Outlawing Abortion

The 4 judge minority is furious and Pelosi may correct the error herself.

But she'd never get an abortion bill through the Senate, and an abortion bill couldn't be done through reconciliation, and there's no real appetite for abolishing the filibuster because Dems know the GOP would run wild with it next time they were the majority.

It's a pity abortion has become such a football.

Joy pointed out in her program tonite that evangelicals used to be pro-choice.  It was only after their pro-segregation platform (for private Christian schools) became untenable that they latched onto reproductive freedom as their new wedge issue.

The way it's been cartoonized is shameful.  Nobody discusses the very real issues that will arise after Roe is overturned.  Women who are forced to carry an unintended pregnancy to term will be faced with real hard choices during pregnancy and upon delivery: adoption?  Abandonment?  Infanticide?  Suicide?

The issue has become totally divorced from the reality.  "Fetal heartbeat" as noted above is not evidence of a heart, only a pulsing cell.  The blastocyst won't be viable for another five months.  Abortion is no more "killing a baby" than wearing a condom is.  And what about spontaneous abortions, stillbirths and miscarriages -- will they be felonies too?

There's a lot of bluster and indignation from the progressives, but the bald fact is, we lost.  The far-right outplayed us, we let them define the issues in their own terms, and now a generation of women will reap the results of living under sharia law because of the American Taliban.

Got a letter from my local U.S. Representative, headlined "An update on our efforts to protect women's reproductive health." Phooey. We have allowed the Right to define how we talk about this issue, so now progressives have been backed into the corner of "protecting women's reproductive heath." The REAL issue here -- the one nobody's talking about -- is this: a 6-week old blastocyst is not a baby.

The Supreme Court's hearing on the Texas abortion law this morning ended up drawing the batshit-crazy justices (Kavanaugh and Barrett) out on another point.

They're not against overturning 50 years of precedent on Roe v. Wade.

They DO have concerns about somebody applying the same twisted legal philosophy to eliminate gun rights.  Sounds like SCOTUS will probably overturn Texas's law so they can get a clean reversal of Roe in the Mississippi case on December 1.

Roe's gonna be overturned this week.

I can't help wondering: once Roe is overturned, how long until the American Taliban makes it illegal to masturbate? Because, you know, "spilling your seed on the ground" is discouraged in the bible.

Somebody on Rachel's show tonite said that overturning Roe v. Wade is just the right's first step; after they have legally established that women have no bodily autonomy, no personal freedom, their next step will be to go after all the other "personal freedom" rulings that have followed in the footsteps of Roe: Gay marriage.  Interracial marriage.  Trans rights. Gay rights. Anti-discrimination and equal-pay legislation.

While I don't disagree that the American Taliban would LOVE to rescind those rights, I don't think this path is inevitable.

The right has used, is using one primary argument to restore women to second-class citizen status: rights of the unborn.  By assigning full citizenship to a fertilized egg, hey have effectively removed "personal freedoms" as the core of this argument.  To them, it's all about "mur'drin' babies."

This does not translate easily to gay rights, trans rights, black rights, disabled rights, and all the other Thurgood Marshall "librul rulings."  When they win, tomorrow—which they will—they'll have to start all over with a different rationale to overturn the court's 50 years of OTHER personal rights decisions.

However.... it still PISSES ME OFF that the plaintiffs are arguing this as a case of women's rights.  It should be a simple SCIENTIFIC slam dunk: a fertilized egg is not an independent individual at the moment of conception.  Arguing otherwise opens a Pandora's box of corollaries you don't want to have to litigate in the future.

Women better be prepared to buy TWO tickets to any airplanes or movies (because they might be pregnant).  Women better expect federal murder charges if they miscarry.  Women can expect "child endangerment" charges if they drink or do rock climbing or SCUBA dive. Women will lose all protections against abuse or rape or domestic violence, because they are simply portals for sperm.

NoCoPilot wrote:

However.... it still PISSES ME OFF that the plaintiffs are arguing this as a case of women's rights.

