Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattnewton | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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...

The irony of using Vox as a source of bias judgement which itself is extremely left-biased: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/

Guess other researchers think differently. Vox isn't extremely left.

According to the chart you linked, it only goes as far as "left" and "right" and doesn't capture extreme bias at all.

Wow, this is garbage, I wonder who made it…

And surprise surprise, this was founded by an ex-GOP consultant. There’s no need to consume fascist propaganda as part of a balanced media diet. Most of the outlets on the far right don’t qualify as news, and CNN isn’t hard left no matter how much it makes Republicans shriek.

This is like a food chart and on the left we see fruits and veggies and on the right we see various animals droppings.

Calling the other party Fascists isn’t a very bright thing to do either.

Try joining a conservative discussion board and you’ll notice that they call Democrats Fascists/Totalitarian!

I don’t use it lightly. I used to defend conservatives from such slurs as unfair. After Trump, Jan 6 and their support of the coup , and this Supreme Court’s outrageous antidemocratic decisions, no longer. It is now a full on fascist movement.

Wut? No unbiased citation? I expect better of HN.

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.

Not sure why you were downvoted, this is exactly how I and many friends I talk to feel.

HN in general tends to be on the pacifist, anti-militarist, technology-solves-everything side. Which is a pretty decent thing in general, don't get me wrong, but dogmatic followers of such attitudes got us Trump, the invasion of Ukraine and now this shit.

Si vis pacem para bellum, and there will be war. I honestly am unable to think of a scenario that will prevent a collapse of at least the US democracy, if not the rest of the world with it (because let's face it, the US picked up the tab to ensure the freedom of democracies while us Europeans stood aside). The only thing capable of stopping the spiral towards death is if the Democrats win a solid majority in November... but that is completely unrealistic.

You have so much right and the trot out this doozie

> US picked up the tab to ensure the freedom of democracies while us Europeans stood aside

Cite! The US does anything it wants to keep corporate power corporate. We topple lots of democracies. US is squarely imperialist.

See my comment about Smedley Butler from earlier, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31469671

They're clearly talking about since WWII. When the US has definitely picked up the tab to ensure freedom for Europeans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Koreans, and former English colonies throughout the world.

Sure, the US was somewhat imperialist a century ago, but that's long gone.

You are spouting nonsense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism

I think we're in agreement about post WWII. The US was invited into Europe and paid a lot of money to hold off the Russians. It protected the Taiwanese, Koreans and Japanese. That's pretty much what I said.

Sorry, as a non-American, I see the US has always been an imperialist nation that has encouraged regime changes whenever and wherever it felt its influence threatened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

I used to be a pro-American when I was a child blinded by US propaganda and television. Americans are heroes are what I always thought.!

Then the Iraq, Afghanistan wars, the coups in Libya and the Syrian War - encouraged via Obama's so-called 'moderate rapist rebels' completely changed my mind. What CNN said was completely different from what my Libyan and Syrian colleagues said. So Much Lying. It was around that time I did extensive reading of American history and realised I was a moron.

From a European POV, I would say that US democracy is about as functional as European union democracy. Remember how EU declared natural gas as "green"?

It is difficult combining low population areas with high population areas when they got completely different culture, wealth, and natural resources. Mistrust, suspicions, polarization, alienation and otherism abound.

The trend is however not impossible to break, and there is scientific understanding of those forces if people were willing to take them in. A key finding is to not shove culture symbols into peoples face, a proposition that scarce few want to agree in the name of cooperation. When people feel that their culture is threatened the natural repose seems to be the opposite and display as much of cultural symbols as possible.

> I would say that US democracy is about as functional as European union democracy. Remember how EU declared natural gas as "green"?

Oh I do. And I know the reason behind that headline - the fact is we absolutely need gas infrastructure to allow diversifying from Russia in the short term while preventing dozens of millions of people from freezing in winter or to allow gas peaker plants to assist solar and wind so we can shut down coal and the decades-old nuclear clunkers.

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.

I think it’s hard to compare those countries to the US, culturally they are way way different than the US.

Russia didn’t really regress, did it? It experimented with 8 years of democracy after a thousand years of authoritarianism and went back to its comfort zone. Poland and Hungary as part of that soviet bloc once is affected by those old soviet ghosts still driving some of the culture. The US doesn’t have that long authoritarian past and is still pretty rebellious

India…well it’s an enigma anyway with such ancient traditions and culture, it’s going to be an outlier anyway.

Liberal democracy appears to be a metastable equilibrium that requires active management to resist authoritarian perturbations. The Roman Republic didn't have universal suffrage, but lasted almost 500 years, before gradually and then suddenly descending into authoritarian rule.

Chemical stability is a function of temperature and I suspect democracy is a well, to some of political analogue.

My fear is with the recent increase in wealth inequality democracy in America may no longer be the stable phase

I would argue racism has always been the element causing instability. Racism is why we don’t have universal healthcare, it’s why the inequality we do have is so punishing. Republicans are the party of white grievance since at least the 1960s, and even mentioning this fact is enough to send so-called moderates rushing to vote Republican because how dare I point this out.

That's possible, and it's difficult to disentangle class and race in the US, due to historical racism economically repressing many minorities. However, follow on studies to the famous resume name-swapping study found that the original study used stereotypical lower-class black names as its pool of stereotypical black names. When stereotypical lower-class white names and stereotypical upper-class black names were added to the randomized pool, a larger component of discrimination fell along class lines vs. race lines, for both white and black prospective interviewers.

I hope our discrimination problems fall more along class lines, because that's much easier to solve by implementing economic policies to reduce economic inequalities. Government programs won't change people's races (well, non-terrifying government programs, at least), but policies can change people's economic class.

It's also entirely possible that different areas of the country have different mixes of classism and racism. My wife is of a different race, and our son is mixed race, and my wife and I both went to top-tier schools, so my social group is almost certainly less racist and more classist than the US median. It's very difficult and dangerous to extrapolate my lived truth to the whole nation.

Class is cultural before it's monetary. You can give Billy-bob a million dollars- a rich hick, a hick remains.

Every class tranche uses fashion to differentiate themselves from the tranche just below, while imitating the tranches above. The upper class used to wear fancy clothes to differentiate themselves from the middle class; the middle class started wearing the clothes of the upper class to try and join them; boom, ghetto chic becomes popular among ivy-leaguers. (They don't have to worry about being mistaken for actual lower-class people; the cultural differences are big enough that that isn't a concern).

This helps maintain in-group selection with all the wonderful effects it has.

I think that a lot of what we call racism is dressed up classism. If race A is poorer on average, people of race A will get treated as if they are poor--more likely to steal, more likely to break laws as they have less to lose. If race A is wealthier or the same, on average, the classism won't be intermingled in the same way with race.

Sadly, in the US, we have a terrible system where schools are locally funded, and poor people get poor schools. Under this system, socioeconomic class self-perpetuates.

> people of race A will get treated as if

I think you've just described racism.

While it isn't helpful that you're focusing on definitional terms rather than the point, the dictionary doesn't really back you up here anyhow.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism

Well, to me part of your point seemed to be that a lot of what we call racism has roots in classism, rather than in beliefs about inherent differences between races.

My point is that the resulting behaviors and discrimination can still be racist, even if they don't have their ultimate roots in racism itself.

From your link:

> also : behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster this belief : racial discrimination or prejudice

> : the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another

Edit: Anyway, I do recognize that the distinction you're pointing out does have implications for the best way to address the problems.

I’m not so sure about that. Modern societies seem to be trending towards more democracy rather then the opposite. There are a few notable exceptions (including the USA). But I would argue they are notable because they are rare. Today’s authoritarian regimes seem far more unstable then today’s democracies. Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes are falling to a coup, popular uprisings or legislative democratic reforms, all the time (notable examples include South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and Argentina). Even today’s most prominent authoritarian regimes in mainland China and Cuba are enacting more and more democratic reforms (albeit very limited in the former case).

But then again, I’m not a historian. So this is just some guys on the internet’s interpretation.

Poland regressed in similar direction as US as the already very limited right to abortion there was severely restricted by government and Polish equivalent of Supreme Court that overtly subscribes to Christian "morality".

idk. The USA didn’t actually become a full democracy (by modern standards) until the 1960s, after the civil rights act of 1964 when voting rights were (mostly) guaranteed. We are currently witnessing these rights being rolled back. One can just as easily say that the USA is ending a 60 year experiment with equal rights and regressing to the tried and trusted 200 years of slanted democracy.

But that’s not what I’m interested in though. False analogs and convenient distinctions are easy to come by. What I’m looking for is a historical trend of voting behavior during a democratic regression.

India regressed because of a lack of another option. Because the other party is ruled by a single family for multiple decades and is unable to find a leader outside of that family.

The Roman Republic and the Weimar Republic are also two huge examples of democracies regressing to authoritarian regimes.

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".

Sadly, that's true for an awful lot of people. Even then you'd be surprised how many go along meekly with having their rights removed or withheld.

That is unfortunately always the case. And almost always it’s too late when they come for you (i.e you’re directly affected by something) and you finally feel like doing something about it.

Unfortunately it is true. (I posted this interesting piece once on HN & it did not get the traction, but strangely relevant today):

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/15/1857976/--The-Only-...

This is one reason why laws need to apply to everyone equally, since only by doing so will everyone have a equal interest that it exist and get enforced. It is also one reason why government and religion need to be separated, since otherwise there will be a imbalance between those who belong to that religion and those that don't.

Yes

It's called 'only so many shits to give', and most people are all out and solidly overdrawn.

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.

> Only a quarter of evangelicals in the United States believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, according to a new poll showing that a majority of self-identified Christians in the U.S. identify as “pro-choice” and less than half of evangelicals identify as “pro-life.”

And yet, here we are.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/less-than-half-of-us-evan...

We are here because one party decided that abortion should be legal in any and all cases—well past fetal viability, with zero limits and restrictions and knew they would never have been able to achieve that legislatively.

The same political party then proceeded to rely on a court case about a physician’s privacy to practice medicine as a substitute for women’s body rights instead of creating legislation that could have at least guaranteed access to abortion in the first trimester, which would have received enough bi-partisan support to make Roe v. Wade a non-issue and relied on the 10th amendment and states to expand abortion access beyond the minimum guarantee.

But instead, they did nothing but talk, and here we are…

> would have received enough bi-partisan support

Huge asterisk on this. Can you point to any moment when doing what you suggest would have been politicially viable? Especially considering the fervor with which GOP are racing to pass bans that don’t include exceptions for rape and incest.

Say what you will about Roe but auto until Thursday it did strike a balance that worked for a vast majority of the country (60%). There were limits, there were restrictions. Why do you presume there were none?

Yeah, you hear consternation about the availability of late term abortions, but if you explain those happen in fewer than 1% of cases and often are medically necessary this concern often is ameliorated.

But now that’s all been blown up. Now there will be two Americas: safe haven America where women are free, and Gilead where women are forced to give birth to their rapists babies.

> Huge asterisk on this. Can you point to any moment when doing what you suggest would have been politicially viable? Especially considering the fervor with which GOP are racing to pass bans that don’t include exceptions for rape and incest

At multiple points in the last 50 years we have been in a place where our executive branch and congress has been controlled by the Democratic Party, and after presidential elections that were pretty solidly decided. At those points federal legislation could have been introduced that if crafted in a bi-partisan way—limited to first trimester, avoiding tax payer funding, limits on fetal tissue use, etc… the Democrats could have passed legislation with some basic bi-partisan support that could have provided access to abortion at a minimal level federally that would account for about 90% of the performed abortions out there. However, because the democrats either chose to die on that remaining 10% hill, or intentionally didn’t fight at all they lost the whole battle. People seem to believe that they were fighting all this time, in reality, they enabled yesterday to happen. I would argue, intentionally, because the only other explanation is that for 50 years the Democratic Party has been incompetent.

Roe never really struck a balance of anything, it was always weak and was always going to fall. It managed to simply pause the illegality question for a time, during which our congress could have and should have acted to affirm the rights.

Even RBG felt it was the wrong case for abortion rights because it didn’t focus on women’s rights, but rather physician privacy. If the most arguably liberal justice in the last 50 years is warning you that Roe is bad and going to fall, you might want to believe them.

> Now there will be two Americas: safe haven America where women are free, and Gilead where women are forced to give birth to their rapists babies.

Actually there will be 50 Americas—-which is really no different today than it was yesterday.

I’m asking if you can identify a specific Congress you feel could have passed abortion legislation.

The 111th had the best chance in my opinion. I also think 105th ironically could have as well, despite it being GOP controlled with the right Clinton deal making. The current congress could have as well if they had focused right at the beginning of the term and not went off on witch-hunting and posthumously impeaching former presidents.

Current congress can’t pass anything without 10 Republicans on board, and given how the GOP is coalescing around total abortion bans. Which Republicans do you imagine beyond collins and Murkowski joining to break the filibuster?

Hard to fault Democrats in the 105th for what Republicans wouldn’t do.

That leaves one congress in 50 years’ time with even a shot. Could they have done it, maybe, but we saw how even when Democrats bent over backwards to accommodate Republican ideas into the ACA (inviting and incorporating over 100 amendments, basing it off of a heritage foundation plan implemented by Republican Mitt Romney in MA), they still got 0 Republican support.

Do you think a partisan abortion law would have solved anything? Do you think that wouldn’t have been appealed immediately after the 115th Congress? They failed to repeal the ACA by 1 vote. I can’t imagine how they could have failed repealing an abortion law.

And btw, impeaching Trump in 2021 for orchestrating an insurrection and coup was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately Republicans refused to convict, because as we now know, many of them were complicit in the coup and sought pardons for their roles (read: crimes). Had they convicted him, he would have been barred from holding future office and a huge problem would have been solved for the country. It was worth a shot. Unfortunately, now a man who sought to overthrow the US government is running for President again, and might win.

I think kcplate has a point here, though. The Democrats have had Congressional majorities before and squandered them one way and another, often because they were playing t-ball with the GOP.

even when Democrats bent over backwards to accommodate Republican ideas into the ACA

That's what I mean, the Democrats keep trying to appeal to the middle by saying 'look how bipartisan we are' and getting kicked int he gut. As a party, they want to appeal to the moral authority of a teacher or moderate voters' consciences, and so they continually aspire to good stewardship. The reality is that while that does appeal to some, American people in general don't respect weakness and reflexively distance themselves from losers. Culturally speaking, winning is more important than being right to many Americans, and even people who believe it ought to be otherwise have to balance their idealism with the logic of survival.

The GOP has been shifting toward a win-at-all-costs mentality since 1994 when Gingrich took Congress (after a long, long period of Democratic dominance) with the 'contract with America.' Despite many of these 'contractual' provisions not being serious (eg the commitment to balanced budgets has only ever been a talking/negotiating point for the GOP, when holding power they max out on debt), they provided a unifying agenda for conservatives whose object is power for its own sake, and such conservatives now dominate the GOP.

