The Vindication of Dobbs After Two Years | Hacker News Reader

The Vindication of Dobbs After Two Years

wsj.com

2 pointslolinder10 comments

“Despite the left’s predictions, the fall of Roe hasn’t ushered in a “Handmaid’s Tale” dystopia”.

This is really in the eye of the beholder isn’t it, interesting that another recent article shows an increase in child deaths and attacks on IVF and people arguing against no fault divorce feel pretty dystopian. Aside from the fact I think there’s really no way anti-abortion activists don’t want to make it illegal at the federal level as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/24/texa...

I’ve been really interested in this idea of people should be able to choose their own government recently though. It’s I think a thing that sounds good but doesn’t really mean anything. Any time you start to limit individual freedoms in this way, especially when it aligns with a religion it makes me wonder, who is really choosing? Do people really “choose” a government that reflects a minority opinion(I mean this with the Dobb’s decision but also other arguments in favor of more authoritarian governments). Can you say people “choose” a government if that government is not a liberal democracy. Like this is an argument against overthrowing someone like Saddam Hussein.

> The Dobbs decision, which returned abortion policy to the states and the voters, was correct as a matter of constitutional law. It overturned what even liberal jurists in 1973 and since recognized was one of the High Court’s worst decisions.

That's the first time I've seen any serious person suggest this decision was anything less than terrible.

https://phys.org/news/2023-06-expert-analysis-year-dobbs-dec...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/opinion/abortion-religion...

This piece is basically just arguing that RBG was right about Roe [0]. Eliminating the crutch that was Roe allowed the legislative process to finally begin to work in a cultural environment that has changed dramatically since the 70s.

> “My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights.

It's been messy and complicated, but I think we're already seeing a shift in public opinion since Dobbs as people see what the extreme right actually wants to do. Even Republican perspectives have shifted dramatically in the last two years [1].

[0] https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsbur...

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/246278/abortion-trends-party.as...

So, and I say this as someone who is indisputably pro choice. It was an open secret that Roe V Wade was a bad legal decision, and tons of ink has been spilt on that, even Ruth Bader Ginsburg has commented on it, and there’s some thought that it may have turned the tide against an organic pro-choice movement that was happening at the time. That being said Dobbs was an incredibly cynical power play, with everyone involved saying that Roe V Wade was settled law and they weren’t going to touch it, then doing to opposite.

https://archive.ph/96tce

Honestly, why are Americans so obsessed with abortion?

What does this mean? Which Americans and on what opinion?

Most countries the topic hardly comes up. Politicians in America regularly fight over it. Why?

I think it’s because for a modern liberal first world democracy we’re remarkably religious, most other countries are either more religious so it’s settled anti-abortion or more secular/liberal so it’s settled pro-choice.

Because it's an easy political win. Whichever side you're on, you can present it as the end of the world if you lose. Either you're killing millions of babies or you're putting women in shackles.

In reality most people want some kind of compromise on it. But the extremes get the voters out. Certainly the anti-abortion voters turn out in droves. (Abortion rights voters are kind of wishy-washy about it.)

Most actually kind of liked the compromise that Roe put in place. But it was an easy thing to attack, and to demonize their opponents about. So they did.

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