The main topic may be a bit more heated and less aligned with typical discussions on HN, but as a DC resident and security/policy wonk I found the details of the breach of the Supreme Court's veil to be much more fascinating.
The main topic is inappropriately flagged, but you can clearly see the meltdown and why it's flagged.
In terms of a breach, I don't believe I've seen anything like this. They seem to have figured out who leaked this. That person will have to live with their decision. I don't know how they will justify or rationalize it, but I don't fathom I would want to be them right now.
Insider threat is very commonly a breach/leak issue. People who have legitimate reason to have access can decide what to do afterwards. No magic DLP is ever stopping someone who has real access. You have to pat people down and wand them for metals and even look for concealed sd cards. It far more security than they are ever subjecting to these people. So the hole is open.
The only way to prevent a breach when the hole is open is to ensure there's no need to leak. If discussing or planning to repeal roe vs wade. The supreme court should be doing this all in public. It doesn't have to be all out news event or even live for that matter.
I'm not going to link it, because they're probably catching some significant heat already, but there's speculation it was one of Sotomayor's clerks. Scroll twitter for a bit if you're inclined and you'll find it.
This sort of leak, likely from a law clerk given that it was a draft opinion, is not a good development. Nobody has any loyalty to their institutions anymore. Every institutional loyalty has been subjected to team red or team blue.
Don't you think it was for money? A law clerk would be risking their entire career for this, and I can't imagine they would do that just to get the news out early.
I wonder if politico will acknowledge whether or not they paid for the leak.
I'd venture it was deemed "worth it" just like the absurd amount of leaks just after Jan 20, 2017. In this case, it's possible that an intentional leak of a draft is aimed to encourage politicians and activists alike to ~~threaten~~encourage various Justices to change their minds before the final decision, ala ACA/Roberts
> There's a third possibility, which might be most plausible: Roberts is doing his institutionalist best to court Kavanaugh and/or Barrett away from a full overrule of Roe and someone wants to deter that defection by documenting that they both initially voted to end it.
I’m doubtful of that; politico lives and dies on having friends in government willing to break things (whether by leaks or just telling their reporters public facts first). Looking like a tabloid has only downside for politico — either people will start to want money for scoops, or they’ll get cut off.
Given the absolute destruction this will wreak on internal institutional trust at the Court, there is only one sitting Justice that would really risk nothing at all by leaking it.
I’m assuming dragonwriter means Breyer, who is retiring after this term. Having followed the court for over a decade I’d been genuinely shocked if it was him.
>Don't you think it was for money? A law clerk would be risking their entire career for this, and I can't imagine they would do that just to get the news out early.
We can only speculate until (unless?) the details come out. It certainly could be for the money. On a hot potato political issue like this, someone who is seen as "helping the cause" could easily make millions from a Gofundme or a book deal. There is also the social capital to be gained among those who would view this person's "sacrifice" as heroic. And of course there are always true believers like Reality Winner who are blinded by ideology and fail to consider the potential consequences of their actions.
Such clerk would be heralded as a hero by many in the far left. They will write a book about it and make millions. Oh and get a show on a liberal network or at least be paid handsomely as a contributor. Perhaps I’m being too cynical.
> A law clerk would be risking their entire career for this
I see two likely outcomes here:
1) The leaker is not publicly identified and their career goes along as well as it would have had they not leaked.
2) The leaker is identified. They lose their clerkship but the leak will end up pleasing about half the country and they get a really nice job with some ideologically aligned law firm/NGO, a book deal, and a lucrative speaking career as the one who bravely risked their job to save the right to abortion.
That is extremely unlikely. There's nothing to be gained by breaking the trust of the supreme court justices by leaking a draft of a decision you are in favor of.
Now, the justices will be facing intense public discontent from those who want a different decision to be made before the draft is finalized (not that I suspect anything can realistically be changed at this point).
If you favor the decision, then it also speaks to money not getting a significant motivating factor (taking money to leak would betray someone they are supporting, which seems less than likely).
By this line of reasoning, I am assuming it was done by someone who deeply opposes the result.
I doubt it's a success. Outside the HN bubble, the overturning itself is the main subject of discussion in places like reddit. In fact, if you take a quick look at the HN "new" queue, you'll see plenty of flagged/dead submissions that directly mention the decision but this one is the only one that gets through because HN disdains mainstream partisan topics like abortion.
Releasing a draft stops many avenues of compromise among the decision makers. Regardless of the industry/institution.
When members do not have a way to change their opinion and save face, they won't change their opinion.
Politico should have been more thoughtful about its disclosure if they preferred to see changes because now the names on that opinion will never change and we could very well see the exact language become the published opinion.
US Supreme justices are appointed for life, the only "face" they have to lose realistically is their legacy reputation, how they are seen by future generations. They are not really vulnerable to populist attacks of hypocrisy or flip-flopping or whatever.
> They are not really vulnerable to populist attacks of hypocrisy or flip-flopping or whatever.
They are humans that have to live in society just like the rest of us. No one is completely invulnerable to society. I imagine being the target of some of these radical abortion groups (anti or pro) would be scary, especially for officials that are normally not in the limelight.
Tell me more about these radical pro-abortion groups of which you speak. I’d really love to know if there’s an equivalent to the violent murderers on the right wing.
Last estimate I'd heard of abortions since Roe v. Wade is 60 million. I haven't a clue how accurate it is, but let's use it as an example.
Pro-life / anti-abortion people believe that a fetus is a unique human life; from their perspective, that's 60 million murders committed against the unborn.
Of course, for any who do not think a fetus is a living human, it is a hollow argument.
>I imagine being the target of some of these radical abortion groups (anti or pro) would be scary, especially for officials that are normally not in the limelight.
These are federal supreme court justices that rule on often (by the nature of the cases they receive) controversial topics constantly. It's not a position you take if you value privacy.
I'm sure now it's especially dangerous, but I don't think this is a novel factor in their life at this point.
That’s incredibly unrealistic in this case. All the conservatives could die satisified the day after this decision is final. They’d have served their ultimate purpose to the cause to which they dedicated their entire lives. This is the one thing they were put on the court to do.