Democrats worry that whenever they drift too far 'left' the GOP will attack them mercilessly, and so they tend to huddle in the middle, where the GOP attack them mercilessly anyway. Centrist Democrats literally lose seats and console themselves that if they had put up more of a fight their margin of defeat would have been even more painful.

Posting here since I think we went too deep on the other

> Do you think a partisan abortion law would have solved anything?

I never said “partisan”, I said bi-partisan and yes I do. Polling within the electorate showed support across parties for first trimester access.

You're blaming the Dems for relying on a precedent staying a precedent, as if that's a dumbshit rookie move, as if what the Rs did (a series of nominees lying about their beliefs in order to overturn a popular ruling) is a normal thing to do that they should've expected. I don't think that's accurate. I think this is pretty unusual, and the main reason the Ds didn't work harder to pass a bill legalizing abortion is that it was already legal.

In any event, you seem to have missed the point of my post, which was that we can't assume that things like contraception, gay marriage, and interracial marriage are safe from being overturned just because a plurality support them. You said banning contraception is a "scratch issue" with evangelicals, and I'm pointing out, so is banning abortion, and yet, here we are.

> You're blaming the Dems for relying on a precedent staying a precedent, as if that's a dumbshit rookie move

Yes, I am definitely blaming them. Judge Ginsburg warned them, told them it was not going to survive certain challenges. The dems did nothing. If the smartest legal mind on your side (and she was not the only one BTW) is warning you that something you hold claim to hold sacred is in danger and you choose to do nothing to protect it, that is a dumb shit move. However, I’d argue that it may have been intentional—that to the democratic leadership abortion rights were not sacred, but only valuable to them for the political division it caused.

>You said banning contraception is a "scratch issue" with evangelicals

Contraception is simply different. There isn’t the “innocent third party without a voice” factor there that will motivate the activism and financial investment in that activism the same way. Same sex marriage is kind of the same, there is no third party component to it to protect.

> Yes, I am definitely blaming them.

I'm sure it's satisfying but I don't think it adds a lot to the conversation. Maybe the Ds don't play hard enough (blocking nominees, lying under oath, etc) but you shouldn't have to cheat to protect a popular long-standing precedent.

> Contraception [and same sex marriage] is simply different.

The belief that there's an "innocent third party" involved in abortion is a religious belief; I don't see why the court would enforce that but not other religious beliefs, like women submitting to their husbands and so forth. Your stance that D's were dupes for believing R's about Roe v Wade would appear to suggest that we shouldn't believe you about this either.

The theocrats on the court are young, they probably have 30+ years ahead of them, and the only sensible prediction is to assume that anything disliked by Fundamentalist Christians is in danger. That means not just contraception and gay marriage, but Obamacare, social security, trans rights, owning sex toys, gay adoption, domestic violence laws, spousal protective orders, womens' rights generally, Miranda and anything else predicated on Due Process, any gun restriction, and I'm not feeling super confident about the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, or interracial marriage.

Surely your "what a bunch of dumbshits, why didn't they see this coming" applies to those too?

> The belief that there's an "innocent third party" involved in abortion is a religious belief

That is mostly false. If a pregnant mother get harmed to the degree that it harms the unborn or kills it, the legal system (and "popular opinion" in my view) see it as being more than just harming the mother. In feticide, there is an third party involved. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 is very explicit about that and it also gives an explicit exception for abortions.

If we view child in utero as similar to a cancer growth off the womans body then feticide does not exist. There would be physical assault, but not homicide, because no Homo sapiens would be killed. That view point conflict with how a lot of people feel in those situations.

I think you missed the phrase "in abortion" in the sentence you quoted. You may feel that those positions are contradictory or hypocritical, but it's disingenuous to act as if pro-choice people agree.

Edit: also, if you're going to wade in to an ongoing discussion, it's nice to respond to the thing we're generally arguing about; don't just pluck one sentence fragment out and start a new discussion over it. When someone says, "I think X, therefore Y", they're arguing that X is true enough in this context to support a belief in Y, not that X is always true in all contexts, which is a much larger (and therefore, easier to argue against) claim.

The reason I address that point is that its the central point of contention why abortion is different from contraception and same sex marriage. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 illustrate that in some situation people, even non-religious people, want to to view unborn as more than just cells growing on the woman. It not just a religious belief but rather an emotional one.

My guess is that for popular belief, if a unborn dies because of violence to the woman then people emotionally see it as murder of an other human being. If the woman choose to abort then for social reason many/most people do not view it as a human being that died. This is however a conflict of views which has nothing to do with religion.

With contraception, even if it was done through force, no one outside of religious belief would see it as killing a human. How would even The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 be applied? Should each sperm count as a half human?

Similar with same-sex there isn't any direct situations where non-religious people suddenly would be in favor of outlawing it.

As for the exception written in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, what is say is that the legality of abortion is not effected by the definition of the that law. Nothing more, nothing less. We can have laws allowing abortion for social reasons regardless if we view the bunch of cells as being more than just a bunch of cells.

I agree that people who believe a fetus is a person ought to be more opposed to abortion than gay marriage or contraception; but it is also true that people who believe a fetus is a person ought to favor easier access to contraception (which provably reduces abortions), and they generally don't, so here we are.

A bit of insider info from the UK on this one :) UK Catholics believe that life begins moment of conception and therefore generally oppose abortion (apart from extreme cases e:g mother might die, baby might die anyway, baby will suffer badly). Opposition to abortion generally goes with desire for better support of troubled mothers, but whether in practice this practically results in improved services seems doubtful. Apparently the stats say 90% of UK married Catholics actually use contraception. And parents quietly say to their teenagers "If you can't be good, be safe" ;). Gay marriage is something some clergy go about but the "silent majority" of Catholics is liberal on gay and trans issues I think, believing that committed love for each other counts more than what gender a couple are. So what you say ought to happen, seems to me does happen in the UK in my experience. However, what happens in the USA is a different matter. :)

Also, I think you're engaging in a little historical revisionism about that law. My memory of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act was that everyone, on both sides, understood it to be primarily a way to further the cause of banning abortion by maneuvering pro-choice politicians into a corner. It worked, but it seems disingenuous to speak as if it had bipartisan support; extra penalties for crimes against pregnant women had bipartisan support, referring to the baby as a victim of the crime did not.

> The belief that there's an "innocent third party" involved in abortion is a vreligious belief; I don't see why the court would enforce that but not other religious beliefs

I think you missed my point on this, i was speaking in terms of things that drive they activist attitudes, not any specific legal distinction.

as belorn said in their comment to you, in certain legal cases we consider the unborn child as a person. You don’t have this sort of strange legal dichotomy with a innocent third party with contraception or gay marriage

I understand where you're coming from, but the position that religious fundamentalist activists aren't particularly interested in keeping gays from marrying would seem to be contradicted by their behavior over the last two decades.

edit to add: and most of the bible verses they quote to support that view also condemn divorce and sex outside of wedlock, so forgive us for not knowing what is and isn't in danger. You make a persuasive argument that we should be more concerned than we think we should.

> keeping gays from marrying would seem to be contradicted by their behavior over the last two decades.

Sure, but taking a position to prevent something from becoming legally recognized requires far less effort and commitment than taking something presently legal and making it illegal. Abortion was an outlier because there was a tangible victim to rally around in the pro-life activist’s eyes.

There simply isn’t a tangible victim they can point to for gay marriage and contraception. Those issues center around behavior they might regard as sinful, but in their eyes the sinner is the only one to suffer.

People may not approve…but will they care enough to work against them? I don’t think so. I know a lot of folks who are loudly pro-life, but I can only think of perhaps one that might actively work against gay marriage, and none that would have a strong opinion at all regarding contraception

Er, did you read the news between like 2005 and 2015? Opposition to gay marriage was fairly prominent. It certainly seems to have died down since then, but I would've said the same thing about the pro-life movement until this week. I don't think the view from within our bubbles is a good way to measure these things. For example, did you realize that "pro-life" was a minority view among evangelicals, before I posted that poll? I sure didn't.

As for the "victim," the most effective way we know of to reduce the number of abortions is giving young people easy access to contraception, and AFAICT very few pro-lifers are in favor of that. I think it's a mistake to think this is only or even primarily about the fetus.

> Er, did you read the news between like 2005 and 2015? Opposition to gay marriage was fairly prominent.

I didn’t dispute that. I said specifically that it’s easier to work against something that is currently not legal becoming legal.

> It certainly seems to have died down since then

Because…it’s now legal.

> is giving young people easy access to contraception, and AFAICT very few pro-lifers are in favor of that

They may not be in favor of it, but it’s legal for young people to use contraceptives, and has been for a long time and there is no where near the passion against it as there was for abortion. However, when you say “easy access” do you mean “free and government supplied”? That is wholly a different argument that has a more “taxpayer support of discretionary human behavior” driver against it.

> there is no where near the passion against [legal access to contraception]

I don't think you've internalized the thing that started this conversation. This is not a victory for the pro-life movement! The pro-life movement has never been less popular, even among evangelicals. In the battle to convince Americans of their cause, they have lost by any measure.

Roe was overturned not by "passion" but by a handful of ethically flexible judges. If they can do that with one unpopular thing, they can do it with a second and a third.

> However, when you say “easy access” do you mean “free and government supplied”?

Yes, but not as an ideological matter, just because that's the most straightforward way to implement policies. In general, "I support policy X" means "I want tax money to be spent on X". That's how governments do things, by spending money.

If you don't want to be involved I'm sure we can fund it privately, it's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. But it's not clear why would you be against spending tax money to prevent abortions, but okay with spending money to jail the women who've had them. If this were actually about preventing abortions and not punishing sin, it wouldn't matter.

in their eyes the sinner is the only one to suffer

You are applying utilitarian considerations of outcomes to religious dogmatists. Such consider sexual immorality (as defined by them) to be a corrupting influence on everyone peripherally connected to it, and an affront to God.

Hence the current moral panic of denouncing all LGBT people as 'groomers' and insinuating or openly accusing people who disagree as pedophiles, which is considered sufficient reason to kill in some peoples' eyes. Now while this moral panic is by no means universal among religious Christians, if you're not aware of it then you just aren't paying attention.

> Hence the current moral panic of denouncing all LGBT people as 'groomers' and insinuating or openly accusing people who disagree as pedophiles

I find it kind of strange that you are conflating marriage equality and concerns over sexualizing young children together. I don’t see people using this sexualization of children as an argument against gay marriage, I see it pretty hyper-focused on the sexualization of young children.

I am wondering why you are tying them together if the folks doing it don’t seem to be.

I have admired your candor in these exchanges, up until this comment.

Sorry you feel that way, but I just find it a little disappointing that this thread went down this road and someone made this linkage. I don’t see it as a related issue.

I am also disappointed that "someone" has been conflating those two things, but it ain't anigbrowl. In case you're genuinely unaware of where that accusation comes from, an explainer: https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/23/lgbtq-groomers-smear-...

I’m certainly aware that “grooming” is now a political weapon, but what I am not aware of is any concerted effort to try and use that to attack marriage equality. Your snopes article does not appear to be making that case either.

Conflating homosexuality with pedophilia has been a thing since before there was a gay rights movement. Has it occurred to you that maybe your outgroup hears more of your ingroup's worst arguments than you do?

Having grown up in a country where all contraception was illegal, I assure it's not that different. The arguments abortion are simply transferred onto contraception as 'interference with the divine will' and (implicitly) the price to be paid for sexual indulgence.

Among religious persons and societies, doctrinal considerations outweigh all others. If you are under the impression that the abortion issue is different because large numbers of non-religious folk are sufficiently motivated by the ethical issue to engage in activism and donate funding, I think you're quite mistaken.

Perhaps in a country with a homogeneous religious culture it’s easy to dictate dogmatism, and while the US might be religious compared to perhaps Europe, it is not homogeneous. I’d argue that you could take two different congregations affiliated with the same denomination and probably find topics or scripture that would create fierce debate between the two.

Birth control might be a big deal to some devout Catholics and some primitive/fundamentalist Baptists, but virtually every other denomination and congregation is literally not going to care.

>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.

Libertarians (reactionaries) took over the GOP, kicking out the conservatives. Koch, who is an atheist, et al allied with evangelicals to accomplish this.

Time will tell who will be left standing, the theocrats or the reactionaries.

There are many exposés, books, articles, etc. Here are two of the more recent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Chains

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money

These concepts I am familiar with, but both of these sources suffer from the same problem: third parties presuming and ascribing intent. Sure they might be correct eventually, and as you say, only time will tell. But I ain't overly interested in the opinions of third party, hyperbolic sooth sayers with axes to grind. If someone is going to claim a fact one way or the other, let's be factual all around. Assumption and doubt-casting may sell books, but they don't really persuade me.

> ...but they don't really persuade me.

What measure of proof do you require?

Democracy in Chains' primary source are a cache of documents from economist James Buchanan's think tank, architects of the reactionary movement's strategy. By their own words and actions, they intend to end democracy and protect the rich. Disagree with the author's analysis, fine. But the thesis is not circumstantial, inferred, or speculated.

Whereas Dark Money is a standard whodunnit. Investigative journalism, following the money, ferret out the criminal conspiracy. If you have a different interpretation of the evidence, please share.

You need it spelled out for you? So if I tell you “I love you and would never hurt you” while beating the shit out of you, you’re going to think “hm, I can’t assume his intent, I bet he does love me!”

Your argument is foolish.

The bit about banning birth control is directly from Clarance Thomas.

You could start with a roundup from this non-sensationalist nonprofit for an overview of legislative action. An example of a candidate publicly expressing opposition to any form of birth control would be Jacky Eubanks, a Republican candidate for Governor in Michigan. And I include one example of politically motivated religiosity for a longer historical perspective.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/6/4/1411/pdf#:~:text=Abstract....

very uneducated misinterpretation of a (relatively unimportant) concurrent opinion by Justice Thomas in which the hyperbolic clearly don't understand

Dude, when you're trying to shoehorn 5 dismissals into one sentence it's not conducive to discussion.

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 1850s, I believe there was a serious political party with some concern that Pius IX would use Irish immigrants to dig a tunnel from Rome to Washington and send the Swiss Guards in to take over America.

Thank you. Same situation occuring with the exagerated outrage over the 2020 election shenanigans and resulting riot at the capitol.

Not a great look for the US by any means, but the whole chapter is a joke compared to past election turmoil, especially during reconstruction era post Civil War. In those years, you often had large armed militias battling it out with occupying federal troops over which election results.

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.

> 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.

Because there is an explicit provision on guns in the constitution. No mention of or allusion to abortion in the constitution. If the US wants to protect abortion through the constitution, they are free to do so. The US constitution has been amended many times. But that takes an even broader consensus.

