, because we voted in a new legislature.

Don't worry, SCOTUS won't let that happen. There's a pretty good chance they'll intervene in the next presidential election (unless a republican house takes it out of their hands), but either way they'll simply overturn any new laws they don't like. They're not burdened by any need for internal consistency - they'll rule in favor of Texas's abortion-bounty laws and rule against California's anti gun bounty laws, for example. Doesn't matter the logic is the same either way, they're not bound to any internal consistency or past logic, it's all about the will-to-power.

This is actually a pretty noted characteristic of .... "alt-right" movements.

> “Never believe [they] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. [They] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

You? You have to make logically consistent legal arguments and follow the process, because you believe in the system. They believe in power. And they have power.

Dangerous times indeed, but here we are overturning Roe v Wade. And criminalizing contraception, overturning gay marriage, and criminalizing homosexuality is up next - Thomas specifically calls out Griswold, Obergefell, and Lawrence as being on the chopping block.

>The same state rights that allow gun control and homosexuality to be locally legalized before national concensus; also now lead to abortion legislation being a state issue.

There is some irony to this statement as the Supreme Court just the other day released a ruling that denied a state this ability with regards to gun control laws.

> The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the views of the voting majority.

As you said, the Judiciary is the least democratic, the nominations came from Presidents whom were elected by a minority of voters and confirmed by the Senate, using a minority of the voting populace of the country (because, slavery essentially)

It's awful all around.

The court's view on the 2nd amendment is so wildly, outrageously out of line with the Founder's intentions, and the actual text of the law, that any hope of "restraint towards political activism" is beyond futile.

At the time of the founders private ownership of cannons was legal, which was the most powerful weapon at the time.

Framers likely would have claimed that private citizens should be able to own working tanks (gun and all). They believed in a monopoly of violence solely predicated on the ability to muster an army, not on bans of certain types of weapons.

But maybe we shouldn't give a fk about framers intent. That's where the real debate should be on...

You seem to be overlooking that "well organized militia" clause.

It looks like either we will have a January 6th like raid on the SCOTUS or a total collapse of the United States at this point and end up with a civil war with a second republic.

Hopefully that won't possibly happen. But we'll see in 2024.

I will bet you a lot of money no such raid on the Supreme Court occurs, unless you mean a street protest with signs and public speakers to be a "raid"

I personally think it’s time for a new form of government. I just hope it can be done without bloodshed.

This sounds all diplomatic and intellectual, but when a 16 year old gets a pregnancy from incest or rape, she’s totally screwed. I don’t think going towards the dark ages deserves this kind of “both sides” talk

I won't make ad hominem attacks here but it's clear that you're privileged enough to not be impacted by this SC decision if you:

1. Resolve to both-sideism

2. Think we need more moderates (lol)

3. Think progress is the default if you just give it enough time

> My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both sides to be completely antagonistic towards each other.

Nobody in power is trying to put an end to it. In fact, media and institutions are trying to push the anger and divide further. I think most people realize this and this is why there are so many conspiracies out there as to why things have gotten this bad.

In my opinion, it's too late. Corruption of society of this level CANNOT be fixed. In a perfect world, everyone would chill out and realize they are fighting over what is essentially first world problems. But people have become trained to the point of abandoning reasoning, common sense, and good faith to prop up their tribes. We now have an entire generation that thinks this is all normal. It won't end well and this is exactly what our enemies wanted.

> It is good for...such dividing issues be figured out democratically.

By that logic it would be good to get rid of the bill of rights, the other constitutional amendments, and most of the rest of the constitution.

Still sound good to you?

I read a nice quote on linux fortunes the other day:

"Democracy is the wishful notion that more then half of the population supports better than average opinions more than half of the time."

Their decision may be right through the lens of the initial ruling some 50 years ago, and perhaps through the acknowledgement of this being a divisive issue. However, it is at best hypocrisy of the court itself, and at worst, a devastating blow to one of the worlds worst healthcare systems.

This ruling in particular has be viewed through a wider scope, and not just the narrow lens of "people are divisive".

Their recent ruling interfering with New York states own policy on concealed carries best represents the courts hypocrisy - if a state makes a ruling and has a certain level of autonomy and power to do so, why is the SC overruling them here when its nearly just as divisive as abortion?