Unlikely. The more obvious intent is to provide a tool to campaign on for the next several months and boost the sagging approval of the president. Something to rally around.
This decision is disregarding what process? This is the power vested in the Supreme Court.
Edit: No, no law is “settled” and impossible to overturn. The comment said “casually overturned”, not “never overturned”.
It’s how it’s supposed to work
You don’t get to pick and choose what decisions you like and then attack the ones you don’t. If you do you undermine the decisions you don’t agree with AND the ones you do.”
And again, there is nothing stopping Congress from turning around and passing a new abortion law that maintains the status quo.
It may not be perfect but if you don’t respect the process then you might as well throw the whole system out the window.
"During his confirmation to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh convinced Sen. Susan Collins that he thought a woman’s right to an abortion was 'settled law,' calling the court cases affirming it 'precedent on precedent' that could not be casually overturned."
Certainly, but one of the deciding votes here won their seat very recently claiming precedent in this specific case made it settled law. That appears to have been a lie.
> A person familiar with the court’s deliberations said that four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices after hearing oral arguments in December, and that line-up remains unchanged as of this week.
> “We talked about whether he considered Roe to be settled law,” Collins told reporters. “He said that he agreed with what [Chief] Justice [John] Roberts said at his nomination hearing in which he said that it was settled law.”
I have no problem with someone taking issue with a specific instance of overturning precedent, or the logic used to do so. But I don't think it's correct to say this never happens or ignores the process. We could look to a myriad of rulings related to slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, etc in which courts previously ruled on flawed precedent that was later overturned (although many bills were also used to help those changes along). It's rare, but it's a type of action that still exists within the overall legal process. I didn't realize the court held constitutional decisions as easier to overturn than statutory ones.
There was also precedent for defending slavery, women's right to vote, and other things but that didn't stop us from progressing or degressing(?) depending on what side you're on.
> And again, there is nothing stopping Congress from turning around and passing a new abortion law that maintains the status quo.
Nothing except Congress being useless. When empty land gets to vote, and half of it votes against functioning government, unsurprisingly nothing gets done.
I'm not sure what you mean by the ignoring process part. Is it the way they were appointed or something to do with the justices themselves?
Government is ignoring processes and right at all levels to some degree. I sympathize with the idea that rule of law has become a joke since nobody can enforce it on the people in power.
This post is gonna be too hot to make reasonable arguments, but I think they're talking about how Garland was never confirmed when Obama appointed him. At least one of these seats should've been someone else.
Beyond that, it's probably also that McConnell used the excuse of the upcoming election to delay that nomination, but not when RBG died.
Which, while perhaps unethical to someone on the other side of the political debate, doesn't contravene any rules as far as I'm aware. Same here, so I think the leak is fine.
That does not change the fact that she was very selfish person who could have easily predicted that the other side will play such political games. Instead of enjoying retirement her ego came in the way
If the Supremes overturn Roe vs Wade they will lose all of the legitimacy they’ve spent the last 70 years building.
At that point the Court itself is fubar. It probably already is fubar since Trump anyway. Clarence Thomas and his wife’s Jan 6th involvement is just the cherry on top of a shit show.
In the end they are falliable humans like the rest of us so perhaps we hold too high an opinion.
The fact that liberals peg their views of the Supreme Court’s “legitimacy” on a cluster fuck of an opinion as Roe v. Wade speaks volumes.
Roe is so bad that it has long united libertarian conservatives (who hate it because it makes up a right out of thin air) and social conservatives (who had abortion on the merits).
In addition to that it manages to be wildly out of line with international norms, which:
1) Generally recognize abortion as an issue for the legislature.
2) Typically draw the line for elective abortions at the end of the first trimester, not viability. The abortion laws in Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain would be unconstitutional under Roe.
I think I've actually asked you something like this before, but is there a compact way to write a constitutional amendment that creates a right to privacy?
Those two examples are literally written down as amendments to the Constitution itself. If France or Germany wanted to amend theirs to reflect free speech and the right to bear arms,, they are free to do so. Likewise, if the Untied States wishes to enshrine a right to abortion analogous to free speech and arms bearing, it is also free to do so.
I'm not following how you think these are comparable.
Hand-wringing about "process" is a POLITICAL argument designed to deflect attention from substance. It's an argument that politicians make to change the topic and not an appropriate argument for the courts. Stop trying to change the topic.
And even if accepting this framing -- which "process" exactly has been undermined? Has someone suggested stripping the courts of jurisdiction for certain cases? Have the courts been defunded or had their staffers taken away? Have the number of courts been reduced or the justices circulated to another court? These are all "process" changes well within the power of the other political branches, that aren't happening here.
In short -- quit changing the topic and perhaps read the draft opinion, which waxes philosophically about the value of public debate on controversial opinions.
This stuff has happened before. It will happen again. I assume that you must believe that the violation of the nine person sacred debate club is far worse than any of the substantive consequences from the actual decision, right?
Specifically -- are you aware that before the Roe v. Wade decision was released in 1973, that news of the decision leaked to the Washington Post? The idea that this has "never occurred" is absurd when a) it has, b) it literally happened in the case that this will overturn.
Are you aware that there was a series of leaks during the Berger court and that everything ended up fine?
> Judicial independence, separation of powers
If the leak came from within the judiciary, how does this threaten the independence of the court?
You think it's a good thing that the judiciary is an ivory tower with absolutely no regard for public perception? These nine people are unelected and appointed to their positions for life. They are insulated from political pressure by the other branches of government. But it is incredibly damaging to a democratic republic if government is unaccountable to the people.
Not to mention, the basic premise of THIS OPINION is that public debate about controversial issues is healthy. Anyone complaining about this leak being damaging are doing a great job of undermining the basic premise of the opinion.
Factually inaccurate. Your statement could be said about the political branches as well, given that direct elections didn't exist when the Constitution was originally drafted the Congress/President were appointed by state legislatures.
But more specifically -- when the country was founded jurisdiction of the court was limited in nature and mainly involved mediating disputes between state governments. The idea that the Court was the ultimate arbiter of constitutional interpretation was a radical idea that was essentially imposed by the first Supreme Court justice.