The constitution doesn’t enshrine the right to a gun. It enshrines the right to a gun for the sake of a well regulated militia. The NYC ruling was pure judicial activism

No, it's correct: https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment2.html

>The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause (A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State) and its operative clause (the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed).

Modern judicial activism which clearly goes to the heart of the matter: the conservative bloc in the SCOTUS doesn’t care about even the text of the constitution

Whose right is gun ownership? It's the people. The Constitution explicitly says that the Government will not have the right to infringe on that right. The inference is that they can infringe on all the other non-enumerated rights.

Edit: to pull context from another comment here.

"The 'militia' was the entire adult male citizenry, who were not simply allowed to keep their own arms, but affirmatively required to do so.… With slight variations, the different colonies imposed a duty to keep arms and to muster occasionally for drill upon virtually every able-bodied white man between the age of majority and a designated cut-off age. Moreover, the duty to keep arms applied to every household, not just to those containing persons subject to militia service. Thus the over-aged and seamen, who were exempt from militia service, were required to keep arms for law enforcement and for the defense of their homes."

This issue is that the States became lazy once the Feds got their standing military. All States should require citizens to muster for arms and disaster training at least twice a year.

Militia: still is, mostly - people live a little longer now.

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

I've had this question for a while but why can I not own a functional tank or MLRS system and just drive them around wherever I want? Why are explosives regulated? Nothing in the constitution seems to suggest "Arms" must mean "guns and only guns", so where else is the line drawn?

In many states you totally can own a functional tank, missile system, or explosives -- you just need the right $200 stamp from the ATF and maybe a background check. (Each tank shell or missile would require an additional ATF stamp, this is where things become different from owning a normal gun and ammunition.) Driving them around - outside of your property - would require them to be properly licensed and road-legal, that's something your local motor vehicle agency would have to decide.

Here's the first Google result for your entertainment:

You Can Purchase a Fully Functional Army Tank Online Because This Is America

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/09/armslist-sells-f...

> In many states you totally can own a functional tank, missile system, or explosives -- you just need the right $200 stamp from the ATF and maybe a background check.

I'm aware and my point was explicitly about being able to drive them around wherever I like, under the guise of it being the rough equivalent of concealed carry for an MLRS.

You can't; there's restrictions. At the minimum, it's likely that people would argue they're heavy and would harm infrastructure (or outright destroy it in the case of some tanks).

Separately, explosives are also tightly controlled, but are still a key part of armaments.

I think if you looked deeper, you'd find that the restrictions for where you could and could not drive tanks are more restrictions on the _roads_ than the _tanks_

The government owns the roads, ergo can sidestep a lot of the what might otherwise be mandated under strict scrutiny for their usage with rational basis tests. E.g., "the roads are rated for <x> class of vehicles, and a tank is <y> class."

I'm aware and my point was explicitly about being able to drive them around wherever I like...

But you're wrong, while I couldn't drive my tank around, I could certainly load it onto a tractor trailor and show it off around town. I would argue that's functionally the same thing.

In theory states could write a new law that forbid carrying any explosive on public road as a matter of road safety. Ammunition would be non-road-legal, making concealed and non-concealed carry impossible on public roads.

You absolutely can own a tank. With functioning cannon. Because of the NFA, you have to register the cannon as a destructive device, although at the 1776 ratification, cannons were explicitly legal. So there is your tank and cannon.

A multi rocket system, is not a gun. It's ordnance. So this argument is weak and I don't need to extend into that except for.... ALSO LEGAL. Again, you are going to need to follow the rules of the NFA, and ATF's explosives requirements. The larger issue will be to get Lockhead Martin to sell you one! Which they will not. But you come up with the cash for 1000 of them, and I bet they do.

Explosives are regulated because they have no defensive purpose. I mean, they do, but it's tough to use them defensively and accurately. If you cite Heller vs DC, they are dangerous AND unusual, key point to use "AND" there.

Arms do actually mean arms. Arms meant cannons too. But bombs were never really arms.

The line in this case is drawn rather inconsistently by the federal government agencies, and more fairly but even increasingly restrictive by congress.

Any other questions?

I'm aware you can own a tank, the issue was with the restrictions on its use. It was probably a poor analogy, but the concept is:

Legally, how is:

> You can purchase a tank but not operate it anywhere off your own property.

functionally different than:

> You can purchase a handgun but may not carry it concealed on your person off your own property.

Emphasis on Legally. In both cases these are allowed weapons for people to own, which, while not exact parallels (Tanks can cause infrastructure damage and such) at their core seem very similar from a legal perspective, especially because of the NFA requirement for tanks. That latter is important to consider because the NFA largely deals with guns of varying sorts in its rules.

Also context: I'm an ignorant Canuck who occasionally lives stateside.

>at their core seem very similar from a legal perspective especially because of the NFA requirement for tanks.

There is no NFA requirement for the tank itself. Only for the cannon, and the ammunition if it has an explosive payload. The tank is just a vehicle. If you can make it street legal, you are free to drive it anywhere you like.

The more interesting thing you bring up inadvertently is "on your own property". If that's the case, I should be able to own all the machine guns I like without NFA stamps on my own property right?

The NFA is an unconstitutional law that sought to put a tax on rights. Then extra double unconstitutional when in 1986 they said "Oh, we longer accept the tax for certain still legal things". We specifically deny behavior that elsewhere, like voting. All handguns were supposed to be included, and all rifles with barrels shorter than 18". 18" stuck for shotguns, but rifles were moved to 16" for silly reason I can't recall exactly. Pistols got dropped because even in 1934 the public reaction wasn't going to fly.

It doesn't matter though. The point of all of this is 2A is an individual right, enumerated, and verified with previous and recent court decisions. Abortion is not, so people using the BUT STATES RIGHTS comments about the NYRPA decision vs Roe overturn are being completely ignorant of the realities here.

It's very silly to compare them.

> Any other questions?

Since you seem to know a lot about "arms," is a sword an "arm?"

> functionally different than:

I believe you can take your tank off your property, assuming you went to the DMV and got license plates and a VIN number for it.

>Since you seem to know a lot about "arms," is a sword an "arm?"

Knives and swords are arms, yes. This was most recently seen in states that tried to ban switchblades outright. Switchblades are pretty poor fighting knives, but have the same public reaction fueled by media as pitbulls.

I talked with a lobbyist responsible for the switchblade deregulation in my state. After her research it came to "What makes a weapon will always be up to the judge, but the easy test is can you swing it?". Which is fair I think. That said... I also trained with my state's swat unit for a class and they talked about their justification for getting their gun out according to dept policy being "Any time a weapon is involved", which can mean gun, knife, sword, folding chair, sharp pencil or really big box of hot dogs depending on intent.

You're right about the tank. So long as you have the right markers, mirrors, vision, licensing, etc. You're good to go. Although you won't enjoy it as a daily driver after the initial buzz wears off.

Driving motored vehicles on public roads is a privilege retained by the states under the Tenth Amendment. You can drive a tank on private property, if you can legally acquire one (Commerce Clause).

Unclear on explosives.

As far as "arms," the line is drawn at being able to be operated by a single person. So it would appear unconstitutional to prohibit keeping and bearing cannons and tactical nukes, though Congress can prohibit sale and interstate transfer.

The US is party to various treaties governing fissile material. Whether those treaties can be construed to override amendments as opposed to the original Constitution is a good question.

The militia (as opposed to the army) would use personal weapons that they owned for defense of the home, and the Supreme Court has held that those are the arms protected by the 2nd Amendment. From Heller, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf page 59,

"As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose.

The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,”, would fail constitutional muster."

If people had commonly used cannons to protect their homes, maybe tanks would be protected under the 2nd Amendment by their logic.

> The constitution doesn’t enshrine the right to a gun. It enshrines the right to a gun for the sake of a well regulated militia.

IIRC, you need private gun ownership to have a militia (as the founders understood them). I believe the idea was regular citizens would organize when needed and bring their own guns.

One of possible interpretations, which AFAIK was even on the books in some state for a time, was that second amendment meant compulsory obligation for each voter to buy, out of their own money, a military rifle and stand for militia training periodically - essentially, mandatory militia service.

Lots of ways to wring hands about a very badly written amendment.

Firstly, the supreme court decides what the 2A means and they decided it does not mean that. The NYC law spit in the face of a previous supreme court decision. That can't be allowed.

You can argue that the previous decision was wrong all you want (I personally think it was), but you can't allow the states to just ignore the supreme court and do whatever they want or all constitutional protections are meaningless.

> The NYC law spit in the face of a previous supreme court decision. That can’t be allowed.

I mean it obviously can, as the law at issue in Dobbs did that, and it was allowed.

An extension of my first point is that the supreme court decides what is constitutional and what isn't. My point was that only the supreme court can be allowed to overturn the supreme court. That's how it works. If the court decides that a previous court was wrong, then that's fine. That's how the system is designed.

tl;dr we have a really dogshit system that essentially puts 9 people in charge of everything

It puts them in charge of interpreting the constitution, I thought. What a stretch to make them seem like on a whim law makers or tyrannical. Governments tends to become tyrannical especially as they scale and gain more power. That's what the fabulous constitution was drafted after for the most part: to protect people against the government(s). Not put by Trump or other conservative to exerce more control over people. Here quite the opposite. I see in this overturn a move to re-establish distance and reduce the over reach of governance, federal legislation here, the supreme court attacking itself. The constitution still somehow works in the U.S, and supreme judges doing a great job at keeping it honored.

> What a stretch to make them seem like on a whim law makers or tyrannical.

It's not a stretch. They are literally "on a whim law makers." They decide what issues they want to take up and change the way they interpret the constitution depending on how they want to rule on an issue. In theory, they could be held in check by congress, but in practice that is impossible. Especially since the justice's are political weapons of congress. There's a reason the supreme court nominations have been huge campaign points for the last few elections. They have basically unchecked power.

> The constitution still somehow works in the U.S, and supreme judges doing a great job at keeping it honored.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. They choose how they want to interpret it depending on how they want to rule. There's no consistency and it's frankly a disgrace. Has been for a while too, this isn't something new to this current court.

It would be useful to provide at least a concrete example. Sounding very undoubtul doesn't imply being right or argumenting based on the truth. I will however do further reading and find out what may be so outrageous this court might have been up to.

I have to concede, a long series of rulings are a disgrace. In the long run of this institution, not sure on the ratio of questionable vs rightful vs plain calamities judges have come up with historically. I stand on my previous comment and as you say would agree to disagree: the supreme court system _still_ works, somehow. Institutions at large are in chamble in the West, we could make a special case here but no obvious dissonance that I can see or hear from these judges. On this ruling. Politically biased? Of course. Corrupt? Not quite, but indirectly, very likely. Thanks for your thoughts. Agreed on them not being kept in check by Congress, not sure how the balance of power work in details, it would naturally more sense that congress gets at least some electing power and surely an avenue for dismissing them for misconduct, by 2/3 of votes or whatever. That would sound more balanced than the whichever passing president given the election or some judges who then sit on their thrones for life.

More like 5 people who get to be in charge of whatever they feel like at the time.

In fact the ruling relies, for purposes of establishing that restrictions on abortion are an established part of the American tradition, on pointing to the existence of a bunch of state abortion laws that existed in the 1860s, which were all ruled unconstitutional in Roe.

It's effectively saying 'the existence of state laws that attempt to restrict a right, even ones which have been rule unconstitutional, is itself evidence that it's okay for states to impose restrictions on constitutional rights.'

Which seems like a very odd argument to make the day after striking down a 100 year old NY State law restricting gun carry rights on the basis that there's no evidence of a long tradition of such restrictions being passed by states.

> Firstly, the supreme court decides what the 2A means and they decided it does not mean that. The NYC law spit in the face of a previous supreme court decision. That can't be allowed.

I'm always surprised by how few people realize that the SCOTUS doesn't make laws for states. I'm also surprised at how deeply convinced the notion of "the federal government and SCOTUS supersede state laws" is ingrained into our culture.

The SCOTUS only provides opinions and jurisprudence on matters. They don't "make laws" and can't command anything with any sort of enforceable power. Abortion could have been abolished yesterday, last month or even last decade if any state wanted it to.

Any state level Supreme Court can run contrary to the judgements of the SCOTUS without having to fear enforceable retribution. We've seen this recently with the case of interstate "travel bans" during COVID, "Sanctuary Cities" during Trump's first couple months of presidency and the spotty legalization of marijuana in certain states.

> The NYC law spit in the face of a previous supreme court decision. That can't be allowed.

Yet what we recently learned is what the supreme court decides is of little consequence. It's just the temporary whim of whatever political party happens to be in power. In 10, 20 or whatever years it takes to get a liberal court back, then roe v wade comes back and the court reinterprets a "well regulated militia" to mean, ah, a "well regulated militia".

This "well regulated militia" stuff is so disgustingly ignorant. And people keep parroting it like it is some kind of "gotem".

First of all, what do you think a militia even is? It is a group of CITIZENS that form an ad-hoc fighting force.

Secondly, the amendment says "the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms".

It doesn't say "the right of the military". It doesn't say "the right of the militia". And it doesn't say "the right of peace officers."

When the Declaration of Independence was drafted, "We the People" did not mean "military".

Thirdly, the Bill of Rights explicitly grants rights to people, NOT the government and NOT the military. Yet somehow, conveniently, that is different for the 2A?

You might not like the 2A, but the meaning is clear and supported by history. This "well-regulated militia" nonsense is the climate-change-denial of the 2A.

Yeehaw, cowboy!

The supreme court spat in the face of a previous supreme court decision. That's the reality of what's going on right now.

If the supreme court cannot respect precedent or at least provide a very good reason why precedent should be overruled, then what we have is a country ruled by a set of god kings with zero accountability. When faith in the system crumbles as a result of extreme partisan decision making, what you get is balkanization.

>> If the supreme court cannot respect precedent or at least provide a very good reason why precedent should be overruled

Pages 47 through 74 of the court's decision, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf, provide their reasons for why precedent should be overruled.

SCOTUS overrules earlier decisions all the time: https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru...

https://www.madisonbrigade.com/library_bor.htm

This issue is that the States became lazy once the Feds got their standing military. All States should require citizens to muster for arms and disaster training at least twice a year.

> All States should require citizens to muster for arms and disaster training at least twice a year

Or how about, since we banded together in order to create a more perfect union, and so that I, as a citizen, can focus my time on pursuing happiness, rather than mustering every six months, we agree, through our democratically elected representatives, to just pay some money into a kitty and out of that fund a professional police force, fire department, and a state national guard. That way we get sufficient people trained in the use of arms to secure our liberty, and we don't have to act like we're a bunch of 18th century farmers any more.

No, the Federal government having a standing army is what leads to us invading other countries. This is a terrible, terrible thing. It is far harder to forward deploy individuals that are only required to defend their homeland.