Additionally - the ruling is made within a very narrow scope, against common scientific and healthcare advice. It's also likely the ruling was made with strong bias and in bad favor as many of the justices themselves are not duly qualified to sit on the bench which they sit, and the ruling subsequently falls in line with a serious of previously strongly conservative rulings that defy prior precedent and the SC's own interpretation of autonomy, law, and previous rulings.

There is really no way to justify their ruling.

Polarization is a bit of mysterious character because we see a very strong, radical right wing forcing changes down to the county level in terms of gerrymandering, up to the level of presidential cabinet where federal crimes were committed without any consequence.

We don't hear of Democrats who, after losing a race complain of fraud and refuse to accept the results. That's a very Republican thing to do.

So, polarization is mysterious because there is a fast growing anti-intellectual, religious radicalism spirit and a fairly unchanged "populist" left wing. I.e. the left is mostly unchanged from 20 years ago, whereas the right has gone through a sharp and dramatic change in the same period.

> I'll be the begrudging devils advocate

I'm reading this comment, and many others, and I am in awe, just how utterly heartless and soulless people are on Hacker News.

This corner of the internet combines very little empathy with enough technical acumen to believe their biases are grounded in logic. Social issues here are just abstract intellectual exercises that are extremely disconnected from the reality of how people’s lives are affected.

I’m not sure why I clicked this thread, these responses were predictably awful.

HN definitely shows a vile, callous and selfish side of humanity

> But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other branches of govt.

Isn't it the whole purpose of its existence?

In a world where marketing/propaganda is a thing, created by whoever owns the medium, etc. Does democracy really exist?

> But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other branches of govt.

And it's not. The underlying problem is most of voting public doesn't understand how the system works, and why.

Repeated the language has been "The SC is making abortion illegal." That simply is not true. But with that falsely dumbed down "fact" ppl judge, form opinions, make noise, etc.

It’s been known for decades that roe v wade was a weak basis for abortion rights. The constitution does not have any law on abortion, and it’s Congress’s job to create federal laws.

Rights do not stem from the Constitution - as the language of the constitution itself shows: they are natural rights, some of which are explicitly laid down in paper. The right to do what you will with your own body is a natural right, and can't be alienated by anything, not even the will of the majority.

Known? By the maasses? As based on the medias' narrative?

That's not what's playing out.

The elected representatives of the Democratic party is overwhelmingly moderate. There are a handful of conservative democrats and equally many progressive democrats. Progressive democrats have been loosing as many primaries as they win, but overwhelmingly they are not up for election, instead a moderate democrat is the default choice.

The same can not be said about the Republican Party. This is not a both sides issue. Polarization is happening on the right wing in the American Party system, and the right wing alone.

I miss the crazed jesus Republicans. There is no Jesus anymore.

This fight is not going to be over until the legislature formally defines what is and is not a person. I doubt that's going to happen because nobody wants to have that discussion.

There's a much better argument to legalizing abortion, that holds even if one considers fetuses as persons. In that just as one may not be forced to donate organs or even just blood to save someone else's life, by the same logic, one cannot be forced to bear a child.

Of course this is an ethical, not legal argument, so I don't know how it would translate to US law.

"…[L]et me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, 'Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.' Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. 'Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.' I imagine you would regard this as outrageous…"

Judith Jarvis Thomas: "A Defense of Abortion," 1971. https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.h...

In that just as one may not be forced to donate organs or even just blood to save someone else's life, by the same logic, one cannot be forced to bear a child.

Speaking as a generally pro-abortion person, I don't think it's that black and white. When you agree to sustain someone's life, is taking away that sustainment murder? For example, if you reach out and stop someone from falling off a cliff but then choose to let go before they regain their balance, is that murder? I also don't see how to logically reconcile the idea that abortion isn't murder but letting a baby starve to death is. Either you have a responsibility towards human life you created or you don't.

We are talking about a mother, courts frequently force parents to act in the best interests of their children even if it's against the interests of the parents. A mother's child is not an alien unrelated in any way to the mother.