If you think that the Court shouldn't be concerned with public opinion, well, the court staying out of public opinion is a large part of Alitio's reasoning here and that belies his argument. If being tasked with issuing public and controversial opinions, the justices shouldn't be political activists who are imposing their own personal agendas regardless of political opinion.
Huh? Your argument is "that role for the Supreme Court wasn't decided until 1789"?
I mean, that's correct, but isn't that relevant to the discussion of the Court's role 230 years later.
I think what you want to say is "when the court rules the way I like, it's correct, but when it doesn't, the court is acting incorrectly".
It doesn't work that way
And what’s most hilarious is nobody actually read the draft opinion it says “Roe vs Wade has not resolved it, far better to have Congress resolve it”.
How is that an opinion worthy of attack?
HN likes to think it has as a more intelligent and logical discussion but looking at these comments it’s clear about 90% of it typical social media commentary you’d find anywhere. The few well thought out comments are downvoted to oblivion.
>You think it's a good thing that the judiciary is an ivory tower with absolutely no regard for public perception
yes, the point of the supreme court is to interpret established law (which IS made through public opinion) and make judgement that isn't trying to appeal for their re-election campaign.
>These nine people are unelected and appointed to their positions for life.
in a vacuum, yes. In reality, they are appointed by the president (elected official) with approval from the senate (elected officials). Checks and balances, it's not perfect but it's made so that no one person can basically rule the country like a monarchy.
>the basic premise of THIS OPINION is that public debate about controversial issues is healthy.
no, the basic premise you replied to is "things are so polarized that even state officials are trying to skew opinions through leaks".
Whether it be revealed yesterday or in 2 years, this ruling would not have changed the obviously charged discourse that such a landmark case would bring. There isn't any particular justification that it's in the public's interest to hear this ruling earlier (since, well...it's been ruled over by now I assume. They aren't just going to re-judge the case over some pre-emptive protests). It is in the courts' interests to not have employees release documents off cue.
> These nine people are unelected and appointed to their positions for life.
That's not entirely true, the people voted for them by proxy. We live in a republic not an athenian democracy, this is how a lot of things work, it's how it's supposed to work.
And I would further argue that the justices are pillars of the government in that the foundations are not easily swayed if indeed they are impervious to the temporal whims of galvanized crowds.
This was ultimately the choice of the country within the current framework of the government.
> You think it's a good thing that the judiciary is an ivory tower with absolutely no regard for public perception?
Roe exists only because Supreme Court Justices in their ivory tower overturned the laws the “public” had supported. People are afraid of Roe being overturned only because they are afraid of the laws duly elected officials will enact with public support when it’s gone.
The Supreme Court, as conceived by liberals, is an ivory tower where elite lawyers dish out rulings on moral issues without regard to the public perception.
Perhaps because institutions care not about their people? Granted that Leaking of information by a law clerk when the clerk should be aware that they are not going to like many of the decisions made while clerking is unprofessional at the least.
True. MBA’s are short time horizon creatures. The impacts of their decisions are closely measured related to the number of years they expect to be employed at that company. Why should they care about anything else? Unfortunately, most of the executive compensation measures at corporations support this type of thinking.
Or is it wow that Roe vs Wade is going to get overturned is surprising? It was always assumed when Kavanagh got on SCOTUS but people were hopeful it wouldn't come to that.
It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.
I'm not at all surprised. Though I wonder if the risk of leaks going forward might act as a normalizing force on "hot take" court opinions (in either direction).
I'm looking forward to a post-leak Supreme Court, at least for now. I can't foresee negative outcomes yet so I'm open to a counter-thought to the one I presented above.
Do some reading on the subject? The arguments here are very well documented. If you don’t want to read non-fiction, try Harlan Ellison’s Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine.
What arguments? The parent to my post didn't make an argument, they made a claim unsupported by argument. If the claim is so obvious, it should be simple to post a sentence or two of supporting argument instead of me having to guess what they're talking about.
I think it's self evident. When abortion is made illegal it's not eliminated it's just made unsafe. People resort to unsafe abortive methods which will result in more dead women along with the fetus. Banning abortion also means that when one does need an abortion for medical reasons, it's difficult or expensive to have one, which will result in fewer women seeking a lifesaving abortion. That America lacks socialized healthcare compounds the problem.
Also it means that someone other than a doctor will be deciding on whether the abortion is medically necessary, and that decision will not be made on the basis of the woman's health (because if it were, the woman and the doctor would be the only ones to make it, and the government and the supreme court would have no say whatsoever). Life and death decisions related to a woman's health that are not grounded purely in actual medicine rather than politics and religion will necessarily result in more deaths (otherwise then I think we should make lawyers and priests into doctors because they are more effective at saving lives).
> the Mississippi law under review in this case does not make abortion illegal until after 15 weeks of pregnancy (and even then there are exceptions like the health of the mother)
I don't think you understand what's happened here. The Mississippi law was written for a world where Roe is still active. This opinion eviscerates Roe. Mississippi has a "trigger law" already on the books for just this occasion, and it will place a total ban on abortion as soon as the opinion is issued. Total abortion bans are going to be a thing very soon, even in the case of rape, even in the case of incest, and yes, even in the case where the health of the woman is threatened. That is all currently on the table.
> The Mississippi law was written for a world where Roe is still active. This opinion eviscerates Roe. Mississippi has a "trigger law" already on the books for just this occasion, and it will place a total ban on abortion as soon as the opinion is issued.
Ah, I see. Thank you for providing these critical details.
> try Harlan Ellison’s Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine
If you're referring to having to get an illegal abortion, the Mississippi law under review in this case does not make abortion illegal until after 15 weeks of pregnancy (and even then there are exceptions like the health of the mother). 15 weeks is more than enough time to get a legal abortion. (Note also that the abortion clinic that challenged the Mississippi law only provides abortions up to 16 weeks of pregnancy anyway, so we're only talking about a difference of one week in the time women have to get an abortion.)
The Supreme Court isn't banning abortion. It's moving the issue from the federal level to the state level. It will be members of state legislatures and their governors who will be banning abortion and obviously not in all states.