Also, we've seen all the institutions you mention collapse in the face of disaster. It would be far better for the citizens to be responsible for themselves in a collation with larger bodies than be dependent upon those larger organizations. For example, in Florida it makes sense to have the community trained on preparation and local response. People need to know what to materials to gather and what is already stockpiled locally. In the face of a hurricane, the community guard, i.e. the people, would be responsible for triaging the situation until reinforcements arrive. As it stands, the people huddle together en-mass hoping that the Federal government, or even the State will come to their rescue.

I love these arguments that still want to pretend that Well Regulated means lots of regulations instead of the actual "Well trained and in good working order". And Milita which is really just any able bodied adult that can fight for defense of self or state...

But ignores Heller 2008 and McDonald 2010 which both, for a long time, have ruled that this word argument is complete nonsense. That regardless of what you want to believe, 2A is an individual right.

Heller v DC - It's an individual right to own a firearm. You can't ban handguns or anything else just because you say so.

McDonald v Chicago - You can't just not issue permits to carry. 2A includes the right to carry outside the home.

NYPRA v Bruen - You can't say you MIGHT issue a permit, you will if they meet the legal requirements established by your state.

Please stop with the intellectually void argument that 2A is how you see it because you think the first few words invalidate "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

It's weak, and more importantly, it's over. It has been nail in the coffin settled for 12 years now.

And abortion being a woman's right up to the moment of viability was "nail in the coffin settled" in 1973.

The court's analysis that 'keep and bear arms' implies an individual right to carry a handgun (or a weapon 'in common use') for self defense purposes is exactly the kind of drawing of 'legislative-style' boundaries that the court railed against in today's ruling overturning Roe and Casey.

>And abortion being a woman's right up to the moment of viability was "nail in the coffin settled" in 1973.

Can you point to a scotus case that has clarified or determined the text of the abortion amendment?

ROE V WADE

Also Casey

You don't do this, but any arguments by any anti-gunners regarding US v. Miller should be taken as "arguing in bad faith" immediately - the "why?" becomes obvious as soon as you look at the circumstances of the case and quotations in the ruling.

Basically, if the court had been told (i.e. someone had actually been present to argue, which your attorney won't do if you disappear and stuff) that an NFA weapon was of the kind used by the militia/military it should've come out differently. The court said:

"The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon."

Judicial notice is messy but given it was a criminal case, with a right to argue about everything that might be used to convict, a competent lawyer - hell, even an incompetent lawyer - should have challenged everything, and by that time "trench guns" from WW1 would have certainly, easily been identifiable as the kind of weapon suitable for militia use.

There were definite cases in TN of Muslims being refused firearms permits so it will be interesting to see how the states run with this

I don’t know anything about Muslims being denied in TN but suspect there is more to it than their religion because TN has been a SHALL ISSUE state, and is now a CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY state.

So whatever it is you are talking about does not apply like it does to CA, NY, NJ, HI, MD, and others being MAY ISSUE states.

In TN now, you need no permission to concealed carry, so unless prohibited by other laws or statutes anyone is free to do so, regardless of religion or what the local police think your rights should be.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons" means something, doesn't it? "Self defense" is nowhere in the constitution either but that didn't stop this court's radical right wing from establishing it as some kind of new right.

The provision (Second Amendment) explicitly says "well regulated", and talks about gun rights in connection with being for militias. This is how that right was read until 2008. This is all about conservatives on the Supreme Court picking and choosing what they want the Constitution to say.

tbf, that's only how it had been read from 1934 to 2008, and only by some -- it was not read that way prior to 1934, and 1934's decision in US v Miller likely wouldn't have arrived at that reading but for an extremely peculiar set of circumstances, including the fact that the defendant was dead, and the attorney didn't show up to correct false testimony from the government, which was extremely wrong in its assertion that the firearm used had no connection to military service

We know this, but arguing it to people who actively want to not understand is such a Sisyphean task...

If you read the original papers about this, it's clear that "well regulated" refers to "To adjust (a mechanism) for accurate and proper functioning." as defined in https://www.thefreedictionary.com/regulated, not "subject to arbitrary Government control".

In a plain reading, it makes sense in context for this to mean "well trained". It would be rather odd for it to both say, in a supporting clause, that it's subject to arbitrary Government control, and also in the main clause that the right "shall not be infringed".

The difference is that one inures to state governments rather than the federal government. The concern at the time was that the federal government would take guns away from people in order to neuter the States' power to defend itself. The States themselves free to do what they wanted to regulate their citizens and militias.

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

Who has the right to food? A well balanced breakfast or the people?

Give me a few supreme court appointments, and it'll be whatever I want it to be.

> Because there is an explicit provision on guns in the constitution. No mention of or allusion to abortion in the constitution. If the US wants to protect abortion through the constitution, they are free to do so. The US constitution has been amended many times. But that takes an even broader consensus.

The constitution is short and vague on many things. People read between the lines. That's just as true of abortion as it if of gun rights.

If you read the constitutions as written, there is no right for individuals to have guns. It's very clear, this is for organized militias. If you read the constitution as written most of what the federal government does today isn't allowed, it's all mostly approved by an incredibly wide reading of the commerce clause.

The Court is picking and choosing rights. They force Maine to give priority to their religion, they force California/NY/MA to give priority to their gun rights, they force everyone to abandon reproductive rights. That's a choice in how to interpret a very vague document.

No, its very clear that the right to gun ownership is an individual right: https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment2.html

You are picking and choosing an out of context citation and twisting what the 2nd amendment means.

"Many historians agree that the primary reason for passing the Second Amendment was to prevent the need for the United States to have a professional standing army. At the time it was passed, it seems it was not intended to grant a right for private individuals to keep weapons for self-defense."

So no. Your quote is not what the 2nd amendment means at all! It is a modern twist reinterpreting it.

The key question as it pertains to the law isn't the intent, but the meaning of the words (informed by context, intent, etc). It is the meaning of the words written that form the law, and the meaning of the words is clear. The operative clause clearly is not limited to the context of a standing army.

>They force Maine to give priority to their religion,

They force Maine to not discriminate against religious schools. Maine can choose to not pay private schools at all or Maine can choose to pay all private schools.

Maine is not allowed to say that the local Catholic school is bad but a non religious local school is good. That is, in effect government choosing that religion is bad.

> they force California/NY/MA to give priority to their gun rights They force CA/NY/MA to follow the guidelines the court has set around the 2nd amendment. Notably in this case, you can not require someone to prove they have a need to exercise a right.

The NY law stated that you had to prove you needed a gun in order to get a license. That is opposite of how a right works. Let's re-frame this as a 1st amendment issue.

There is a large amount of misinformation in the world, this is causing civil unrest and issues(i.e. vaccine, elections). When the constitution was written, the founders could not conceive the internet, radio and TV or even large scale printing presses. Therefor, in order for you to publish a book or post a comment on a site that has to possibility of receiving over 200 views, you need to submit an application to your city hall in order to do so.

We would call any such law absurd on it's face.

>they force everyone to abandon reproductive rights. They are doing the opposite of forcing. They are saying that each state has the ability to decide what rights their citizens have.

This is not in conflict with the earlier gun control decision as the 2nd amendment defines the gun rights at the federal level. The supreme court has not found any text that defines reproductive rights at the federal level.

There are already plenty of types of guns that you cannot buy (machine guns, grenade launchers, etc.), and that seems to be fine and legal. We're just talking about adding more to that list.

Or we could subtract from the list as well.

>Or we could subtract from the list as well.

To what end?

That's not a rhetorical question. How far do you want to go? P90s? RPGs? Stinger missiles?

What would the societal benefit be there?

>To what end?

To get some long lost rights back.

>How far do you want to go? P90s? RPGs? Stinger missiles?

Silencers/supressors are currently banned in the US (requires a tax stamp and long waiting period) but legal in other highly restrictive countries like England/UK. They're basically mufflers for guns and not like in the movies. Short barreled rifles would be nice too; we have those now but it's a "technicality," where anyone who owns them for recreational shooting can, on a whim of a bureaucrat, become a felon sentenced to decades of prison. That's not how a free society based on laws should work. Pot falls under the same category. It's still not legal at the federal level and if the DEA decides it wants to start raiding people's homes looking for pot, it certainly can, and people can be prosecuted for it.

>What would the societal benefit be there?

We're a society of individuals, not a society of Borg. Freedoms of the individual are the greatest benefit a society can have.

>To get some long lost rights back.

Which specific rights? Don't wax on the pseudo-libertarian bullshit, as you're communicating with an actual libertarian.

Please, do tell.

>Which specific rights?

Reread what I wrote, I put them in there.

>pseudo-libertarian bullshit

Dunno where this came from, maybe time to tone it down a notch. You sound a little emotional.

>You sound a little emotional.

Not emotional. I just don't suffer fools gladly. That'd be you, in case that escapes you.

Toodles!

It's sad that the extent of your dialog is just name calling. Perhaps you should look in the mirror when you do it, just to make sure you aren't projecting.

It's pretty obvious you are trying to sound intelligent by claiming to be an "actual libertarian," (is there a certification for that by chance? Social or economic?) and using a cliché, but the content of your dialog is pretty thin.

Here's the summary: you asked a question, I answered, you went into a mindless rant and starting name calling. I'll bet you even started to type "LINO" then thought better of it. I don't even know what your position is, your dialog was so thin. Maybe take a deep breath and take time to collect your thoughts. Who's the one suffering fools again?

I'll give you the last word, make it count.

>Silencers/supressors are currently banned in the US (requires a tax stamp and long waiting period) but legal in other highly restrictive countries like England/UK. They're basically mufflers for guns and not like in the movies. Short barreled rifles would be nice too; we have those now but it's a "technicality," where anyone who owns them for recreational shooting can, on a whim of a bureaucrat, become a felon sentenced to decades of prison. That's not how a free society based on laws should work. Pot falls under the same category. It's still not legal at the federal level and if the DEA decides it wants to start raiding people's homes looking for pot, it certainly can, and people can be prosecuted for it.

Those aren't rights.

Those are (whether you agree with them or not) laws.

Those are different things.

What you advocate is license (definition 3)[0], not liberty.

Those are wildly different concepts.

>We're a society of individuals, not a society of Borg. Freedoms of the individual are the greatest benefit a society can have.

That we are, but we still all need to live together. Unless, of course you want to move to the middle of the desert or atop a mountain, the rights of others must also be respected.

I'd point out that you never did answer my question: "To what end?"

I'll clarify, since a good faith reading of your response would make me think you didn't understand the question rather than ignoring it in favor of your trained-in prejudices.

What would be served (other than you being able to kill people with impunity) by removing restrictions on, say P90s or RPGs?

If your intent is to have the means (and the desire?) to kill lots of people, then I get your point.

But if you wish to live in a free, peaceful society based on the rule of law (rather than the rule of the gun), I don't see your point at all.

As a (small 'l') libertarian, I note that I can only exercise my liberties freely in a society governed by the rule of law.

Having folks around with the means and will to kill anyone they feel like in large numbers isn't a libertarian principle.

Rather, it's a delusional state fed by this idea that your whole life is only the result of your actions, when 200,000+ years of human existence shows us that liberty comes from collective action to protect those liberties.

Having a bazooka doesn't make you more free. Nor is it a "right" per se.

What gives us liberty is the actual work required to maintain a free society.

"I've got guns, so back off asshole!" isn't a libertarian idea. Rather, it's a backward, "might makes right" authoritarian idea.

If you want to be completely isolated from other humans, go ahead and do whatever you want. But if you're going to live in a society, you need to work with your fellow members of that society to maximize individual rights and liberty.

What you propose does none of those things and are more appropriate to a street gang or mafia. Or is that your desire?

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/license

> California

New York* I believe.

Well, really, any state that has a similar law on the books. But yesterday's ruling was specifically about a NY law. CA and many other states will also be impacted.

SB-8 helped create a framework for bypassing constitutional “rights” and I think it’s time that California, with its direct democracy, bans guns altogether.

The supreme court just said abortion is not constitutionally protected so SB-8 isn't bypassing constitutional rights.

You might disagree with the court, but that doesn't matter since any law similar to SB-8 related to guns would be handled by that court.

That said, I think CA/NY and others should absolutely do it. They should be super aggressive and start using the tactic created in SB-8 on all kinds of issues if for no other reason than the ridiculousness of relying on civilian enforcement of laws.

If guns are banned or SB-8 style tactics are banned we win either way.

>If guns are banned

You know they won't just magically disappear right? They will still exist en masse. Guns are mostly banned in Mexico, but the cartels use them to control the government. Careful what you wish for.

What you would probably end up with is that the SB-8 bill banning guns is ruled unconstitutional but the mechanism(SB-8) is not.

>Well, really, any state that has a similar law on the books. But yesterday's ruling was specifically about a NY law. CA and many other states will also be impacted.

I'd also note that the Sullivan Act[0] was put into law 111 years ago, and was perfectly fine until last week.

What has changed to make it unconstitutional now?

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

There was a case about it now, and Heller changed, in 2008.

These are two different decisions.

As has been pointed out by others the NY law was arbitrary. The local law man decided if you were worthy of getting a concealed permit. This would be like if the local law man decided if area women were worthy to be allowed an abortion.

The US would be better with fewer guns, but this was a badly written law.

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.

All the plans I've seen to separate California, would create more red states..

The 'Six Californias'[0] proposal would be a net-positive for Democrats.

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

Is there any movement trying to achieve this other than the "State of Jefferson"[0] which would create the reddest of all Red States?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...

Jefferson would mostly be blue. The emerald triangle is left/libertarian and a lot of boomers there have no access to Fox News and are still salty about the time Regan landed a helicopter on their ranch to shoot up their weed crop. Jefferson only sounds red because only crazy right wingers with hybrid Confederate/Jamaican flags on their trucks support the idea. The reality is they would still need to live and vote with their neighbors who drive Subarus.

I don't know how true that is. It's hard to say which counties "would be" in that state since it will never exist, and some of the counties which its supporters say would be included have already affirmatively rejected the idea, such as Lake County. But as for the supposed California counties, the Trumpy ones like Shasta went 2:1 for Trump in 2020 while the large "blue" ones like Butte went 50/50. The ludicrously empty ones like Modoc were 3:1 Trump in 2020.

Jefferson will never ever happen because there's no mechanism for it to happen, and because it would be by far the poorest state with the absolute worst economy in the nation, so I'm not even sure why we should discuss it.

Oh and by the way the Jefferson plan specifically excludes the Emerald Triangle.

I think secession is more likely, but we aren't there yet.

Secession is unconstitutional. Splitting up an existing state is consitutional.

This is always such a non-sense argument. The civil war showed that you can't secede and lose the battle. Do you think the Federal government would start a bombing campaign against the People's Republic of California? No. Would there be some really uncomfortable trade negotiations? Yes.

Texas v. White established that states cannot unilaterally leave.