I wouldn’t say nobody. Certain schools of Islam explicitly teach that “ensoulment” of the fetus occurs after 120 days, as per my limited understanding. This timeframe largely coincides with the beliefs of a significant majority of Americans (per recent surveys) that abortion should be legal until the first few weeks of the second trimester.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoulment#Islam

I like the "until it can sustain itself" argument but the issue is that's a moving bar. Every time technology improves that time gets a little bit shorter. A hundred years ago a five month fetus had little chance of surviving. Now that survival rate is 85%. If we had the ability to instantly and painlessly teleport a week-old fetus into an artificial womb, would that be cause to ban all abortion?

The only fully consistent argument I've heard is that a human mind is the definition of personhood and that parents should be able to terminate up until several months after birth, but that's pretty out there.

If you wouldn't mind, could you please cite both of those claims.

Given Citizens United no one should be able to terminate a corporation, as corporations are people.

Citizens United does not say that corporations are people, it just says people are not restricted on their rights if they create a corporation to exercise them together.

Set up a website that lets you buy these people a round-trip plane ticket to CA. That gets around both issues. If the doctor says there's no baby, then no money.

in general I think state rights lowers division, as a federal system is winner-take-all while a State system can be live or let live. of course the issue is when States violate Constitutional rights and hide behind State rights. however, diminishing States rights in favor of Federal rights ultimately has the same risks, i.e. let the lesson of Trump scare the hell out of us.

History will NOT have a dim view of the left.

Thomas Paine, an example of a radical leftists in his own time by the standards of his day, is extremely well regarded today despite dying in relative obscurity and relative poverty.

It's the radical right wing that history will take a dim view on. The left can be secure in their control of posterity.

For the most part history does have a dim view of the mainstream leftist movements (socialists and communists) from the 20th century.

I don't know much about Paine, but trends are pretty clear.

(Right-wing populists have a similarly spotty record, but that just proves my point of a dim view of both sides in this era)

Nothing that happened today has anything to do with democracy.

The Republicans have successfully infiltrated state legislatures, gerrymandered and some states now are effectively under one-party rule. Take Wisconsin [1] as an example:

> Back in 2018, Republicans lost the popular vote in the state Senate races by 52.3 percent to 46.9 percent, yet gained two seats for a 19-14 majority. In the state Assembly, they lost the popular vote 53.0 to 44.8, yet lost only one seat to retain a 63-36 supermajority

This gerymandering also affects Congressional maps. And the Senate [2]?

> ... the Senate will be split 50-50, but the Democratic half will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.

In the wake of 2020, red states have passed laws like Arizona [3] that will allow the legislature or appointed officgials to overturn election results.

And on top of all that one side conspired to "steal" the Supreme Court by sitting on Obama's nomination for almost a year and then later rushing their own replacement in the last month before an election.

And every Supreme Court justice appointed in the last 10 years has said on the record that Roe v. Wade was a super-precedent. And today they voted to overturn. They lied. They all lied.

This isn't a "both sides" issue. This is the rise of white Christian fascism vs the feckless controlled opposition party. "Bothsidesing" is both a logical fallacy and intellectually lazy (if not outright dishonest). It's like looking at Kristallnacht and saying "well both sides are at fault".

There is no "both sides" here. The myth of the "far left" just shows how normalized right-wing propaganda has become. There are lilke maybe 4 progressive members of Congress while on the other side Nazi propaganda is openly pushed [4] and QAnon conspiracies are rampant in the Republican party, which may go as far as including Clarence Thomas and his wife who may well have conspired to overthrow the government.

When people say "far left" or "hyperprogressive" they really means "trans rights". Not wanting to murder trans people doesn't make you a radical leftist.

Please open your eyes and stop this nonsense about bothsidesing and polarization.

[1]: https://theweek.com/republicans/1008820/wisconsins-1-party-r...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/2020/11/6/21550979/senate-malapportionme...

[3]: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/591597-arizona-bill...

[4]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-rep...

I see the courts as more of a low pass filter for a democracy. If you elect right or left wing governments for a sufficient number of terms, you will end up with a left or right leaning court.

Why shouldn't slavery be up to the states?

> Ofc, my support for this change assumes that this Supreme Court will show restraint towards political activism (in either direction) in general. Call it naive, but I'll wait and see.

You're a day too late to hold this position, the supreme court struck down New York's attempt to regulate open carry yesterday.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/supreme-court-ny-open-...

Your understanding of what happened yesterday is extremely poor.