I think you’re the one making a bad faith argument. “People are going to die” because democrats let the ETC expire. That’s the nature of legislation. Pretty much all of it is impactful enough that you can come up with a body count.
But at the end of the day the rule of law and the process matters. Roe prohibited Americans from banning second trimester abortions, which most Americans think should be banned, and which most liberal European countries do ban. It was substituting the moral views of an elite against the judgment of the public on a fundamental moral line drawing issue.
> Roe prohibited Americans from banning second trimester abortions, which most Americans think should be banned, and which most liberal European countries do ban.
It's even worse than that. As the brief for petitioners [1] notes, only three countries in the world do not ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The US is one. The other two? China and North Korea.
I feel like "impartial AI judge" is at least the top 3 most common sci-fi topics.
I've yet to see a work that puts such a concept in a good light. Even if humans are prone to corruption, the theoretical point of a judicial system is to deal with the edge cases that are never clear cut.
The irony of this line of argument is that an “impartial AI judge” never would have created Roe in the first place. A computer wouldn’t conjure up a right to abortion that’s not expressly listed in the constitution from a right to privacy that’s also not expressly listed in the constitution but is instead conjured up from the “penumbras” of listed rights. Only a human would do such a thing.
But you don't have an inaliable right to creme brulee do you? If the FDA/Congress decides dairy should no longer be sold or consumed in the USA then they can pass a rule/law and it would almost certainly be upheld as constitutional. All the politicians might get thrown out by the cheese lovers in the next election. But it would be perfectly legal. The constitution I think is referring to other rights established in English common law previously?
Unenumerated rights are implied, inferred, etc. The right to vote, for example, isn't actually in the Constitution (eligibility is left to the States, and various amendments only forbid certain types of discrimination in eligibility), but everyone agrees it exists to some extent.
Similarly, a right to privacy of some level is generally considered to stem from the Fourth Amendment. The right to freedom of movement is inferred from the Privileges and Immunities Clause.
An attempt by the FDA to ban dairy would likely meet Constitutional challenges, and I'd expect SCOTUS to find some way to deem it a legislative overreach.
English common law has meaning in the US because of State-level actions, not Federal/Constitutional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_statute (Entertainingly, this means oddities like theoretically having the right to trial by combat in Virginia.)
It’s easier to find some rights implied than others. And the US Supreme Court is unusual in how aggressively it overrules legislatures in finding implied rights.
For example, the European Convention on Human Rights contains an express right to marriage. Yet in 2016, the European Court of Human Rights found that there was no implied right to same sex marriage in the Convention. But the year before, the US Supreme Court had found the same right in the US Constitution, which doesn’t even contain an express marriage right.
The Supreme Court was not designed to be a tribunal of experts that overrules the people on moral questions. Not only is there no basis for that in our Constitution, it’s a departure from how most developed nations understand democracy to work.
You're making my point stronger. The EU Court on Human Rights made those rulings based on the following provisions of the EU Convention on Human Rights:
> Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life
> 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
> 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
> Article 12- Right to marry
> Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right
Even a dedicated textualist could find the above provisions ample justification for finding a right of same-sex couples to marry. Instead, the EU court adhered to a traditional definition of "marriage" and only found a right to civil unions and to mutual recognition across member states.
The U.S. Constitution, by contrast, contains no remotely similar provisions on which to premise a right for same-sex couples to marry. Yet, five justices, including a Reagan appointee, did just that. The U.S. Supreme Court is vastly less respectful of our democratic process than its counterparts in other developed countries.
The "smart contract" stuff from the cryptocoin crowd is more-or-less an attempt at actually doing the "impartial AI judge" thing. I suppose it'll be interesting to see if they get it sufficiently free of bugs and surprise edge cases that it's useful for more than enthusiasts or people doing sketchy things.
But it seems to be getting closer to the point where we can say AI judges are generally unwise based on real experiment rather than on thought experiment. (Assuming it turns out the way I expect.)
The whole case of Clarence Thomas’ wife Ginni Thomas is outright insane.
Like, truth is stranger than fiction levels of insane. From what I learned of the Supreme Court in the most advanced classes offered at my highschool, to then seeing that debacle go down…
Like, it’s impossible to not view the joint as one of the biggest jokes & public failures of our government.
Furthermore, it’s very much an “and this is what’s in plain view” sort of thing. I, and I presume most HN users, have always known the US gov is a bit of a gigantic joke… but I can’t really imagine how much worse things probably are in private after seeing that play out.
It takes some mental gymnastics to say that elective abortions to 24 weeks is a “human right” that’s so important it must be read into the Constitution—implying that countries like France, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Spain are violating human rights by limiting abortions to the first trimester.
But to go further and say the Supreme Court “has lost all credibility” by returning US law to the international norm—where abortion is a legislative determination—is breathtaking.
You have to either be extremely naive or totally oblivious of the current political climate in the US to think this ends with only a ban on abortions after 24 weeks.
No, I think “this ends up” the same way as Europe: most places get a ban at the end of the first trimester, when the fetus has a face and can suck its thumb. Some states ban it or near ban it, like Poland or Ireland until a couple of years ago. A handful of blue states end up with abortion until birth.
Alito is literally calling out gay marriage and contraception as on the chopping block in that thing. I think this ends up someplace very very ugly very quickly.
This just reads like the slippery-slope fallacy. At no point will gay marriage and contraception be on the chopping block. I just talked to some conservative gay couples who align with this draft ruling, and they have no fears whatsoever.
The thing is that the current makeup of the court has been engineered for decades. It was a project that took so long because the exact right conditions needed to be in place: namely the death of a liberal justice while Republicans controlled the Senate and Presidency. In some ways the current court is a bit of a perfect storm.
And what have they been saying they would do for the past 20 years? Get rid of Roe vs. Wade. And what happens as soon as they get control of the court? As fast as they humanly could they tested Roe in front of their new court, and now they've overturned the entire decision in the most brazen way possible.
That was item 1 on their list. In the intervening 20 years there have been other items added to the list as reasons for wanting control of the Supreme Court. Gay marriage has been absolutely listed as a top target since 2015.