Would the federal government carpet bomb a state that tried? No. But there are other means to exert force and stop secession. Besides, the U.S. Government has no reason to ever willingly let California (or Texas, or really any state) leave the union, so why would they ever sit down at the negotiating table?

Then they would be at a stalemate/armistice much like the Koreas. How would the Feds trade with PRC? They'd have to either allow it full market access as a wayward child, which would mean PRC would get all the benefits of trade without having to pay Federal tax, or they would have to freeze out PRC, which would damage the Federal economy. Given California's economic pull around the world, I could see a great number of countries in the West aligning with them for "freedom reasons".

Texas can separate into 5 states according to its state constitution.

LBJ frequently brought that up in negotiations. It was his prerogative so to speak.

I'm not necessarily opposed to splitting California into multiple states, but if we do that then we should also split Texas, Florida, and New York because they have comparable population sizes. In order to split a state, both the state's Legislature and Congress (both House and Senate) would have to vote in favor. So it's possible, but politically difficult to get all three of those bodies to agree.

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-4/#ar...

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.

Most of the examples you mention are actually protected at the federal level, through the constitution, i.e. people voted to protect those rights. No one voted on abortion at the federal level.

And abortion is not just a medical procedure, there is a third party involved: the baby. Now I find the religious view that a baby exists as soon the sperm touches the egg ridiculous. But I find equally ridiculous the dismissal of a viable baby's life implied by calling it just a "medial procedure".

The reality is that there is likely a broad consensus in the US for legalising abortion up to 12 weeks, the way it is in most of europe.

Sure, and we need a federal law clarifying this to protect us against selective court interpretations of the 14th amendment, on that much we are in agreement. But that’s not what this decision is about, it is no coincidence that there are trigger laws across the country in anticipation of this, that even attempt to ban abortions in other states (the Texas law). 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 now Supreme Court. By any measure the functioning of the government is divorced from the will of the majority and this is a symptom of that. To celebrate it as returning powers to a democratic process is a crazy distraction to me in light of that.

>The reality is that there is likely a broad consensus in the US for legalising abortion up to 12 weeks, the way it is in most of europe

Yeah, that's true, but there's also been a broad consensus in the US for federally legalizing (or even just decriminalizing) cannabis for well over a decade, and we haven't even managed to get that done due to the minority party overwhelmingly blocking even the most popular legislation if it goes even remotely against their moneyed interests.

Just because there's broad support doesn't mean that it will happen. At this point the Rs are going to have to be thoroughly crushed in congressional elections for a while, like what happened in the 30s through 60s, if any popular legislation is going to be passed.

We’re going to need a new-deal level mandate unfortunately and my understanding is that will has only been built off catastrophic events as large as two world wars and the Great Depression.

And keep in mind that was before Fox News/other right wing propaganda networks highjacked a third of the nation's critical thinking abilities with scare tactics and conspiracy nonsense.

Basically they built already exactly those extraordinary events in the minds of their followers...

As long as D's continue to push unpopular initiatives like "racial equity" (reverse discrimination), banning gas cars, and increasing taxes to pay for social programs, they're never going to get a mandate. The reality is, whether you like it or not, even California rejected ultra left-wing "racial equity" initiatives at the ballot (Prop 16), people like their big gas cars that pollute the environment (or they can't afford a $50k EV/$30k hybrid and think D's are out of touch), and there is a widespread notion that the government is notoriously inefficient and incompetent. Agencies like the DMV and SSA don't exactly work to dispel that notion either.

Where's the common sense stuff? Where's the stuff most people would vote for?

I had a great time the last time I went to the DMV, but I agree that is usually not the case.

Technically Schedule 1 drugs should be given the same treatment as R v. W just got.

There is no federally enumerated power to ban substances. That should be a state issue according the the 10th ammendment.

Both abortion and schedule I drug prohibition/anti-prohibition require Constitutional ammendments legally.

The ruling isn't actually rooted in state versus federal powers, and in fact opens the door for a federal ban on abortion.

What is the ruling rooted in? This is what I see:

""" hold thatRoe andCasey must be overruled. The Con-stitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such rightis implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, in-cluding the one on which the defenders ofRoe andCaseynow chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ... is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue ofabortion to the people’s elected representatives. “The per-missibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are tobe resolved like most important questions in our democ-racy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and thenvoting. """ https://www.scribd.com/document/579588941/19-1392-6j37

That spells it out pretty well.

That it's rooted in the court's idea that there is no inherent constitutional protection against abortion bans, and therefore lower tiers of law (including federal US code) instituting arbitrary bans. Currently it looks like a states' rights issue because the bans are only in state code at the moment. The door is left open for federal code to fully ban abortion however, and Republican leaders have been messaging that this is their next step. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/mitch-mcconnell-ackn...

> That it's rooted in the court's idea that there is no inherent constitutional protection against abortion bans,

I don’t think they went so far as to definitely say there is no federal right to an abortion under any circumstances. I think they’ve left open the possibility that the due process right to life entails a right to an abortion when necessary to save the life of the mother (and possibly even when necessary to prevent severe long-term harm to her health-such as if continuing with the pregnancy was highly likely to cause her to go blind, for example). I could certainly see a future ruling (even by the current SCOTUS majority) upholding a federal right to an abortion in those very restrictive circumstances. All it might (sadly) take, is for America to have its own Savita Halappanavar

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar

Agreed. Substantive due process was left intact.

Additionally, regarding left or right federal legislation: this would very likely be struck down by the same court under the reasoning that the constitution does not grant the federal government the power to regulate abortion.

Any federal legislation would have to come in the form of an ammendment.

> Additionally, regarding left or right federal legislation: this would very likely be struck down by the same court under the reasoning that the constitution does not grant the federal government the power to regulate abortion.

I think, if Congress enacted a narrow federal right to an abortion – such as the right to an abortion to save the life of the mother – the current SCOTUS majority would be likely to uphold it - the right to life (including that of the mother) is arguably "deeply rooted in the nation's history" – and "life" is even explicitly mentioned in the text – and so such Congressional legislation would arguably be a legitimate exercise of the Section 5 power to enforce Section 1. Plausibly, they might even uphold a statutory federal right to an abortion to save the mother's health, since the right to health has an obvious connection to the right to life.

Seems like drugs might "reasonably" fall under the commerce clause [0] and thus federal regulation, though it is contemptible how much it is abused.

[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause

They do, but that only regulates interstate commerce. Intrastate commerce is unimpacted.

I recently learned that being a kidney donor has lower fatality rates than birthing. With that in mind I absolutely can’t see any reason to override someone’s bodily autonomy on any reason whatsoever. The not hyperbolic analog would be to force someone to be a kidney donor in order to save a live (one who actually lived on the Earth for decades) - on which I’m fairly sure noone sane would agree.

Would you be willing to have an unwanted fetus transplanted into your body to carry it to term, and have all associated parental ties transferred to you

Was that comment meant for me?

If you read around, you'll see that tribalism mode has fully engaged in many here. People aren't reading/thinking, all over in this comment section. Or, as the top level comment does, criticize those that are thinking about/being critical about certain aspects.

It was, though I initially read your comment as suggesting that since kidney transplants were lower risk, that pregnancies should always be carried; missing the significant cost of carrying it out.

On a closer reread I can’t tel what your actual point was. Though it’s not what I thought.

>On a closer reread I can’t tel what your actual point was.

The point was that since carrying a pregnancy to term has a higher risk profile than having an organ removed, a pregnancy should be voluntary in the same way we wouldn't coerce someone into giving up their kidney for someone else.

A bit of a weak argument. The biggest dangerous part of removing a kidney isn’t the act of removal, it’s the long term lack of having it.

That being said, I think it is perhaps noteworthy to say if women lose the bodily autonomy for carrying children, it is outrageous that dead people should retain the bodily autonomy to not be organ donors.

>The biggest dangerous part of removing a kidney isn’t the act of removal, it’s the long term lack of having it.

So? You wouldn't mandate mandatory kidney removals if we could mitigate the long term risk of not having one because that risk isn't the reason we don't unilaterally harvest organs from people against their will.

Regardless of where the risk is clustered (at the event or in the long tail following it), it is the harm to an individual via a non-consensually driven medical event.

I think mandatory blood donations might be closer to the argument you’re trying to make here

Tumorectomy is not just a medical procedure, there is a third party involved: the cancer. Now I find the religious view that a cancer exists as soon the cell starts replicating uncontrollably ridiculous. But I find equally ridiculous the dismissal of the cancer's life implied by calling it just a "medical procedure".

I think it's fine. The cancer is not able to survive in it's own and has a significant negative impact on the person carrying it. To make medical removal illegal even in cases where continuing to carry the cancer threatens the life of the one carrying it displays reckless disregard for their safety.

You would have a point if cancer had a heart and a brain and was observed to develop into a sentient being after 9 months. Or if cancer was the result of a deliberate and voluntary action that the vast crushing majority of people older than 15 years understand its inevitable consequences.

Alas, none of that is true, and your remark can only win you a comfortable position in the mental gymnastics Olympics. And a 1st place in the moral bankruptcy competition, for comparing infants to a disease.

So, I should be forced to give blood if someone’s life is at risk and they need my blood (or, kidney)? There is a 3rd party to consider here and they are already living and breathing. So, blood or organ donations should be made mandatory. And if the argument is that the woman is responsible for getting pregnant then apply the above logic to a person you accidentally injured in a car accident. Now, anyone who causes a car accident should be forced to give blood (or any other part of their body) to ensure the victim is saved.

>anyone who causes a car accident should be forced to give blood (or any other part of their body) to ensure the victim is saved.

Yes.

>So, I should be forced to give blood if someone’s life is at risk and they need my blood (or, kidney)?

If that someone being in risk was the inevitable biological result of your actions, then yes. You should be forced to save him/her. Because you put him/her there.

So if you gave someone Covid and their lungs failed, they have a right to one of your lungs?

Should men be required to donate organs to women they got pregnant, if indicated?

This is obviously very silly and not thought out. Banning abortion is just as silly.

>So if you gave someone Covid and their lungs failed, they have a right to one of your lungs

Yes, if you can

1- Prove that I infected them

And,

2- Prove that no other solution would save the infected person, and organ donation would

>Should men be required to donate organs to women they got pregnant

Not if the impregnation was consensual. The person infected with Covid or hit by a car didn't consent to those actions, but a pregnant woman consented to impregnation unless she's raped, therefore she should accept responsibility for the associated risks. Rape is one of the very few reasons where abortion should be allowed. But it's something like 0.1% or so of abortion reasons, the vast majority of abortions are morally indefensible.

>deliberate and voluntary

You know people can be raped right?

Just being the devils advocate: Contraceptives do also work while being raped...

Does an 11 year old have access to contraceptives from her father that’s raping her?

Legitimate rape rarely leads to pregnancy [1].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/19/republican-tod...

> Most of the examples you mention are actually protected at the federal level, through the constitution

until just now, the courts have repeatedly confirmed for several decades that abortion was protected at a federal level through the constitution.

> Most of the examples you mention are actually protected at the federal level

In many cases, like abortion until today, under the Supreme Court’s substantive due process jurisprudence, and in some cases building at least in part on Roe which was just overturned.

> 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.

There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for something that's legal in state 2?

> 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.

Who decides when the will of a state's majority is "democracy at work" and when it's "persecution of the minority violating equal protection"?

Particularly interstate matters are handled by federal institutions set up by Congress. Which is why Texas police cannot prosecute you for crime done in California, but they can report you to the FBI.

As such, Texas is overstepping its jurisdiction. And sidestepping the law by making it civil cases... Which they can adjudicate.

So, states can get into their mess by staying civil cases, when do we see an escalation?

Federal institutions such as the Supreme Court?

Wrong. You can be prosecuted for a drug conspiracy hatched in California where the drugs are shipped to Texas. Federally, in Texas, California or all three "separate" sovereigns.

> There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for something that's legal in state 2?

Yes, it’s insane. But I don’t have faith in our courts to not split this hair and allow it for abortion specifically because they are so clearly partisan on social issues here.

Even without the insanity of the Texas law though, it’s still a huge issue for poor women in red states.

> Who decides when the will of a state's majority is "democracy at work" and when it's "persecution of the minority violating equal protection"?

The federal government passes laws, or a constitutional convention passes amendments, and federal courts interpret them. The 14th amendment was interpreted to apply this protection before but now it is not.

> There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for something that's legal in state 2?

I'd suggest reading about the run up to the civil war. "State's rights" in that context was the slave states demanding that the free states capture and return escaped slaves outside of the slave states. Put simply, they wanted to enforce their fugitive slave laws on states that were completely uninterested in enforcing those laws.

The idea that "state's rights" in US political discourse reflects some principled division, rather than just being another lever people in power used to fight other people in power, is fiction. This has and remains fundamentally about a minority asserting their views over the majority, including outside the borders of their state.

> There is no way this can be upheld, right?

Interstate travel is specifically protected federally and incorporated against the states. Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion specifically says this is an easy question to answer and it would be presumably unconstitutional to prevent people from having abortions in other states. Suggesting otherwise at this point is fear-mongering in very bad faith.

> who decides

More like, what laws decide. If the majority is infringing on protections from federal or state constitutions or federal or state legislation, the majority doesn’t win. Otherwise they do. Majorities can affect the laws given enough time and sustained effort.

>Interstate travel is specifically protected federally and incorporated against the states. Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion specifically says this is an easy question to answer and it would be presumably unconstitutional to prevent people from having abortions in other states. Suggesting otherwise at this point is fear-mongering in very bad faith.

Sure, but if they throw someone seeking an abortion in jail or tie them up in the court system, it may be irrelevant whether is is legal because that person still can't travel. That of course assumes they have the money and resources to travel, and that the health care systems in those neighboring states is accessible.

I don't have the stats in front of me, but we already know there is going to be a flood of people from Idaho into WA seeking services and we have very few clinics east of the Cascades as it is.

Presumably the Mann Act would be used as a template

>There is no way this can be upheld, right?

I think you and cm2187 above are making similar arguments, but to my thinking it doesn't really matter: with the time and money it takes to rectify the situation, unconstitutional laws do serious damage regardless. I'm not a lawyer, but oh what I would give for legal review on the constitutionality of laws as a precursor to implementation rather than post-mortem.

As another person suggests below - these states don't care anyway, they are following the same game plan as 1859.

Police departments are also very happy to arrest people over unconstitutional laws. The charges may not stick, but a solid tackle, some tight cuffs, and a rough ride can result in life-altering injuries. They also get the chance to keep the victim in jail for a bit, stick on more charges, and attempt to win convictions via plea bargain.

>There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for something that's legal in state 2?

I'm pretty sure it will be seen as a violation of the constitution's interstate commerce clause, which gives that authority exclusively to the federal government. However, it is possible that a pro-life administration would institute an order that does make it illegal to cross state lines for an abortion, similar to how sex tourism is illegal.