The Supreme Court did not strike down New York‘s ability to regulate open carry at all.

They struck down the states ability to withhold concealed carry permits to anyone who does not provide a sufficient reason for application.

Turns out you don’t actually need to provide a reason for civil rights.

The NYPD since being sued over this has been found guilty in corruption cases of withholding permits to people who weren’t donors, connected, celebrities, elite.

No one reasonable should think you need to prove to the NYPD why you need your rights.

“May Issue” is now dead. “Shall Issue” is still fine, and open carry laws have not changed at all.

It should be noted, that New York had at least three opportunities in court to not appeal decisions they lost, and prevent it from going to the Supreme Court. Back when this case started the state of New York had assumed that Hillary would win and going all the way up to supreme court would be fine. When they lost the second circuit, they had offered the NYRPA concessions, they were reject, and had to appeal the decision making it go to supreme court. This was ALL the state of New York’s arrogance. And now NJ, MD, HI and others are surely pissed.

As to “needs” and “rights”. Hawaii since 2016 has issued approximately four concealed carry permits to citizens. They must be renewed every year. and you cannot leave your home county with the gun. This has been an obvious violation of rights and is soon to change.

I don't even know if you and I agree on political issues, but I'd vote for you.

Yes. I couldn’t imagine if a party had all 3 branches in control. So leaving more rights to states and not forcing them on the entire nation is going to be better.

You can vote in your state for reps that support your cause. Don’t like it? Move elsewhere.

People are doing exactly the same. Florida being one of the top states with influx of people from other states, specifically California.

I think the Democrats have had that trifecta now and again. It's pretty great because they just mill around, argue a bunch, then collapse. I honestly don't get why Libertarians don't vote straight Democrat: it's a sure way to keep government out of peoples' lives due merely to their utter lack of discipline and cohesion.

>>Now, the rural republican votes counting for more in the senate is a huge issue and threat to democracy that the US needs to figure out if it ever wants to represent the views of the people

The United States is a Republic not a democracy.

Republics are democracies.

So was the USSR. So is the Russian federation. The words 'A republic, not a democracy' mean almost nothing.

> The United States is a Republic not a democracy.

These are not mutually exclusive. The US is a republic and a democracy.

There are non religious, anti abortion arguments. I've read some version of these before. They have shifted public opinion I believe more than religious arguments. I've read some version of these before, but there are probably others I'm skipping.

To summarize:

- We need those babies to offset huge demographic changes in the US population. Not enough babies are being born to offset the aging population.

- Women having abortions earlier in life, and having babies later, is negatively affecting the health of the next generation. Autism, Downs and other diseases are all linked to the age of the mother.

- Abortion advocates do themselves no favours by advocating for abortion almost up to the moment of brith. Its about public opinion, and the opinion on when a baby becomes viable has shift due to science. Babies can survive outside the womb much earlier.

-Abortion takes out about 600,000+ babies per year in the US. About 40% of all US abortions are from African American communities. Whether you think this is good or bad, depends if you view abortion to be a good or bad thing. A lot of racists eugenists are hating this decision. So they're not happy with this either. So abortion can be viewed as racist policy because its end effect is killing so many black babies.

Then why is no one doing anything to support babies if we want so many? Here's how to incentivise having children:

- Remove fear of healthcare costs. All children can use Medicare. Cover pregnancy too.

- Stop worries about schools. Bring all schools up to an acceptable level. Hire teachers at underperforming schools until the number of adults is high enough to handle extreme bad behavior and give every child a shot at a decent classroom experience.

- Paid leave. Make it feasible to have a kid in your 20s without tanking your career. Have it come from social security, so you don't have to plan your pregnancy around which company you want to work for.

- Fix housing costs. Make it easy to afford a nice house in your 20s, so having a kid doesn't feel like adding to an ongoing disaster.

The list of things you could do to encourage having kids goes on and on. Of course you could just force pregnancies on the unwilling instead, if that's the kind of person you want to be.

The abortion maximalist position, as well as the pro-life maximalist positions, do no one any good here. Someone in Mississippi came up with the idea of grabbing what by all appearances is a pretty mainstream European law, and applying it - and waiting for the inevitable lawsuit and overreach.

And abortion has absolutely had significant impacts on racism - but that racism pre-dates abortion.

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