Given how they've stated they want to overturn Roe and they followed through, why do you consider the idea that they will go after gay marriage a slippery slope? They've told us they want to do it. Why are we not to take them at their word at this point?
* It reads like an incredible conspiracy theory that the makeup of the court has been engineered. In addition, abortion has been hotly contested and debated, even from just looking at this site. Gay marriage is far less so, and I'm willing to bet that even the most conservative poster on this site would not be against gay marriage. There isn't simply a reason to be against it.
* Even if it were true, same-sex rights are not deeply rooted in history, as is stated in the leaked ruling. The law and rulings should be made without bias of public pressure, and with the knowledge that citizens who votes for these representatives who voted for these justices are getting what they voted for. Who are we to say what is legally right or wrong, without morals?
> It reads like an incredible conspiracy theory that the makeup of the court has been engineered.
It's not a conspiracy theory or a theory at all. You just had to listen and watch what they were doing for the past 20 years. It's not a conspiracy to have a long term project that you telegraph to everyone by campaigning on it. That's called a political platform. It's not some shadowy thing they've done in private; they've done it in the open, slowly, but deliberately. I don't think this is even a question, so I'm surprised you're pushing back on that point unless you don't pay attention to politics. I'm not giving them credit for anything they haven't already taken credit for.
And although I say engineering, it wasn't something they could entirely control. But what they did do was exercise power in pretty craven ways to end up at this 6/3 split (I'm thinking precisely of McConnell holding a seat open with the argument that the people should decide through the upcoming election; and then filling the next vacancy at lightning speed despite being even closer to an election than the last opening).
> I'm willing to bet that even the most conservative poster on this site would not be against gay marriage.
Missing from this site are the fervently religious conservatives. The objection isn't grounded in reason. They're the ones who don't want gay marriage, and they're also actually in power right now in many places. This opinion is a testament to that.
> The law and rulings should be made without bias of public pressure
This presumes that the actors on the court are apolitical and the opinion is grounded firmly in law and logic. I'm still reading the full opinion but my feeling so far is... not positive on that front.
>You just had to listen and watch what they were doing for the past 20 years.
in all fairness, that is prime conspiracy narrative. "just follow the line of strings and it all makes sense!".
The US has been in a swing between the two parties for the past 40 years. to suggest that there's been some kind of plan to fill the courts up an convince the country to overturn a previous ruling would only be possible if you believe the opposing party was in cohoots with the plan. Which is a conspiracy level take that I'd need signifigant, official documents to be swayed on.
Occam's razor still supports your point while keeping the story simple: there's been decades of swing votes with each party getting a justice in over the decades. with the last case happening right towards the end of a controversial president with a controversial 2016 and 2020 election period.
It's a platform, sure. But I think this comes down to a series of happensstance for their plans lining up rather than some carefully crafted web of plans like some sort of thriller movie. We don't need to turn into reddit and make things out to be some grand conspiracy to discuss a topic
> "just follow the line of strings and it all makes sense!"
No I'm not saying follow any strings, I'm saying this is exactly what they said they'd do, and then they did it. How is that a conspiracy? Not every coordinated human movement is a conspiracy. I'm not articulating a conspiracy theory, I'm articulating the Republican Party Platform as expressed by them. Go back and read the platform for any year and it's in there.
I didn't say it was a carefully crafted plan, you're reading that yourself with your assumption that I'm describing a conspiracy. What I'm saying is that when given power, Republicans used it maximally and with purpose to advance the objective of overturning Roe v. Wade. Your observation that parties have swung back and forth does not imply Democrats would have to be in on the plan because Supreme Court appointments are for life, so every time Republicans appoint one Democrats cannot get rid of them.
Republicans did get lucky in 2016 with Trump winning the election, but only because they had previously used their power to unilaterally hold that seat open. And they held that seat open for the express purpose of putting someone on the court who would overturn Roe. And look, that person they put on has voted to overturn. Republicans also got lucky in 2020 when RBG died, but only because they had decided they would abandon their rationale for keeping the previous seat open, and they filled the newly opened seat anyway. That person will be voting to overturn as well. They say that opportunity is luck + being prepared. Yes Republicans got lucky in some ways, but they were prepared at every turn to use all available levers of power to advance this singular objective.
> Occam's razor still supports your point while keeping the story simple
This is an inappropriate usage of Occam's razor, as it requires us to put our heads in the sand about how politics and power work in relation to the supreme court. Saying "there's been decades of swing votes with each party getting a justice in over the decades" implicitly gives weight to the fact that Supreme Court Justices are appointed as part of a political process, driven by political parties, who have stated they intend to use the appointments to further political goals. To that end, conservatives erected an entire vetting system of rating SC nominees on the basis of their friendliness to the anti-choice cause. Only those who were friendly enough have been confirmed.
That the justices then go on to do exactly what they were put there to do is therefore completely unsurprising. But to discount it as mere happenstance and a confluence of factors completely ignores that the process of appointing and confirming them was considered (they didn't just pick the names out of a hat, they picked the names from a list of judges approved by groups who are anti-choice). Arguments were given for appointing these justices, and they always included a recognition that they supported the anti-choice position.
The alternative, that Republicans have been attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade for 50 years, yet when it happens attributing it to happenstance is much more unbelievable to me. It would seem to imply that political parties are completely powerless in advancing their own political goals, and even when they are achieved they can't be attributed to their own deeds. It would mean that Republicans worked feverishly with a singular mind to overturn Roe v. Wade for decades, and ended up doing so on accident. How would the world even work if that were the case?
> I'm willing to bet that even the most conservative poster on this site would not be against gay marriage.
There is an HN poster who is well known for losing his position as a CEO for failure to deal with the PR backlash over his opposition to gay marriage, and others have argued against it on either direct religious grounds or on grounds like the need for marriage to be associated with the production of children.
One of my acquaintances who's a lawyer says in particular certain personal rights to privacy/autonomy that Griswold is built around is a target of the federalist society for a variety of reasons, some of which are business related. Can't remember the details but if you combine a wealth/profit-driven interest with a social conservatives christian patriarchy, the idea that Griswold is just safe because the court wouldn't go there looks pretty thin.