Such a law actually being enforced, then the enforcement upheld, is (quite simply) "the end" for sane rule of law.

States have no jurisdiction outside their borders. Just like, say, Wisconsin having a law on the books that makes it illegal to leave the state (while "intending" to continue living in the state) to get married elsewhere, where the marriage wouldn't be legal in Wisconsin (https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/statutes/765.04) is ridiculous, likewise claiming that you get to apply your law somewhere else that you have no legal jurisdiction is insane.

...not that that stops the US government from doing the same thing if a US citizen travels to another country with a lower age of consent to bang some 16-year-old. It's this magic "intent" which we don't know how they can possibly know - were you over 21 and did you go to France to fuck that 15-year-old you've been playing video games with, or did you just go to France and happen to fall for that 15-year-old that you've been playing video games with hard after they showed you the tourist sights you've always wanted to see, ...then fuck them?

Does it get prosecuted often? No. Is it another bullshit law, waiting to conveniently be used to make you guilty when the powers-that-be need a reason to make you guilty? Yes. Oh-so-yes.

> How on earth can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for something that's legal in state 2?

Just like how the US federal government can go after non-US citizens for something that is legal in their non-US country? Perhaps?

Only the federal goverment can regulate interstate commerce so it is doubtful.

It's erroneous to use slavery and segregation as a template for any social issue you can frame as involving a "minority." It's especially ridiculous in the context of women, who are a majority.

Slavery and segregation were a sui generis issue because Black people are not only a minority, they are a discrete and insular minority. That is not true of gender and sexual orientation. Women and gay people are born into all families at predictable percentages. That drives social change as to those groups in a way that does not apply to a racial minority group.

The U.S. has a unique history with respect to slavery and segregation, but it does not with respect to women's rights or gay rights. Nearly every other developed country has left those issues to the democratic process. The European Court of Human Rights came to the exact opposite conclusion as Obergefell a year after that case, finding that the EU Convention on Human Right's marriage article did not apply to same-sex couples. Switzerland did not allow same-sex marriage nationwide until this year, and Italy still does not. Yet the EU continues to stand.

> Yet the EU continues to stand.

Your thesis seems to be "countries and states can oppress people and society won't totally collapse", which seems like a very weak position to take. I'd hope you don't think "not collapsing" should be our goal. We want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people, right? Not life, liberty, and happiness for some, and well, at least the government remains standing, for the rest.

Like, in some sense, an oppressive government standing is worse than it failing, right?

Taking away a society’s right to decide the scope of social institutions like marriage, or questions of when life begins, and giving unelected judges power over those questions is a serious infringement on democratic self determination.

In the long run, it jeopardizes the possibility of ordered progress because people perceive it as a serious intrusion into society and culture by elites—which judges are—and will resist and eventually revolt. That’s exactly what you see happening in the US right now.

Seems like the root cause of this is that boundary lines of states are drawn wrong, and now encompass a diverse group of people who fundamentally can't agree on what their "society" is or what it should look like.

Time to abolish the states, perhaps, and move to a loose confederation of city-states + regional rump-states that encompass former rural areas, bound together by a Common Economic Protocol. Let the blue areas in Austin, downtown Houston, Miami, Pittsburgh & Philadelphia, etc. be blue, and the red areas surrounding them be red. Conversely, let the red areas in Jefferson (northern California + southern Oregon), eastern Washington, upstate NY, etc. be red, and the dominant metro areas in those states be blue.

Red/blue divides exist within states, but there's a lot more common ground. For example, half of Black people in Georgia oppose abortion. Folks in Atlanta might vote Democrat, but they don't see deeply religious people as aliens the way folks in San Francisco do. In another example, folks in San Francisco would have called Larry Hogan a fascist for sending in the Maryland national guard in response to the Freddie Gray riots. But his approval rating in majority Democrat Baltimore shot up to 70%. The bigger problem is having New York City/San Francisco in the same union with rural Georgia and Alabama. It's not workable.

I suppose you will be cheerleading the secession of Dhaka from Bangladesh too.

> In the long run, it jeopardizes the possibility of ordered progress because people perceive it as a serious intrusion into society and culture by elites—which judges are—and will resist and eventually revolt.

It's reasonable to say that the purpose of the judiciary is to protect rights, even when doing so is unpopular. If the judiciary was consistent in how it did that (for example: providing equal deference to the rights created by Roe and Heller) we might see less revolt. The issue is not "elite intrusion" but inconsistency.

Society's "right to decide" does not impugn my right to life and liberty. And the court is deeply inconsistent about whose rights, lives, and liberties it protects.

> Taking away a society’s right to decide the scope of social institutions like marriage

What gives El Paso residents the right to decide what the scope of marriage is in Austin? Indeed, what gives the government the right to regulate the "scope of marriage" at all?

> That’s exactly what you see happening in the US right now.

No, with the January 6 riots? we see a minority no longer interested in the democratic process now that they don’t feel they are winning anymore.

How can you look at this Supreme Court, where multiple appointments were the result of heavy lobbying by large wealthy conservative faith groups to a president who lost the popular vote, and parliamentary tricks to keep the seat open, and see it representing a return to majority rule from rule by elites.

At a guess because it results in a country that is closer to the one desired.

Never mind the fact that not a single abortion will be stopped on account of this. What will change is that there won't be any safe abortions, essentially this will cause the same number of fetuses to be aborted, it will also result in the death or in complications with a fairly large percentage of the mothers. It may (will?) even result in suicides.

This is in my opinion the real tragedy, the 'pro life' (I use their moniker but I disagree with it) groups are essentially 'anti mom'.

> No, with the January 6 riots? we see a minority no longer interested in the democratic process now that they don’t feel they are winning anymore.

That minority is now in jail, and according to the laws in the US, those people have also lost their ability to vote. The people who active participated in the riot is no longer even an minority vote, but outside the voting process altogether.

I wish, but while some people are in jail, that minority very likely still votes from seats in congress! https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/exclusiv...

> The European Court of Human Rights came to the exact opposite conclusion as Obergefell a year after that case, finding that the EU Convention on Human Right's marriage article did not apply to same-sex couples.

The European Court of Human Rights, and the Council of Europe under which it operates, are actually not EU institutions.

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.

That's the whole point of the compromise.

What needs to be fixed is the cap on the House. Remove that and the larger states get more power in the House. For example the Democrats could get a majority to push legislation to protect abortion at the national level.

People need to fix the issues in the system rather than relying on the courts to legislate for Congress.

Don't misrepresent the "point of the compromise". The Senate exists because of slavery and for no other reason. The constitution would not have been ratified by the slave states without the disproportionate representation of the Senate, because even in the 18th century the overwhelming majority of voting people would have voted to abolish slavery. Jefferson and the other slavers knew this. The Senate is not some kind of beautiful compromise between the city and the country. It is a capitulation to Jefferson, who was really, really super into slavery.

This is patently false. Small, slave free States existed during the authorship of the Constitution. They were afraid of being steamrolled by their larger northern neighbors just as much as the antebellum South. It was the carrot to bring such states into the new Constitutional union.

Did the slave States like this compromise, yes. Is that the only reason for it? No.

"To the framers themselves, Madison explained that the Senate would be a "necessary fence" against the "fickleness and passion" that tended to influence the attitudes of the general public and members of the House of Representatives." - https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_C...

The small states had obvious reasons to support the great compromise, but that's not the question. The question is why did Virginia agree to it, when they were more populous than half the other states combined, and therefore would have naturally wanted proportional representation, as indeed was the original Madison plan. And the reason is: slavery. It's completely central to the entire constitution, from the senate to the 3/5th "compromise" to the electoral college.

We are post Baker vs Carr and 17th amendment now, can you really still give that argument?

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.

You mean that contraception which is in line for the next court decision?

Exactly. They won't stop there either.

It isn't an inference or extrapolation either. From today's decision, citations my own:

> For that reason, in future fases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold[1], Lawrence[2], and Obergefell[3].

The decision advocates for re-ruling on each of these cases. If these should be decided against their current status, expect states to outlaw contraception, gay relations, and same-sex marriage.

1. Ruled that contraception bans are unconstitutional https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/griswold_v_connecticut_%2819...

2. Ruled that sodomy bans are unconstitutional https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/lawrence_v._texas

3. Ruled that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556

Isn’t this from Thomas’s concurrence?

In other words, Thomas has always been crazy about this sort of thing but no one else on the court agrees.

Hence why nobody else signed on to this concurrence.

That doesn't really matter though, what matters is how they will vote and if they voted like they did today then all bets are off.

Yeah, right. Like those liars didn’t say in their confirmation hearing that Roe vs Wade was an established precedent and wouldn’t be touched. Either you are so gullible that you still believe them against all the evidence or you are in bad faith. Tertium non datur.

The other five Republican-aligned justices have amply demonstrated that they’re lying liars when it comes to their publicly-stated vs. actual intentions.

Thomas’ dicta have a bad habit of becoming the right wing party line on the Court in 2.0 years or so

For 2.0 read 20

That's not as far fetched as you would hope. Of course by the time we see that come to pass it'll be too late.

Abstinence is a form of contraception. This is gonna get weird.

You didn’t watch the handmaid’s tale? The commanders were pretty much forced to rape their handmaid to procreate. This is what they want, a continuous influx of cheap poor laborers that are pretty much slaves.

> 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.

The thing that makes these discussions so frustrating is that people often seem to be completely deer-in-the-headlights ignorant of the other side's arguments.

The argument of pro-life people is that there are two human beings involved in the abortion: the mother, and the child. Making abortion legal gives the mother the right over her body by removing the right of the child to not have her life taken away. In the eyes of pro-life people, "taking away some other person's right" is exactly what "the left" are doing.

Now you might not agree that there is a child in this case; you might think that children begin existing and having rights once they pass through the birth canal and not before. Or you might think that even if there is a child that has rights, the mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps the child's right to life. But you can't say "I don't understand where they're coming from; 'the left' isn't trying to take away some other person's right" without being profoundly ignorant of the basic views of the people you're arguing against.

That's a really good point but unfortunately its just a surface level argument. Same states that demonize abortions also cut health services for children and mothers. All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave.

So they only kinda sorta care about the child in the womb but not about the mother or the child when they are born.

If folks are going to ban abortions they should at least expand child and mother care, in my opinion.

On the other hand, pre-Roe, the maximum tax rate was 70%, with 25 different tax brackets. I'm guessing that folks that support today's decision are probably okay with the tax increases and big government that will follow.

Put another way, the case several days ago that allows child school credit to be used for Catholic school ALSO allows the same credit to be used for the Church of Satan School of the Gifted. The unintended consequences of all the rulings during the past week are going to be an interesting things to observe.

Exactly, so much bullshit when the only goals are really to make sure poor people stay poor and that women don't work...

I believe the “real” reason is to disenfranchise voters and seal their majority.

> Same states that demonize abortions also cut health services for children and mothers. All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave.

Suppose for the sake of argument that you're a person who thinks health services for children and paid family leave are important; but you also think that abortion is the moral equivalent of murder. You can vote for:

* Team Blue, who will increase children's health services and advocate for paid family leave, but slaughter millions of innocent children [Remember, I'm not claiming this is true, I'm trying to put you in the mind of a hypothetical person who believes this way]

* Team Red, who will decrease children's health services and family leave, but restrict the slaughter of innocent children.

I mean, if that's what you actually believe, then it really has to be Team Red, doesn't it?

I don't pretend to know what politicians think; it seems pretty likely that a lot of them are cynically using abortion as a ploy to get people to vote for policies that favor their rich donors. But I can tell you that an awful lot of people who actually vote are genuine in their opposition to it. If you want people to vote differently, you have to understand where the voters are coming from, not where their politicians are coming from.

That’s a really good point and thanks for sharing. Definitely food for thought with regards to this sensitive topic.

Personally, I believe anti-abortion is a double edged sword that I don’t know how to traverse. I respect everyone’s right to choose but I also understand how politicizing the issue is favorable for politicians as they can yank at the heart strings and at the same time effect specific class of citizens more than others. And that last part bothers me.

It’s not so much the belief but the use of that as a belief to disenfranchise communities who are most vulnerable. I don’t know how to reconcile that fact, internally.

Team Blue has fewer abortions than Team Red, thanks to contraception. Team Red just has their abortions as safe for rich people while poor people use coat hangers.

Team Red is only opposed to abortions for other people.

"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion": https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...

> Team Blue has fewer abortions than Team Red, thanks to contraception.

...and states run by Team Blue tend to have fewer abortions, in part because of easier availability of contraception, but also in part because people are less desperate and feel more able to cope with unplanned pregnancies. (And the country as a whole has fewer abortions after seasons where Team Blue is in control than Team Red.) Many pro-life people who saw what a danger Trump was made exactly this case to their peers, both in 2016 and 2020.

Additionally, most Team Red people I talk to actually do believe in a social safety net; they just want to make sure it's not wasted on "lazy people". They don't have an accurate picture of exactly what it is that Team Blue and Team Red are both doing with the social safety net. (They don't even tend to have an accurate picture of what Team Blue and Team Red are doing in terms of abortion.)

Rather than slagging these people as regressive hateful backwards bigoted hypocrites, it's better to engage with them: Take their preferences into account, make sure they're informed of the actual situation on the ground. (Again, I'm talking about the individual voters, not politicians, who may well be hateful backwards bigoted hypocrites.)

I think the issue with your particular stance is: you are right, with regard to Red politicians, but not when it comes to the ever-day-joe. The suburb soccer mom doesn't believe abortions should be only for the rich, and supports maternal and child care.

However, the Red politicians are tugging at those heart strings for the votes but have interest of expanding child or maternal care.

The problem aren't the people, it's the POS politicians, in my opinion. Since 2008 or so, politicians have been driving a divide between the voters of the different teams, getting re-elected by showcasing their wedge, and constantly screwing the people on both teams. I believe empathy for voters is the path forward.

I still think about Ted Cruz waving good bye at the dude who was pissed that kids got killed and he's dining at a restaurant. That's the issue. That dude is probably Team Red, probably doesn't agree with me, but fuck me if I don't support him going after a POS politician for not doing their job.

Empathy for voters; Re-examination of our politicians. It's not Team Red or Team Blue. It's the politicians of both sides that failed everyone.

> All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave. So they only kinda sorta care about the child in the womb but not about the mother or the child when they are born.

Or they’re more capitalist in their thinking and expect people to take care of themselves as opposed to leaving it up to the government.

Who is right and who is wrong comes down to opinion. But I don’t believe it’s as simple as “the other side doesn’t care as much as we do”

That's a fair counter-point. If we had to create a model to test my hypothesis, what do you believe is the best way to go about it?