That was the original rationale for Roe vs Wade. Essentially, a woman should be able to manage her health with the aid of her doctor, and the state has no significant reason to interfere. They can't even argue safety - abortion is much safer than carrying a pregnancy to term.

richard09 wrote:

They can't even argue safety - abortion is much safer than carrying a pregnancy to term.

Safety OF THE MOTHER. I'm saying we have allowed the right to argue a completely different issue, the SAFETY OF THE BABY.

By allowing them to make no distinction between a full-term baby, a 39-week fetus, a 6-week old embryo or a newly fertilized egg, they have denied science.

Sonya Sotomeyer is giving the arguer a very hard time. Breyer is pulling the rug out from his legal basis.

Sotomeyer is edging close to an interesting point: most cases of SCOTUS overruling previous cases were done due to a change in who is considered a citizen.  When blacks were decided to be people, with equal rights of whites, then previous laws treating them as property were no longer valid.

So, the underlying issue becomes the citizenship of an embryo.  Voting rights, bodily autonomy, right to carry firearms, all the rights of citizenship.  Yikes.  I wish one of the justices would pull that point out and thrust it forward.

Sotomeyer came CLOSE to hitting the right argument when she said it's universally recognized, here in the US and around the world, that a patient who has suffered "brain death" and has no EKG is, for intents and purposes, not a person anymore. No rights.

Yet even a brain dead person can have a flinch reaction to painful stimulus. This is brain stem activity, not cerebral cortex.

So why, Sotomeyer asked, do we worry about a fetus feeling pain during an abortion if the cerebellum isn't even formed yet?

I wish she'd pressed the issue a little harder. To me that's the key to resolving the whole argument.

Jesus, another monumental lost opportunity. Kavanaugh, Thomas & Barrett are arguing the decision to restrict abortion should be "returned to the people," i.e. state legislatures.

Why has NO ONE mentioned returning that decision to the one person who should make it: the pregnant woman????

Thomas brought up an interesting issue.  In several states you can be charged with child endangerment for using dangerous drugs during pregnancy. Those laws in effect provide legal protections to the unborn, restricting the freedom and bodily autonomy of the pregnant person.

The responses to his question -- and he asked it at least twice to different attorneys -- effectively skirted the issue and did not address it.

It's an interesting point.  If you have an unfit mother endangering her fetus, then does the state (the government) have a prevailing interest in the case?  In other instances, the court has ruled "no."  The personal freedoms clauses give parents the option to send their children to religious schools or home school them.  They have the right to refuse vaccines (and the schools have the right to bar unvaccinated students).  Parents have wide leeway in use of corporal punishment.  Does the "fetal viability" finishing line end the mother's autonomy over her fetus?  Not in this case.

Thomas raises a very interesting point.  It wouldn't make sense to protect a fetus from birth-defect causing drugs, while still allowing abortion.  The line between using alcohol -- which could cause Fetal Alcohol Syndrome-- and using an abortifacient -- intended to induce an abortion-- is a very slippery slope indeed.

SCOTUS seems poised to wipe out Roe next June. What happens then?

Twenty-one states automatically immediately ban abortion.

Hue and cry will arise in women who haven't been following the news, which (sad to say) are mostly poor and minority.

Congress could pass a bill overturning the overturn but the Senate won't have the votes to do that until after the 2022 midterms in November. If the above-mentioned hue & cry is loud enough, and harnessed properly, the Senate could flip ten of the twenty Republican seats up for grabs, giving Democrats a filibuster-proof majority.

Conventional wisdom says the party holding the White House loses seats in the mid-term, but it could be different this year.

• Biden's major legislative victories will be widely felt by 11/22
  
  
• Republicans are pushing a widely-despised agenda
  
  
• By November, hopefully, the wind will have been taken out of the sails of the MAGA/STS folks by some very serious jail time for the leaders

I doubt that many, if any, of the high-level traitors will be locked up by then.

Covid will still be an issue, undermining notions of Biden's effectiveness.

Any infrastructure programs that have started won't have made much impact by then.

The evangelicals etc still won't have learned anything.

Voter suppression and gerrymandering will be at an all-time high.

The Russian information war won't go away.

