Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this.

Let's do a thought experiment: say the speed limit in State X is 60mph. In State Y is it is 70mph.

If you went to State Y and drove at 70mph there, will the police in State X arrest you when you come back because you went over 60mph, even though the claimed "offence" was in a different jurisdiction where it was totally legal?

This whole thing about people having abortions where it is 100% legal (or even just - heaven forbid - tracking menstrual cycles) and then getting into trouble for it in places where abortion is not legal seems really weird. I can't believe it is being discussed in the US - this is like something out of Afghanistan.

View on HN

Before RvW was overturned, Texas passed a law that lets anyone sue anyone who aids and abets an abortion: the doctor who performs an abortion, an insurance company that helps pay for the procedure, an uber driver who just happens to be driving you there, someone who lets you know what options you have available to you, etc.

Some states are just taking a scorched earth approach here, and nothing would surprise me about what they will try to do to punish anyone who is even tangentially involved in the process...

What I think is under-appreciated is that this is going to harm a lot of non-abortion healthcare.

I can personally vouch for the fact that hospitals in my red state were excessively timid about providing necessary or beneficial care that looked too abortion-like—with Roe-v-Wade compliant state restrictions on abortion in place. It's a safe bet that'll be even worse now.

Yes. Some arthritis and lupus patients are already reporting issues accessing methotrexate. https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o1677

There's definitely precedent for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850

Yes, but this and the Dred Scott decision backfired on the slaveowning South so badly that they, ironically, cried "states rights" for the next century or so.

When there is a federal law about it sure, plenty of precedence, but that's a very different case. Here there is no federal law one way or the other about the situation and it's unlikely the current congress would be able to pass such a law. This lack of federal stance is where the impact of the judicial ruling changing comes from.

Why go back to 1850 when last week is far enough?

Antiabortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/abortion-...

There are some insane laws in the US like the Texas one that allow private citizens to sue anyone that helps with access to an abortion in any way. That is arguably a terrible law that is fundamentally broken and should be stopped by some court, but so far it hasn't.

There are probably enough ways to pass laws that are not unconstitutional in immediately apparent ways that would still interfere with abortion access across state lines. And even then I think it is quite likely that a few blatantly unconstitutional ones will be passed as well, and who knows how that will end.

The Republicans chose abortion as a way to create safe voters for their party and voter disgust for the opposing party. Now they've won (at a state level) and they need to keep those voters. They must continue the battle even after it's already won.

The best thing you can ever have as a political party is a base of rabid single issue voters who want something that reasonable people don't.

You get to count on their vote by default, so you don't have to consider or campaign towards anything else they want.

It's especially good when these single issue voters are so extreme that the party can slip in policies that are against their other interests but still get their vote.

TL;DR, single issue voters are NPCs.

NPR's extensive coverage of Trump voters after the '16 election came up with quite a few cases of heavily religion-oriented voters who were like "yeah, he's obviously a huge piece of shit, but I 'prayed on it' and voted for him anyway" (purely because of abortion, clearly)

These voters have been vindicated as doing exactly the right thing, according to their views, now that his court appointments have lead to the loss of Roe.

"But abortion" is an incredibly common refrain from my conservative Christian family and friends who otherwise claim Trump is awful.

And then of course they fell into supporting his election fraud lies.

The American church is dying because it can't stop making deals with the devil on the issues of abortion and LGBT liberty, both issues that Jesus said absolutely nothing about. Meanwhile, he said a hell of a lot about helping the poor, the sick, and the foreigner.

In my mind, this kind of person isn't a real follower of Christ. They're modern day pharisees. Hypocrites who Jesus would have hated.

Lol, and the Democrats did everything in their power to codify Roe v Wade.

Did they? When? I think there were many times where the Dems had the majorities and clout to codify permitting abortion, at least in more "conservative" forms like "up to the third trimester unless special circumstances," between Roe and now and yet it never happened.

I was being sarcastic. Dems have tons of single-issue voters over this and they know it.

These kinds of culture war battles actually do serve a valid electoral purpose: they ban liberals from moving to red states.

Sure, you nominally have freedom-of-movement within the US. In practice, however, there's plenty of ways you can make people decide not to move. California is basically unlivable if you don't like three-hour traffic jams or paying insane rent, because the state is structured with a landed gentry of suburban old-time homeowners. Now, Texas is unlivable if you are an unmarried woman or want your children to be taught the history of racism in America[0].

The real thing that has screwed over Republicans is their stance on immigration. They could be reliably importing hordes of conservative voters from other countries if they hadn't spent so much time demonizing them for being too conservative.

[0] The laws on the books only talk about "critical race theory". However it is actually rather difficult to explain, say, Jim Crow laws or the nadir of race relations without embracing at least some of CRT's base assumptions.

There are certain precedents: if you travel abroad to have sex with children, or commit espionage or terrorism against your home country, you can be prosecuted in the US even if what you did was "100% legal" in the jurisdiction where the acts physically took place.

Applying this kind of logic to speeding or indeed healthcare does seem like an overreach of government - but in general Americans who support women's reproductive rights favour more government overreach, not less.

There's no state in the United States in which pedophilia, or committing espionage / terrorism is legal.

> but in general Americans who support women's reproductive rights favour more government overreach, not less

Compared to what?

> Compared to what?

It's just a smear. Biased language ("overreach") addressing generalities rather than specifics is how you nudge people toward "this group is bad, because they favor [biased language bad thing that everyone agrees is bad—what, are you going to defend 'overreach'? Of course not]".

Really? It does seem like this issue was used to create non-jurisdiction-bound laws, which of course now sucks.

There is concern and precedent around “conspiracy to commit abortion” being implemented, so that if you live in Alabama and plan a vacation for Denver specifically to get an abortion you can be tried.

Any law like that will fail the first legal challenge. You can't be guilty of conspiring to do something legal. If abortion is legal in Colorado, then you'll be in the clear.

Do you honestly believe it will fail once it reaches the current Supreme Court? I don't.

Depends on the crime. For serious crimes I think it is quite common?

Like, Finnish law claims jurisdiction over all crimes committed against or by Finnish citizens committed abroad, no matter the location or acts legality per local law, if the crime could result in prison term of 6 months or longer according to the criminal code of Finland. We also claim jurisdiction over some particularly heinous crimes committed abroad no matter the nationality of victim or perpetrator. I think it is very rare to see it applied, because crimes according to Finnish law are often crimes abroad, too (I mean, the location of country often takes precedence?). And I don't think our laws grant our authorities power to act outside territory of Finland (like the US sometimes does).

But if a Finnish citizen traveled to country X, did something bad enough to mandate a long prison sentence, came back to Finland, was found, and for one reason or other were not extradited back to X for trial there, they would be tried here.

How is this any different with slave states wanting to enforce their slave laws on non-slave states by requiring them to turn over run away slaves? Since non-slave states no longer had slavery, there was no crime committed when slaves ran away and traveled to the free states.

Slave states where trying to push their state laws as federal laws and circumventing non-slave state sovereignty and federal laws.

For those who are anti abortion, this isn’t a case of speeding in another state but rather going to another state to commit murder of an innocent. Considering the stakes they will do everything in their power to hinder people from attaining legal abortions.

it's exactly like stuff we've already done in the US, though. this is what it was like in the ramp-up to the Civil War, re slavery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com