My proposal is as follows: Take the GDP, per capita, per state and compare expansion/contraction of before Roe and after Roe. We can measure % change in the 10 years pre Roe to 10 years post Roe. The hypothesis is that states never cared about children and as such, post Roe, GDP expansion in states that had abortion abolished experienced a much higher GDP, per capita growth than before.

Information can be sourced from St. Luis FED.

If you have another idea, please let me know. I'm personally curious about this and would like to explore so feel free to pick apart my post as it will just render a more thought out experiment.

Thanks.

edit: If someone is a data scientist that can comment on what is the correct methodology to take or what pitfalls to consider, I would highly appreciate it.

Another part of the pro-life/conservative mindset is that positive rights (freedom to) and negative rights (freedom from) tend to be treated very differently, leading to no inherent contradiction between believing in the unborn child’s right to not be killed, and believing that same child has no right to free care.

I don’t inherently believe that to be true for most Red voters. I do believe that is the inherit belief of most Red politicians and oligarchs.

> Now you might not agree that there is a child in this case; you might think that children begin existing and having rights once they pass through the birth canal and not before. Or you might think that even if there is a child that has rights, the mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps the child's right to life. But you can't say "I don't understand where they're coming from; 'the left' isn't trying to take away some other person's right" without being profoundly ignorant of the basic views of the people you're arguing against.

I think people want to make it about that, and that's fine. But should we force people to donate their livers, kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise? Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's and you have to take care of them until either one of you die.

Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some ways), they may not even live through the event, and then take care of it for the rest of each others lives.

Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in such a way she could not have a child without losing the ability to walk for the rest of her life. She couldn't get her 'tubes tied' because she was too young. Think about that for a minute and the position she was in and now think about a position she might be in if she were in her early twenties today. She wouldn't be able to have a normal life and even back then, she never wanted to be unable to run with her child. IIRC, she's "tied" her tubes and her and her husband have adopted a child. But damn, it isn't always so black and white.

> I think people want to make it about that, and that's fine.

Well, from a moral perspective, it is about that. I'm not sure which of those two positions you take (not a person / mother's rights supersede children's rights), but if you're going to be honest you've got to figure out which it is and why.

And for the vast majority of people who vote pro-life (at least, all the ones that I know), that's what it's about too. And I note that you haven't really challenged the core logic I've put forward there, but rather on some of the sticky implications.

> Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's and you have to take care of them until either one of you die. ...The woman is forced to... take care of it for the rest of each others lives.

And, here's again where there's a basic ignorance that a five-minute conversation with someone who's pro-life would clear up. Nobody who's pro-life would say that women should be forced to raise the children; they can be put up for adoption.

> But should we force people to donate their livers, kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise?

There's a difference between causing someone to die by action, and allowing someone to die by inaction. Pushing someone into a raging river is different than failing to dive in to rescue them.

> Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some ways), they may not even live through the event...

This is your strongest point. I mean, yeah, birth is crazy. And it would totally suck to go through it if it wasn't something you'd chosen to do. But it's not like the child was able to choose this either. It's a terrible situation for both people.

> Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in such a way she could not have a child without losing the ability to walk for the rest of her life.

So first of all, this sort of situation is quite uncommon; and while there are zealots who would take a hard line, lots of people would be willing to compromise in this sort of a case. Secondly, there are lots of people worldwide who are OK with abortion in the first trimester, but not the second and third. I think there are reasonable justifications for this.

But thinking about it from a moral perspective, let's try this scenario.

You're taking a tour of some tall factory with a bunch of people you don't know. While you're on a catwalk 4 stories up, something catastrophic happens, and at the end of it you're holding for dear life to a railing, and a stranger is dangling over the factory floor, holding for dear life to your legs.

You're not afraid of falling yourself; your arms are wrapped firmly around the railing, which you're pretty sure isn't going anywhere. But you have some sort of a degenerative joint disorder in your hips. You can already feel the tendons stretching from the stranger dangling below you; you're pretty sure that by the time help arrives to pull him up that enough damage will be done that you'll never walk again. You're also pretty sure that if you kick him hard enough right now, he'll let go and fall to his death, leaving your legs intact.

Is it moral for you to kill the stranger to save your legs? Should it be legal to kill the stranger to save your legs?

I'm going to ignore most of your response for now, I'll come back to it.

> Is it moral for you to kill the stranger to save your legs?

Is it moral? I think you might be mixing morality with ethics. Whether it is moral or not is highly dependent upon my culture and upbringing, whether it is ethical or not ... see the speeding trolley problem, because it is remarkably similar, where instead of "saving a bunch of people" I'm saving my future.

> Should it be legal to kill the stranger to save your legs?

How would a police officer know the difference between slipping and me kicking? I'd have to admit that it ever happened. Even if there are witnesses, it would be unreliable accounts. This gets into how Roe vs. Wade came about in the first place. I have some right to some privacy: the ability to keep my mouth shut, for one. You can say it is illegal all you want, but you also have to enforce it. Are police officers going to come give my wife random pregnancy tests to see if she stops being pregnant? How will they know the difference between a miscarriage and an abortion?

> I mean, yeah, birth is crazy. And it would totally suck to go through it if it wasn't something you'd chosen to do.

I venture you don't have at least one child? There is no way to explain having a child, and raising a child to someone who hasn't done so. There is life before ... and then there is life after. It is hard. I've been to boot camp, I've been to war, I've saved lives and ended them. And you know what ... having a child was initially, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It is quite sudden, even though you have some 7-8 months to prepare. I wouldn't wish those first few months on my worst enemy. If I were a single mom/dad, it would have devastated my career, especially because as a father, I had TWO DAYS of vacation after the birth. Hell, it did negatively affect my performance for years.

It was worth every second because I loved my child, especially because my first one died during childbirth. But if I resented my child, I can't imagine the psychological torture that child would have to live through.

> Nobody who's pro-life would say that women should be forced to raise the children; they can be put up for adoption.

And who the fuck is going to adopt them? The foster care system is already overrun and under-funded. So, good luck with that...

> I venture you don't have at least one child? ...And who... is going to adopt them?

On the contrary, I do have a child, which I adopted. I know a little bit about the birth mother's situation; I'm pretty sure a lot of people would have recommended to her to have had an abortion. I'm very thankful that she didn't -- she chose to take a risk, and there's a beautiful precious life as a result.

I don't know the situation in the US at the moment, but I can tell you that in my country, there is absolutely no problem finding adoptive parents for healthy newborns. Obviously if there's significant risk of damage due to alcohol or drugs, or significant health issues or genetic abnormalities, it's more difficult; but the last time I looked into it, those cases represented a very small fraction of the total number of abortions done in the US.

Regarding raising children: apparently all 50 states in the US have "Safe-haven" laws [1], which allow parents to drop off infants at designated locations. There is absolutely no reason for anyone in the US to feel trapped into raising children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law

None of that change the fact that pregnancy itself can be terrifying and even dangerous, of course.

> The foster care system is already overrun and under-funded.

Let's expand this argument a bit: "The foster care system is overrun and under-funded; we can help reduce pressure on the system by killing children who might go into it." I mean, if you're OK with killing children to reduce pressure on the foster care system, wouldn't it make more sense to kill the older children? Say, those who haven't been adopted by the age of 5?

If you're shocked / disgusted / horrified at the idea of killing innocent 5-year-olds, then you know how genuine pro-life people feel about the argument that we should use abortions to reduce pressure on the care system. You should 1) reflect on what moral justification you have for not feeling the same way; 2) have more respect for people who do feel that way.

Honestly, if the Supreme Court had ruled unborn children as having rights beyond this I could take you seriously, but they literally have nothing beyond the right to a womb.

Do they count in the census? Can I say they're a dependent?

Heck, why don't we make periods and ejaculation illegal. After all, those eggs and sperm are viable! Men shouldn't be allowed to pull out, wear condoms, or masturbate. Won't someone think of the children?! Oh, I almost forgot to ban sodomy too! Good heavens!

And what about contraception? That's coming next. What is your argument then?

The thing is, we have evidence based ways to reduce the need for unnecessary abortions, but the "right" isn't concerned about that. We know, for a fact, that access to contraception and sex education dramatically reduce abortion levels.

We know for a fact that making it illegal does not, it merely causes dangerous abortions to increase.

How do you square that? The "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd somehow can't grasp, or refuse to grasp, the consequences of their actions.

I'm also interested in how you feel about the rights of rape victims. Perhaps you'd like to carry the baby for them?

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.

And don't forget, that door swings both left and right.

The Dems held a gerrymandering advantage for one year of the past 50 gaining one 'underserved seat' advantage over republicans. This is no longer the case...

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...

> 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.

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.

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.

This is a really poor comparison and shows a major lack of understanding of process. For better or worse, gun rights are specifically guaranteed by the constitution, abortion rights are not.

What? Read the 9th amendment!

> 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_...

> 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?

> 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?

The latter, but if I'm wrong please don't link to it.

You have problems eating thinking of "`races` mixing" ? What about this: the entire humanity is, that is all specimen, including yourself, is the outcome of in and outbreeding between countless ethnies, groups of different skin colors, cultures and even religion/folklore followers.

If you have a digesting problem with this, we may just call it nature but your comment is what could put many not at ease. That being said, I would at least guess we agree on the ruling that it gets us closer to nature and some commonly accepted ethic with regards to human life and procreation.

I think he meant particularly Ginny and Clarence Thomas, not people of different races in general.

I'll compromise. Justices can miscegenate or plot to overthrow an election, but not both.

I support your position, but I'm pretty sure he was cracking a tasteless joke at the thought of the specific people of Clarence and Ginni getting it on rather than all people of mixed races.

It's a reddit-level comment that doesn't add anything to the discussion.

> It's a reddit-level comment that doesn't add anything to the discussion.

That still makes it a rhetorical step up from Thomas's concurrence.

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.

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

> 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.

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

> 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...

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.

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

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.

I think we just have different definitions of "inventing rights" because I pretty much agree with everything else you said.

> 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.

It turns out that the justices spoke very carefully and nothing they said precluded them from making a decision like this. Dishonest, yes. Perjury, no.

It’s not like perjury is enforceable at that level anymore anyways. I’m not a lawyer but I am not so sure he was even that careful in a legal sense. I think he was mostly saying things to not give a sound byte to opponents who would block his nomination like Bork. The conservatives who backed his nomination know the game and what he was put on the court to rule on, they don’t need to be told again. Enough to wink at it.

There isn’t any actual legal teeth there anymore as far as I can tell. Countless examples of presidents, justices, etc walking past perjury charges.

Yeah, I certainly wasn't trying to say that they committed a crime or anything; I'm just saying I'm skeptical of the claim that there's no intent to overturn those other cases mentioned just because most of the justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade didn't explicitly state it at this time.

> 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.

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

> She was very much of the opinion that legislatively it should have been codified as a right.

These positions are not in conflict, and seem to be supported with quotes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/06/ruth-bader...

Exactly correct, and today's ruling still doesn't prevent Congress from acting. They had 50 years to codify Roe into law, but they didn't. And now they'll come out and try to deflect the blame onto the Supreme Court, which is beyond absurd but will work to convince a whole lot of people.

I have my own personal feelings on abortion, but as far as laws on it go I honestly don't care one way or another. So if all of these Congresspeople want to come out and say that the majority of the country wants abortion to be legal nationwide, then they need to DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS and pass a law to make it so.

A law isn't enough as it will be in conflict with the consitution. A constitutional amendment is required.

To get enough Senate votes to pass a constitutional amendment, you're looking at 75% of the country voting for Democrats. Not going to happen. The Senate imbalance is ridiculous.

The ruling said that the Constitution does not grant the right to abortion. It did not say that it denies the right to abortion.

> you're looking at 75% of the country voting for Democrats

A constitutional amendment ought to have support from more than one party, not just Democrats. You might be able to get that if you took a more oblique approach, for example with an amendment explicitly upholding the natural right to control over one's own body, as opposed to one narrowly focused on allowing abortion.

People would argue that your natural right of control over your own body would be in conflict with the baby's right of control. Now we're back to square 1 where we're debating the limits of abortion and nothing has changed.

The fetus clearly has no right to control the mother's body, only its own[0]. Extricate it without otherwise injuring it and see if it can survive on its own, or with whatever degree of medical intervention the "pro-life" crowd is willing to pay for.

[0] Assuming fetuses had rights, of course, which is obviously absurd. That requires the capability for deliberate action and the ability and willingness to take responsibility for the effects of your actions on others. Without that you may be alive and biologically "human" but you're still more an animal than a person--at any age.

It's not 'obviously absurd' because a significant amount of the pro-life people pushing the anti-abortion rhetoric believe no abortion should be allowed and that all fetuses have rights, period. Like the fact that this debate still exists even after this constitutional amendment supposedly crosses both aisles does not fix the problem at all.

The point was that even if you take the absurd position that fetuses have rights, a constitutional right to bodily autonomy would--among other things--make it obviously unconstitutional to force the mother to continue to serve as a host against her will.

Again, they would simply either argue that the rights of the fetus supercede the rights of the mother, or that even though the mother has a right to bodily autonomy she would be committing murder and could still be put on trial for murder.

These are lines of arguments they already use. A constitutional right to bodily autonomy doesn't change the math at all.

> argue that the rights of the fetus supercede the rights of the mother

The whole point of the amendment is to make it explicit that they don't. That isn't how rights work anyway; it's never a matter of priority, one right vs. another. Any positive action which would infringe on someone else's rights is forbidden, including in particular using someone else's property, including their body, without their consent. But merely not doing anything for them--non-action--is always an option. The fetus is the one taking from the mother--that's the action. The mother merely wants this to stop. There is no conflict of rights. The fetus's rights, such as they are, are not being infringed.

> even though the mother has a right to bodily autonomy she would be committing murder

This line of argumentation would prove far too much. Refusing to serve as someone else's life support system is not murder. And again, the point of the amendment would be to make that explicit.

> The whole point of the amendment is to make it explicit that they don't. That isn't how rights work anyway; it's never a matter of priority, one right vs. another.

This is exactly how rights work, how they're debated and how the supreme court rules. Like the constitution says you have freedom of speech, but you don't have an absolute right to freedom of speech. You cannot go on someone else's property and start yelling because they have the right to kick you off, violating your right to freedom of speech.

What you're trying to do is frame it in a way that makes sense to yourself, which is great, but is not how things are decided by the judiciary. Which is my entire point: It doesn't matter if you explicitly say bodily autonomy is sacred in a constitutional amendment because ultimately the supreme court is whom interprets that. The only way you could in theory do something like this would be to have an amendment that outright says abortion is legal, but that wouldn't pass for obvious reasons.

You really need to go and try to debate more pro-life individuals because these are all things I've encountered while debating them. The idea that this line of thinking is 'too much' when that's literally what's happening in places like my current state of Texas means you really need to experience what's actually going on.

> You cannot go on someone else's property and start yelling because they have the right to kick you off, violating your right to freedom of speech.