I think I may have to leave the country by 2024. When I left England, I didn't want to go to an undeveloped country.

NoCoPilot wrote:

They DO have concerns about somebody applying the same twisted legal philosophy to eliminate gun rights.

Yay Gavin Newsom!!! SCOTUS opened the door to doing an end-run around precedent and enshrined rights, and SOMEBODY needs to take this ball and run with it.

Does Texas outlaw IVF too? Because excess embryos are almost always created.

If you go through all the scientific arguments against bestowing personhood on a fertilized egg, and all the arguments against forcing a woman to carry to term against her wishes, and all of the bizarre consequences of putting the state in charge of medical decisions...

You're forced to conclude the whole conservative debate about abortion has NOTHING TO DO WITH SAVIN' BABIES.

They don't care about all the unwanted babies who will be born into poverty.

They only care about one thing, this whole debate is about a different issue altogether: reducing women to second-class citizens. Taking away their autonomy. Keeping them "in their place" which is out of business, out of politics, and out of decision-making.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote:

I will not stand by silently as a state continues to nullify this constitutional guarantee. I dissent.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-sonia-sotomayor-texas-abortion_n_61e9d5ffe4b01440a6896067

Practically speaking though, what exactly can she do but "silently stand by"? She may be in the majority (80%) with the American people, but she's in the minority (3-6) on this court.

I wonder if, after Roe is overturned, Gorsach, Kavaugh and Barrett could be charged with perjury, removed from the bench, and the ruling vacated?

They all swore, under oath I believe? at their confirmation hearings that Roe was settled case law and it was not their mission to overturn it. In other words, THEY LIED.

Make no mistake, as soon as abortion is illegal Republicans will be coming after birth control next.

Don't say you weren't warned.

California and Washington state both just voted to make abortion rights less expensive and protected. Now, if some benefactor would just step up and offer to pay transportation and lodging for out-of-state women coming in for medical care....

But I guess, the women could still be prosecuted in their home states. Fucking American Taliban.

Medicare and Social Security.

It's done.  Roe is gone.

Somebody leaked Justice Samuel Allito's draft decision about an hour ago, overturning Roe in toto.  The fact that Alito wrote it, rather than Chief Justice Roberts, indicates it's a 5-4 decision with Roberts siding with the liberals.  The fact that it was leaked to the press -- a first in Supreme Court history -- indicates that Sotomayor or Kagen (or one of their clerks) are VERY unhappy about it.

The draft will be polished and workshopped before being published in June, but the vote is over.  Roe is gone.  

Not just Roe, but ALL abortion is outlawed: rape, incest, fetal abnormalities, the mother's health, at any stage of pregnancy.

And, as Constitutional professor Jamie Raskin pointed out on Rachel tonight, following the overturn of Roe and the total disregard this court now has shown for stare decisis, that means ALL of the precedent that the far right dislikes is soon to be facing overturn.

• Griswald vs Connecticut: goodbye to birth control
  
• Brown vs Board of Education: hello segregation
  
• Loving vs Virginia: goodbye mixed marriage
  
• United States vs Windsor: goodbye gay marriage
  
• Bostock vs Clayton County: goodbye LBGTQ protections
  

Alito's prime reasoning, apparently, is that the word "abortion" does not appear anywhere in the Constitution.  Gee, where does it mention AK47s, dipshit?

Raskin also pointed out the Court does not have a police force or any monetary power.  If states want to DISOBEY the Supreme Court on this, and continue to make it safe & legal, they can.  SCOTUS has no power to stop them.  In fact, SCOTUS says this power should be returned to the states... so abortion will only be illegal in the Republican states.  Maybe women will migrate en masse?

It's more than Roe, of course.  By making this ruling, SCOTUS has removed themselves from having any power over the country since they have no enforcement powers.  They're totally irrelevant and toothless now, and anybody that wants to go against laws anywhere in the country will just have to shop for a like-minded state/county/city.

Mrs. NoCo said, "Maybe there'll be another Civil War, North versus South."  I said more likely the coasts versus the center & southern states.  Any way you cut it, we're in for a bumpy ride for the next 100 years.