Protesters outside several conservative SC justices residences
- Thread starter K Douglas
- Start date
Are you talking about parents going to school board meetings to disagree with a school policy made by school board officials answerable to voters?
Sounds to me like they are setting a precedent for Evangelicals to hound Left Justices on various things at their homes.
Sure you want this?
Sure you want this?
Sorry, Dutch. One of us is trying to have a productive day. If the USSC protects abortion as a constitutionally privileged privacy interest in 1972, a differently constituted court in 2022 saying "that 1972 decision was total bullshit" amounts to the 2022 court removing constitutional protection from abortion rights, not extending them. Not that you or anyone else on the board needed that being explained to him.
You mean the creepy people who told school board members that they were all "commie pedophiles"? Yeah, them. Apparently the same set went to several different board meetings pretending to be parents and all of them arranged it on line as an event beforehand.
But of course, they did also make public board members addresses as well.
I still find it weird that an uppity masher like Clarence Thomas can decide the fate of women's reproductive rights.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/clarence-thomas-abortion-eugenics
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/clarence-thomas-abortion-eugenics
Nope. Talking about the adults who don't even have children in the district showing up at school board meetings threatening teachers with stuff like "we know where you live." That sort of stuff.
Pretzel logic. A reversal of Roe vs. Wade is no different than a reversal of any other SCOTUS precedent. The court reflects the politics of the day, and always has. At least a reversal of Roe vs. Wade will look a lot more like law and lot less like politics, since a reversal ruling will be in harmony with the Constitution.
Except that the current court is an artificially stacked court that does not reflect the current opinion of the large majority of the American public. The previous reversals involved over-turning racist decisions from the late 1800's and replacing them with modern attitudes from the 1950's and 1960's. America had changed.
There's no real proof that American opinion has changed on Roe since 1973. 70% of Americans currently support Roe. Those who support Choice, but think that Roe should have set more ground rules re medical basis for post first trimester abortion (for example) make up a big chunk of the remaining 30%. And those people will not support in any way the absolutely INSANE "no abortion under any circumstances" religion-based abortion bans that are already being drafted by GOP administrations in the South and Midwest.
Total abortion bans which cover rape, incest, pregnant 12 year olds and non viable pregnancies which will also kill the mother are going to be supported by less than 10% of the US public - mostly extremist Catholics and fundamentalists. The laws are going to be an open wound that will divide America and ultimately wreck the GOP as public opinion swings against it in horror at the actual impact of these laws.
It will also probably fuck up the whole constitutional interpretive system wherein the USSC is trusted to do at least a semi competent job - because what's happening now is not even remotely legally competent.
Aren't you ignoring that reversing Roe vs. Wade will result in the "large majority" of Americans still being able to obtain abortions? Certainly a percentage greater than 70%. That's a perfectly democratic outcome.
My opinion is that the original Roe decision was not only legally incompetent, but institutionally corrupt. Reversing Roe is legally corrrect, regardless of the political motivation.
Why would that be the solution when previously ALL Americans could get abortions?
And let's start marking off the states where abortions are likely to now be banned: - TX (28 million people), FL (20 million people), MO (10 million people), all the western interior states, most of the Old South. That's probably 30 - 40% of the US population there.
Well, accepting your math, if 30% of the population ban abortion, then 70% won't. Right in line with your view of popular opinion. However, I suspect that public opinion changes radically according to how the question is asked, and what the requirements are to being granted an abortion.
Now, having an abortion is not usually the most important issue dictating where Americans wish to live, but if it is for a particular person, they will be able to choose to live in most of the country. That's actually the essence of state rights. Apart from rights enshrined in the constitution (abortion is not), states are free to fashion rights as they see fit, and live with the consequences of citizens voting with their feet (as evidenced currently by the mass exodus of Californians TO Texas, and New Yorkers TO Florida). Freedom, baby!
I will preface this by saying I am pro-choice. I will also say I am anti-political and legal instability. By that I mean, I don't want the Supreme Court sending this shit back to fifty state legislatures to make their sausage on this matter. So hopefully we can have a nice civil discussion.
Unfortunately, I don't think the U.S. Constitution guarantees privacy in all matters. (I believe Canadian courts decided the matter as well long after Roe vs. Wade. Does the Canadian Constitution protect privacy rights in ALL matters?) Abortion is a far different matter than say contraceptives in Griswold vs. Connecticut.
What is of interest to me is I believe the U.S. and Canada have virtually no restrictions on abortion. This disregards States currently trying to regulate abortion. If you want an abortion, you can technically get one in the third trimester. In reality, I think this happens very rarely and it's a bit of a straw man for anti-abortion activists. Yet on the other hand, pro-abortion activists in the U.S. seem to cling to this unpopular aspect of abortion law. One side of the extreme desires an all-out prohibition and the other extreme wants unfettered access at anytime during pregnancy.