No, that does not in any way violate your right to freedom of speech. You aren't being punished for the speech. It doesn't even matter whether you were speaking. You were violating their rights with respect to their property by trespassing, which is exactly why they can kick you out. As I said before—any action which infringes on another's rights is forbidden. That includes actions which involve speech, when they also infringe on others' rights. It's not a right to speak, it's simply recognition that speaking, per se, does not infringe on others' rights and consequently is not a just basis for punishment.

That's the natural right to freedom of speech. The 1st Amendment, of course, adds extra constraints against the government interfering with speech, which shouldn't even be necessary in the first place but that's what happens when you grant some privileged entity the power to "legitimately" infringe on people's rights with impunity–natural rights just aren't enough any more, you have to spell out when you're going to respect them and when you're going to ignore them. That's not something you have to worry about when you just do the right thing and respect natural rights all the time without making special exceptions.

> Which is my entire point: It doesn't matter if you explicitly say bodily autonomy is sacred in a constitutional amendment because ultimately the supreme court is whom interprets that.

If you assume from the start that the court will ignore the text of the law and the intent of those who ratified it and simply rule whichever way they want based on their personal feelings then I don't see any point in even having a Constitution. Or a legislature, for that matter. Or this discussion. So let's assume the court at least pretends to do its job and take the text and intent of the amendment into account. Anything less is just defeatism.

> The only way you could in theory do something like this would be to have an amendment that outright says abortion is legal, but that wouldn't pass for obvious reasons.

No, it doesn't need to mention abortion at all. An amendment stating that no person can be compelled to provide life-saving medical support to another against their will would have that effect without being specialized to just abortion. Sure, motivated individuals would try to argue their way around it, but there is no way to reconcile forcing a mother to continue a pregnancy with the mother not being compelled to serve as involuntary life support. Would the SCOTUS do their job and enforce it? Who knows. I don't have that much faith in them, to be honest. But if not, an amendment explicitly stating that abortion is a legal right wouldn't fare any better.

What's happening in Texas is equally absurd, of course. I fully expect it to get struck down eventually, if only because it involves interstate commerce and threatens the federal government's exclusive prerogatives, but it hasn't been in effect long enough yet to work through the system.

I said it was a misrepresentation. "The decision was right, but the reasoning was wrong ."(according to Ginsberg)

How is what I said a misrepresentation? I used the word "flawed" and I think it perfectly represents her opinion. She acknowledged that the reasoning behind it opened up the door to it being overturned, which is something that many if not most legal scholars agreed with. And she was clearly correct, as evidenced by today's ruling.

Of course she wouldn't have voted to overturn it, but I never said or meant to imply that she would have.

> 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.

> as worthy of reconsideration

He went further than that, he explicitly called them out as "errors in need of correction".

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 Constitution doesn't "only talk" about militias, and doesn't mention muskets (or any other specific type of arms) at all. Indeed, muskets weren't even "state of the art" when the Constitution was written, so a belief that the Founders were only referring to them would definitely seem to be mistaken.

To me (and six Supreme Court Justices) the Constitution says you have the right to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms (firearms) and because of this, laws that put an undue burden on this right are unconstitutional.

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

Nothing in the constitution says this is a problem.

> 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?

If that's not from the majority opinion, how much does it actually matter?

Thomas wasn't part of the majority? He wrote a concurring opinion - he agrees with the main decision and went out of his way to further explain his thoughts, including that he disagrees with any of the rights created under the auspices of due process. But, he conveniently left Loving v Virginia off the list, which was also decided (partially) on due process grounds - I guess he's not quite so sure about his principles that he'd blow up his own marriage.

He also lives in DC, so even if he did rule that the states have the right to criminalize interracial marriages, HIS is unlikely to be affected.

Nope, he and Ginny live in VA.

quite a bit, the votes are likely there to overturn those things as well.

what thomas did is a little gauche, the court generally avoids opining on cases that aren't actually in front of them because the facts and specifics of the case matter, but, yeah, the votes are probably there, thomas just likes to say the quiet part out loud.

who do you think is going to vote against it? thomas, who has outright stated he's a yes? kavanaugh, who said roe was "settled law"? Barrett, the actual handmaiden cultist? Alito?

I think, realistically, we're holding out for Gorsuch and Roberts to not be monsters, and I think we will be disappointed.

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

So why do I not have the right to X, where X is some random thing I want that doesn't violate the other rights?

Simply going "Oh, there are more rights" isn't a good answer. I'm pro-choice myself, but Roe vs Wade was terrible legislation, and is a fantastic example of tactical victory, strategic defeat.

In the case you laid out you do have the right to X.

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.

I understand how law is made quite well, which is why I specifically said that Roe invented a "Constitutional right" and not a "law." Of course, for the last 50 years Roe was part of our law. Now it's not, because it was determined that the Constitutional right it was based on doesn't actually exist.

> 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...

Sigh, not this. The bill of rights explicitly says that there are other rights not enumerated in the constitution that exist and (presumably) need to be enforced. The whole idea of Strict Construction flies right in the face of the obvious text of the ninth amendment.

Really, why is the ninth amendment even there if it's supposed to be ignored?

Who is ignoring it?

The court explained in great detail why the right to abortion is not an unenumerated right.

No, they actually did exactly the opposite. They had to splice in a paragraph explaining how, despite all the logic in the piece seemingly being applicable to any such Strict Constructionalist argument, they really, really don't mean it and this is "only" about abortion, because... reasons, basically. It's like they put a pinkie swear into the opinion because they knew the ants nest they were stepping in.

What we actually saw was the end of stare decisis. Any excuse is good enough now. For almost three hundred years, the court only overruled itself in areas of overwhelming public consensus. Now? It's just politics, man.

Sorry dude, that's not how it went down. Roe v. Wade was originally decided on politics, man.

Not really. Roe was one of a bunch of decisions of that era making findings of "civil rights". In particular, and libertarians like to forget this part, the core finding is actually based on the fourth amendment, and it says that no matter how firm it may believe the moral argument may be, the government doesn't have the right to decide for someone what medical procedures should be possible within her own body.

I genuinely don't understand all the HN libertarians lining up on the site of Government Power here. This is absolutely a libertarian issue. Is it just knee-jerk tribalism? Have you guys all decided you don't really care so much about individual rights? Or is it just that you don't have a uterus and are disinclined to align yourself with those who do?

Us guys? I'm not a libertarian. Go find a libertarian to argue with.

Abortion is murder, life in prison for violators, no exceptions.

All the libertarians have become nrx tradcath dominionists since ca. 2015, try to keep up.

And pray do tell how you think such legislation would fare against a challenge before the SCOTUS?

I'm going to assume that you believe they'd throw it out, so I will ask you what part of today's decision leads you to believe that?

They want this to be up to the states. Federal legislation encroaches on the "laboratories of democracy".

Well since there is no federal statute on it, and the Constitution doesn't assign it to the federal government, it goes back to the states. That's how everything works, by default.

There's nothing in the ruling that I'm aware of that would prevent Congress from passing a law on it. But I haven't read the whole ruling, and I'm certainly not an expert. So I'm open to being shown otherwise.

Any legislation passed by congress will get challenged by the states that want to restrict abortion. This court will side with the state challenging the federal law.

> 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.

miranda rights

I have some bad news for you. SCOTUS blew that one up yesterday. <sad trombone>

No, you still have the right to remain silent. You still have the right to an attorney. They removed (rather, neutered) the notification requirement; the police aren't required to tell you your rights. That's bad, but not remotely as bad as legalizing forced interrogation without representation.

Exactly, there is no miranda right (miranda being the notification of your right to remain silent and obtain an attorney).

And there is, as of yesterday, no remedy for violations of your right to remain silent. So, you better hope your lawyer can have anything you say suppressed before trial.

> there is, as of yesterday, no remedy for violations of your right to remain silent.

Explain this, please. You still have the right to remain silent, you still have the right to an attorney. The police still have to stop questioning you when you invoke these rights. Literally the only thing that changed was the notification requirement. That's it.

Here's a pretty good summary... https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/supreme-court-reje...

Basically, the Court removed any remedy against state actors who fail to uphold your right to remain silent.

Prior to Vega, if the state ignored your right to remain silent, you could seek redress with the courts.

Post Vega, that right to seek redress no longer exists.

On paper we still have the right. But, we have to no way to hold the state accountable when it fails to uphold that right. Is a right really a right if the state can ignore it with impunity?

the state can't use the evidence against you in court, can it?

No, it can't. Literally the only thing that changed is that you can't sue a cop for not reading the Miranda warning to you. Your actual Miranda rights are unchanged, and cops still have to read the warning.

A coerced confession was used during the trial in question.

It's up to you/your lawyer to ensure it isn't used. Relying on the judge to do so isn't a great plan.

Now it can

The right you keep referring to is the right to be notified of your rights. You are blatantly incorrect in continually stating that there is any change at all in your right to remain silent, or remedies against state actors who violate it.

You can still sue a cop who continues questioning you after you have invoked your right to remain silent. Literally nothing about that has changed. The one specific thing that has changed is that you can't sue a cop simply for failing to read you your rights.

That does not impact your right to remain silent, or any remedies available in case of violation of it, in any way.

From the parent post: The constitution doesn't speak about ... miranda rights... Yet those are still "rights" that you'd be awfully horrified to have destroyed, right?

And my response: I have some bad news for you. SCOTUS blew that one up yesterday.

There is no longer a right to be Mirandized. That's what I said.

Officer Vega locked Tekoh in a room and threaten him and his family in order to coerce a confession.

That confession was used in the trial.

Are you saying there is some other way to recover damages from Vega? At best, had Tekoh been found guilty, he was looking at years of appeals. He still wouldn't have been able to sue Vega under the current ruling.

As I said above, yes, you still have the right to remain silence. But you no longer have a way to seek redress against a LEO who ignores that right.

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.

> since Rowe v. Wade was primarily a decision about medical privacy

And it got thrown out for precisely this reason. Although cocaine can be prescribed in very limited circumstances, my doctor cannot just write me a prescription for cocaine. That's a "medical privacy" issue too, right?

> is HIPA still valid?

Don't be absurd.

The privacy portions of HIPA were a balanced between a persons right to privacy vs a persons rights to free speech. Much of the foundations of a right to medical privacy is based on Rowe V. Wade. Without a right to medical privacy, HIPA could be an unconstitutional constraint on medical personnel's rights to free speech. I'm not being absurd, the second order consequences of this ruling are going to be vast.

First of all, it's HIPAA.

Second, I think you have a very deep misunderstanding of how all of this works. HIPAA is not in any danger whatsoever, and really has nothing to do with Roe.

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

You realize that this goes against the right of the federal government to regulate the states re abortion?

It's complicated. States can't just limit a persons rights because they aren't explicitly enumerated in the constitution. The federal government does have an expressed interest in making sure states don't legislate away peoples rights, whether they are explicitly enumerated or not.

>States can't just limit a persons rights because they aren't explicitly enumerated in the constitution

Historically, yes, they can. The BoR didn't initially restrict state action, only federal action.

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"?

They treat it like the Bible and interpret it to fit their opinions. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion

Tbf when they said that they meant reviewed and updated as in actually amended.

Oh, absolutely. Not "creatively interpreted by SCOTUS in lieu thereof."

The entire point of the SCOTUS is to interpret the Constitution, as laid out in the Constitution.

Roe was a "creative" interpretation. Upholding the 2nd Amendment is far from that.

I get that.

But not "interpret in lieu of meaningful review". Look at 4A. It's gone to SCOTUS a huge number of times. But no review has ever taken place of it.

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.

As I understand it, the "correct" position that is held by the majority of Americans is that we should have safe, widely-available abortions up to about 12-16 weeks. That's how it is in Europe. Right now, we have two parties full of nutjobs: one party wants state-subsidized free abortions available up to point of birth, and the other party wants to completely ban them. The reasonable group has left the building.

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.

> CNN reported the number has never been above 36% for “should roe v wade be overturned”

the poll said "completely overturned", which is the more radical position. roe v wade being completely overturned is not the same as "delegating to the states" per your original comment, because the federal protection could be weakened to only support specific cases or require an earlier termination which would leave more room for state laws.

You're framing the issue in a way that's misleading, because while the majority of americans oppose completely overturning roe, another majority could support weakening roe or limiting it to specific cases

Could you please at least do two minutes of research before coming in here with this take, using a brand-new burner junk account no less?

This is the most polled issue in American politics and has been for half a century. We know with certainty that a large majority of the public supports abortion rights. We don't need to talk about what "another majority could support". That theory has been shot down thousands of times over the last 50 years.

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

You have those reversed.

Fixed, thank you

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.

This court will never say a federal law allowing abortion is constitutional. Thomas is 74 and Alito is 72. A lot of stars need to align so that anything can be done about this. The lone thing I see changing the calculus is if women in red states stage a mass protest by actually moving to blue states in massive numbers.

Doesn’t your argument apply also to state abortion legalization laws under equal protection? Are those getting struck down? I haven’t been keeping up with this topic.

This majority is regressive enough to go full Handmaid's Tale I fear.

This ruling has zero effect in my state where abortion is protected under the state constitution, and there’s near zero chance of a constitutional convention being formed in my lifetime, much less enough consensus being found at such a meeting.

Republicans have been floating a national ban on abortions; if the Republicans take the legislature in November, it is likely to be the first item on the agenda.

Roe v. Wade was the only thing preventing that.

In what way would it not be constitutional? Wouldn't a petitioner have to cite the preexisting implied rights or explicit laws violated in order for the case to even have standing?

> mass protest by actually moving to blue states in massive numbers

That actually makes the problem worse. You can't undo this without changing the court. You can't change the court without the senate and you can't get the senate of team blue continues to isolate it self in a handful of states.

Or maybe the women in red states can vote for democrats? The 2022 elections outcome could turn out very unexpected.

She wanted a privileges or immunities clause (in 14th Amendment) based argument instead. The issue there is that reopening the Slaughterhouse cases (which shut that line of questioning down) will reopen the obiter dicta therein on birthright citizenship. Pick one, abortion or birthright citizenship?

> 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.

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.

> 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.

And their assets will be forfeit, seized by the arresting agency as aiding and abetting the sodomy. What a wonderful process.

> Gay men will be arrested on "reasonable suspicion" of having had gay sex.

"reasonable" in this case meaning "visiting the home of another gay man", let alone "living with one".

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.

There is a conspicuous lack of education around modern civil rights movements. WW1 and WW2 suck the air out of the history classroom leaving room for little else. I was 35 years old when I first learned about the MOVE bombing[1] and this year years-old when I learned about the Three Articles[2] rules. Anyone else unaware of these until recently? If not, where did you learn about them?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing

2. https://www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-lgbtq-drag-thre...

Yeah, I am 95% neither of these were taught where I grew up (a lefty area in a solid lefty state).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com