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Comment by rajup | Hacker News Reader

> The supreme court ruled that abortion is a state issue. Any law passed by congress would be struck down by the same ruling.

Is it? Then why am I reading news today about the Democrats wanting to suspend the filibuster for a federal abortion law?

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The court ruled in Dobbs that the decision reached in Roe v Wade was improper because there is no right to privacy "deeply rooted" in the Constitution or traditions of the United States, which basically means that if the court sticks with this definition they get to roll back any decisions that they don't like, disregarding two hundred years of precedent.

The fundamental problem is that large important social policy decisions have been made as court cases rather than legislation for the past 50 years. If Congress actually made laws that explicitly granted rights to the people then we wouldn't be in this situation, but by passing the buck to the court they can claim that problems have been solved without actually having to get their hands dirty or face their constituents.

Because they are pandering for votes. They know that the average citizen doesn't know that the law would be deemed unconstitutional based on the most recent ruling.

If you’re talking about the decision overturning Roe, it has literally nothing to do with whether a federal abortion law would be constitutional.

The Dobbs case has everything to do with whether or not a federal abortion law would be constitutional. The court determined on 10th amendment grounds that the constitution was silent on abortion. Therefore, that power belongs to each state. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

They ruled that the constitution does not confer the right to an abortion. That’s it.

The constitution does not confer the right to clean water and yet, it’s not unconstitutional for the federal government to make laws regarding clean water standards.

Roe v Wade was the court case giving a federal right to an abortion, that was struck down so it became a state's rights issue bc the federal gov't itself never passed a law guaranteeing the the right to an abortion. one major piece of criticism you'll hear again Democrats is that they have taken too much comfort is court precedent then actually passing laws when they were in power

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