In Europe, there are restrictions and this has been done by passing laws not court decrees. The problem I see with the Courts protecting the right to an abortion is that courts can't really effectively rule on restrictions. Can the U.S. Supreme Court or any court for that matter say 15 weeks or even 20 weeks for that matter definitively say what is the right time limit for an abortion?
The best thing would be for the U.S. Congress to pass a national restriction. (It's not going to happen.) Perhaps Canada should have a restriction on abortions too. I don't know. Just thinking out loud.
Instead we are going to get 50 states passing legislation with almost as many variations on the matter. I'm not a big State's Rights guy. It seems to me to be an archaic Constitutional concept that made more sense in the days of horse travel and before the U.S. Federal government became the preeminent governing and taxing body in the country. In many privacy matters, the U.S. Federal Courts have simply taken the ball out of the States' hands. Think of it as your personal rights shouldn't be affected by who your neighbor is.
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That's the "best case" argument for the USSC backing out of Roe v Wade: - that both Roe (and Morgentaler) left abortion completely unregulated on the "privacy rights" basis. If Alito was to have written what you just wrote, I would get my traditional liberal pro Choice nose out of joint, but would probably concede that your position had some logic, but choose to disagree. (Leaving aside that there is probably a reason that both Roe and Morgentaler didn't attempt to impose restrictions on abortions and that reason is probably that the panels in both considered late term abortions raised medical ethics issues, rather than legal issues).
But Alito's draft is a balls to the wall attack on Roe and it's accompanied by a Red wave of total bans on abortion in Red states. The total bans are complete nuts. They ban rape, incest, pubescent pre teens and unviable pregnancies that will kill the mother type abortions. Reasonable people would wish abortion to be available in those cases.
It's impossible to disassociate Alito's draft with the extreme GOP legislative positions and with the fact that Alito, Barrett and - I am guessing - Kavanaugh are all conservative Catholics. And that ties into decades of attacks on abortion, Choice and abortion providers by Catholic extreme conservatives.
And that in turn raises the concern that the attack on Roe is being conducted by extremist ideologues who despise the very idea of abortion on religious grounds and who are unprepared to make practical compromises and concede that some abortions are medically necessary and some are morally compelling.
The shit is going to hit the fan. Within a year, there will be a 12 year old girl from San Antonio who has been raped by her uncle and who will be killed by the pregnancy. When Abbott and Paxton shrug and say "God wills that she should die. Thoughts and prayers!" The whole issue will blow up bigger than any issue since the 1860 slavery election.
I think at some level we come to the same conclusion even though we might come at it from different angles. As I wrote: "In many privacy matters, the U.S. Federal Courts have simply taken the ball out of the States' hands. Think of it as your personal rights shouldn't be affected by who your neighbor is."
Are extreme Catholics conservatives really behind attacks on abortion clinics and providers? I'm asking because I just thought it was more likely to be conservative Evangelicals.
I don't think it will be anything like the 1860 slavery election. The issue is not as high a priority in most voters minds as the American media portrays. The issue plays out in the minds of voters at the extremes. The kind of voters who are party stalwarts already.
Of course, it will make abortion more difficult in some areas. However, I see pro-choice groups sponsoring women for out-of-state travel. There will be fights in some of the Red States. Fights that Red State Republicans never really wanted or anticipated. As long as Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, there was more quiet support for Roe vs.Wade in some degree than has been politically measured.
States led by politicians that wanted to ban abortion outright might likely regret the Supreme Court pushing the issue back to the States. It was easy to stand up against the Federal govt. and the Supreme Court. Navigating this politically in several states will be far harder now. I guess you can call this another example of be careful for what you wish for you might just get it.
I suppose this issue could improve Democrats' fortunes in a handful of Congressional districts. Beyond that, it's anybody's guess. I suspect some Republican Congressional candidates will dodge the issue and say it is a matter for their State legislatures. The real battles will likely come in the Republican primaries in several states.
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Probably both. But Catholics have dogma on the issue. Devout Catholics believe that the soul enters the zygote at the time of fertilisation and the value of that new soul outweighs the mother's life. I guess if the fetus is terminated before birth, the soul goes into Limbo; but if the mother dies in childbirth, her soul is eligible to go to heaven, unless Jesus throws her into hell to burn. I like devout Catholics a whole lot.
But who in the north was affected in 1860 by the slavery issue? And how many in the South? Even in the South, you had to be pretty prosperous to own more than 1 or 2 slaves. And in the North, it was a peripheral issue.
How many women are going to be concerned about a total ban on abortion? Especially when an even half-competent Dem Party starts running those news items about raped 13 year olds in Mississipi?
MO has made fleeing the state to obtain an abortion a felony. That's going to be fun to see play out.
The GOP fucked this badly. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was about to fucking do in the SC. The GOP states thought they'd play the old game of passing the post performatively insane and extreme legislation, wait for it to be struck down and then whine about federal judges being commie pedos. Well, this time it came back to bite their fucking face off. They passed the craziest, most nauseating bullshit legislation ever enacted only to find that it was somehow totally constitutionally valid. And now they're going to have to fight a losing battle to make this draconian fuckfest actually fly.