The courts are going to go for broke here, they've got a certain makeup that's been in the making for decades and McConnell's manipulations and Trump's victory got them across the finish line. They're not kidding around with power, they're going to use it.
EDIT: Downvoters, while we're all entitled to the use of that pointy disapproval button, if you think it's fundamentally incorrect to state that Obergfell or Griswold are going to be targeted by the court, you have no idea how thrilled I'd be to be persuaded you're correct. Please, make your case.
Well yes, this is the part that people are most objecting to and calling a human rights violation. How do you gloss over the fact that millions of people in the US will lose a basic right that practically all the rest of western world guarantees its citizens?
>the US will lose a basic right that practically all the rest of western world guarantees its citizens?
This isn't true. The US is somewhat of an outlier in how liberal the abortion laws are here. What's likely is that, should SCOTUS not bow to the inevitable mob that will come after this leak, blue states keep their liberal abortion laws and red states don't. Most of the country will probably have abortion laws that look pretty similar to those of e.g. Germany.
I don't see an issue; this is Federalism and it's by design.
Please reread both my comment and your comment. Do you not see how misleading your reply is? You completely left out a portion of my original quote so you could argue against a straw man.
I didn't say "the US will lose a basic right...".
I said "millions of people in the US will lose a basic right...".
No one thinks this will result in a federal abortion ban, but over a dozen states will immediately ban abortion upon the overturning of Roe v Wade. Those states contain millions of people who will lose the right to an abortion.
Sure. Do you not understand how Federalism works? Voters in some states prefer more restrictive abortion laws. I'm still not following your argument. Is it that, according to you, "millions of people who want abortions" will not be able to get them because some states that are full of people (also millions, ostensibly) who want more restrictive abortion laws are now able to enact them?
Because if that's your argument it sort of gives away the game about the robustness of the Roe/Casey decision(s) in the first place.
The whole point of Federalism is not for the states to decide whatever they want. That would leave little purpose for the existence of the Federal government.
The Federal government abdicating the protection of certain rights means states will infringe on those rights. I can be upset that my fellow citizens will lose those rights even if I live in state that will continue to protect my rights.
> That would leave little purpose for the existence of the Federal government.
Yes, that's exactly the point. States run themselves like little countries and the glowies handle issues that are truly interstate or effect the entire nation.
The idea that someone in "practically Canada" Maine and someone in "practically Mexico" California and someone in "I can see russia" (lol) Alaska all have to run their businesses in some particular way because some jerk on Wall Street ruined it for everyone and got a law made after them is asinine.
Very few countries around the world think that there is a “right” to abortion until viability. It was created out of whole cloth by elite lawyers in the US.
Those states voted for those laws. What interest does someone in California or New York have in trying to overturn the local will?
Abortion isn’t like civil rights, where southern states passed laws directed at a minority that had a unique historical position. States where voters choose to ban abortion have women the same as states who choose to allow abortion and those women agree with the bans. The majority of Black women in Mississippi think abortion should be illegal. Why should anyone in New York get a say?
We had a whole civil war and enacted several amendments to address the unique situation of a majority in a state enslaving or discriminating against a discrete minority.
That has nothing to do with a majority of people imposing restrictions on themselves. 59% of people in Mississippi oppose abortion, including the majority of women. There is no need for California or New York to parachute in and tell them otherwise.
They are not imposing restrictions on themselves. Anyone who doesn't want an abortion can just not have an abortion. They are imposing restrictions on other people. Being a majority doesn't give you the right to impose restrictions on the minority. Bodily autonomy is an individual right. I don't care if you vote 99% to 1%, that 1% still have the right to control their own body.
> That has nothing to do with a majority of people imposing restrictions on themselves. 59% of people in Mississippi oppose abortion, including the majority of women. There is no need for California or New York to parachute in and tell them otherwise.
You could also argue that if 59% of people in Mississippi oppose abortion there's no need to make it illegal. No one will ever force that 59% to start having abortions.
The 59% could simply _choose_ not to have an abortion.
We give the benefit of a safe life to dogs because beating them offers no benefit (and I should note that we _do_ allow putting them down when they're causing excessive harm).
The same doesn't hold for aborting a fetus, because that can be key to the mother's wellbeing. Whether the scale tips toward that of the mother or that of the fetus is the debate, and since it's not cut and dry, individual choice makes sense.
Interesting opinion, but totally irrelevant to the point at hand.
Many people said “gay marriage won’t stop there” and that argument is irrelevant too.
We don’t stop making good decisions because it might lead to bad decisions later.
Edit: And the fun part about this leak? If the Court comes out differently, people will wonder if it was pressured. If anything this leak just will just HARDEN the opinion. The person who leaked probably caused the exact opposite response they wanted.
I wouldn't necessarily read "has lost all credibility" as implying some longwinded thing about human rights in regards to the current case, that the credibility claims are "further than".
There have been attacks and denunciations against the court and its credibility for quite a while. At the very least since that one nomination got deliberately stalled at the end of Obama's last term, but I hear there were people attacking the court even before then, when I wasn't paying much attention yet. Something about hanging chads in Florida for one. Or the previous before-my-time attempt at court packing.
How about, "lost credibility by overturning 50 year old precedent, that was reaffirmed 30 years ago, that a member of the current court even said was "settled law" in his confirmation hearings only 4 years ago" ?
This is the same court that is very likely to find a "human right" to conceal a firearm, despite that premise being contrary to international norms and also contrary to legal historical in America.
In short, America is soon going to switch from a system where a pregnant woman has a human right to self-preservation and instead in many states the life of the unborn child will be privileged over the pregnant woman which is rather far outside international norms.
The Supreme Court was never intended to find human rights. They interpret federal law, including the Constitution. International norms are entirely irrelevant.
Women should be able to control their own bodies, so let's change state laws to make that clear in a way that doesn't depend on judicial interpretation. This shouldn't even be a federal issue to begin with.
Courts are not supposed to legislate from the bench. Roe v Wade was clearly inappropriate ruling from day one. It undermined the integrity of the supreme court.
Abortion should be ingrained as legal via state/federal law.
Roe v. Wade was an interpretation of the Constitution. You might not think it's the correct interpretation, but the decision itself is, in fact, an interpretation of the Constitution rather than a piece of legislation grounded only in itself.
Alito's opinion deciding that there isn't a right, or distinguishing one case from another, is as much a way of "legislating" as Roe was.
And frankly, due to the high likelihood of conflicts in law, this SHOULD be a federal issue. Should states be able to decide who is, and who is not, a human being? Under the Constitution, full faith and credit must be given to the rights afforded by those in other states. If state A says that an unborn child is a person and state B says that they're not, and a pregnant woman travels from state A to B, which state law controls?
The purpose of a judiciary is often to interpret laws that are complicated, often ambiguous, and sometimes in conflict. When people say that judges should just "interpret law" and not "make law," or that these issues should be determined by states... well, the issue will eventually come back to the federal level.
FWIW, I'm far more interested in the gun rights case than this one, and I don't think anyone seriously believes we'll get nationwide concealed carry out of it. The best reasonable case from my perspective is that we'll get "strict scrutiny" applied against the Second Amendment which will in turn invalidate a number of "may-issue" permit systems and perhaps some "category" bans.
I can't imagine a ruling stronger than saying "a state must provide a means for citizens to legally carry a firearm outside their home". Even in that case, there are all kinds of legal impediments that blue states would use to make it as difficult as possible.
> In short, America is soon going to switch from a system where a pregnant woman has a human right to self-preservation and instead in many states the life of the unborn child will be privileged over the pregnant woman which is rather far outside international norms.
I'm not aware of any other major country where abortion third-trimester abortions are legal, as is the case in the US today. Most countries set the gestational limit at ~12 weeks.
> It takes some mental gymnastics to say that elective abortions to 24 weeks is a “human right”
No one ever said that... and apparently you've entirely missed the ProChoice argument. Does a government have the right to prevent you from having an appendectomy? Where does the government end and you begin? ProChoice is about limiting absolute government authority, like, over your cells and junk.
btw the rights in question are already in the Constitution. We generally refer to it as the Fourth Amendment, though an explicit line limiting what the government can do also lives in the Third Amendment. With the 3rd and the 4th Amendments, any ban on abortion is necessarily unconstitutional, in that we have a right to be secure in our persons free from government intrusion, and the government can't force anyone to take on a tenant, even if for only 9 months.
Your remarks are a good summary of pro-choice arguments.
There are also credible pro-life arguments. The 14th amendment's Equal Protection clause is arguably provides the strongest legal basis for banning abortion: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So the legal question is whether a baby that hasn't yet been born is a person - if so, their life ought to be protected by state laws in the same way they protect anyone else's life.
It's a pretty straightforward question - is this baby an individual human being or not? I for one can't accept that I wasn't me while I was yet inside my mom (we know scientifically that after fertilization, I was a distinct human from my mom and dad) - and I see no reason to deny that personhood to fellow people. Answering in the affirmative, and various reasons for such an answer, forms the basis of the pro-life view.
Zooming out a bit, pro-life people see abortion as a modern analog to slavery in the US (where enslaved African-Americans were viewed as 3/5 of a person), except that unborn babies are viewed as not a person at all -- and this framing is used to justify killing them, not merely enslaving them and denying them the right to vote.
If you’re attached by an umbilical cord and that dependent on the womb’s environment, you are in no way individual.
If I hadn’t made it out alive, I wouldn’t care about a thing, same as I won’t care 70 years or so from now. Would have been fine with not experiencing the life I’ve had.
Missing the umbilical cord. Feeds via mouth, not via nutrients taken from someone’s blood. Breathes air, not oxygen taken from someone’s blood. Physiologically separate. Didn’t kill mom in childbirth.
>Zooming out a bit, pro-life people see abortion as a modern analog to slavery in the US (where enslaved African-Americans were viewed as 3/5 of a person), except that unborn babies are viewed as not a person at all -- and this framing is used to justify killing them, not merely enslaving them and denying them the right to vote.
I would argue the better slavery analogy is taking away the bodily autonomy of one individual and forcing them to go through an unwanted and dangerous process for the sole benefit of another individual. That would be like making it a legal requirement for us all to regularly donate bone marrow. Even if we acknowledge the fetus as a person, my rights over my body should still supersede anyone else's rights over my body.
Parental responsibility doesn't stop there. Parents can be jailed for failing to take care of their children; imprisoned for life if their children die through neglect or abandonment; or almost literally enslaved, told what jobs to take and have their earnings confiscated.
I haven't heard anyone seriously challenging the extent of parental responsibility, only when it begins.
Only if that's considered to be in the child's best interests. For example, older children can't be given away without their consent, fathers generally can't terminate their responsibility without the mother's consent, and it must be done in a manner that protects the child (not simply abandoned).
>Only if that's considered to be in the child's best interests.
I don't have to argue against you. I can just point to the leaked draft that argues against you. It specifically cites safe haven laws which allow people to anonymously put their child up for adoption. These laws have no consideration on what the child's life would be like with their biological parents or after they become a ward of the state. The mere existence of those laws is legal precedent that it is acceptable to abdicate care over a child post-birth. Why shouldn't that be possible pre-birth?
Safe haven laws don't do that. They just provide an exception to child abandonment laws. They don't directly affect parental responsibility. If a child has two parents and one of them drops the child of at a safe haven location and the other reports the child missing, the child will most likely be found and given to the parent who did not abandon the child. Nobody will be prosecuted, but the parent who dropped the child off will be ordered to pay child support.
I think this is wrong too, but I think banning abortions is much worse because it's a more direct interference with an individual's body. One is like a a tax, money is taken from you without consent but you are mostly free to get the money however you like. The other is like a mix between forced organ harvesting and slavery where somebody else asserts direct ownership/control over your body.
>Safe haven laws don't do that. They just provide an exception to child abandonment laws. They don't directly affect parental responsibility.
If you can abandon a child without repercussion, how is that not directly affecting parental responsibility?
Whether there are specific exceptions to these rules is irrelevant. Almost no one is pushing for unrestricted abortions up to birth. The analog is that we give people potential outs so they are not forced to be responsible for another person.
You can't equate a purely financial obligation with all the responsibilities of being a legal guardian let alone the process of going through a pregnancy.
I don't think it is fair for one parent to bear 100% of the financial responsibility for a child. I would be in support of a system that allowed a parent to relinquish any financial obligation to a child in exchange for forsaking any familial rights parenthood would traditionally grant them as long as the state would step in and assume that financial obligation. Until the state does that, I think expecting the father to contribute to supporting the child is fair.
If someone advocates for a parent to not have an obligation to pay child support without a way for the other parent to receive the money that child support would traditionally provide them, then they aren't truly concerned about the wellbeing of the child. I therefore will ignore any anti-abortion argument they make that places the wellbeing of the unborn child above the wellbeing of the mother.
> as long as the state would step in and assume that financial obligation
Do you mean a system that provides for the needs of poor children (based solely on financial need)? That already exists, and I'd support expanding it.
Or do you mean a system that reduces the financial burden on a wealthy woman who can afford to provide for her children but simply doesn't want to? I don't see the compelling need for a system like that.
Government support for children should be provided based on their financial need, not an alternative to child support based on the father's income. That's how the available funds can most improve children's welfare.
During pregnancy a woman should be able to terminate her pregnancy to avoid obligation to the child. The rights of the woman supersede the rights of both the child and the father because it is her body that needs to go through pregnancy.
After the birth the parental rights should be equal. Both parents should be able to renounce their obligation to the child. In this situation, the state should step in and assume that responsibility. That applies to both guardianship and financial obligation. The state will only take over guardianship if both parents give up their obligation. The state will step in financially if one parent gives up their obligation.
It is acceptable to put limited restrictions on these such as establishing a reasonable cutoff for abortions as Roe v. Wade allows or the short windows of time that safe haven laws usually establish. What is important is that the parents at least have a choice at some point in the process. Once the parents make that decision, I am fine with them being held to it.
> The state will step in financially if one parent gives up their obligation.
Always? Like, if two millionaires have a child and one gives up their obligation, the government would pay child support to the other millionaire parent?
I couldn't support that. I think whether the state steps in should be based on the child's financial need, not the number of responsible parents.
Too many benefits in the US are gate kept by means testing. It adds unnecessary bureaucracy and causes needless division and animosity among the population.
The rule is just that it's not a crime to leave a child in that location. It doesn't legally affect parental responsibility or anything else outside of criminal law.
I'm 100% in favour of unrestricted abortions up to birth. Bodily autonomy doesn't have a time-limit and it doesn't suddenly become okay for another person to decide what someone can do with their body just because they waited past a particular deadline.
"So the legal question is whether a baby that hasn't yet been born is a person"
That's not the important question. The question is can one person be compelled to use their body to sustain another persons life. We can't even force DEAD people to use their body to sustain life (i.e., a person has to consent to donate organs before they die).
It's people like you that make the world hell to live in.
You have no business telling anyone what to do with their body.
What about your supposed encroachment of our freedoms? Does that not apply here?
Oh, right, when it's the CDC making public health recommendations that's your freedoms being eroded, but when it's the government limiting a woman's autonomy, your all for it.
It isn't really about which is "more important" morally. Both sides agree that infants have some legal rights, the questions are whether one of those legal rights is having their mother to bear them to term against their mother's will and if so, when that right begins and how much risk the mother can be required to accept in doing so.
Edit: One thing I don't see mentioned is how a ethically consistent Pro-Life stance seems to require support for state sponsored healthcare. Requiring people to bear the costs of pregnancy to achieve the state's moral obligations seems unreasonably cruel and counter productive if the infant's well being is the priority. Banning abortions without covering pregnancy costs seems more interested in imposing culture than in protecting the helpless.
On the other hand, the stance that one person cannot be forced to support another would seem to forbid universal healthcare. It's rare to see a 100% ethically consistent position in politics, where most decisions are based on self-interest.
> On the other hand, the stance that one person cannot be forced to support another would seem to forbid universal healthcare.
Nobody is forced to support anyone with universal healthcare. We won't (and shouldn't) send people to jail for not working. Taxes are a part of participating in the economic activity of your country and the amount you pay back into the system is mostly proportional to the amount you get out of it. Disputing the fundamental role of taxes is morally inconsistent in a Kantian sense as the income that is taxed relies on the economy enabled by the government those taxes support. There is plenty to debate about how much to tax and what to spend it on, but I can't take anyone seriously who claims taxes and government shouldn't exist.
While there is room for a range of opinion on what government should be doing, d
Accidents happen. But if someone besides the woman herself can be legally proved to be at fault, I'd argue that person ought to be guilty before the law of anything between involuntary manslaughter to murder, depending on motive, premeditation, actions, and surrounding circumstances.
To clarify my position further, I'm not entirely convinced a woman who intentionally aborts her own baby should be subject to legal review. Though I believe she's morally culpable for doing so, at least at present there are a lot of practical issues with enforcing such a law.
That being said, it's very different if someone else can be shown to have caused the miscarriage (or abortion) to occur -- whether directly or indirectly.
In the most extreme case, consider someone who pointed a loaded gun at a woman's pregnant belly, unprovoked, and fired it, causing the baby's death and injury to the woman. That person ought to be charged with 1 count of first-degree murder and 1 count of aggravated assault, at minimum.
To be clear, what I'm advocating is the equivalent of outlawing assisted suicide alongside murder/manslaughter/etc - all are morally wrong because they take a life.
If someone wants to commit suicide, the law can't do anything about it - they're morally culpable before God for that. But if someone helps them, that ought to be against the law.
If someone helps a woman kill her baby (whether through providing abortifacient drugs, performing an abortion, etc.), that also ought to be against the law.
Maybe I'm equivocating by saying maybe we shouldn't create a law against a woman taking action to terminate her own pregnancy. And I probably would change my mind if I became convinced that such a law could be enforced justly without subjecting grieving victims of miscarriages to a miscarriage of justice.
The problem is, even if a fetus is a person, by all philosophical definitions of a person, pregnancy is only an ethical arrangement if the mother consents to the pregnancy.[1] If she does not, the fetus is, perhaps ironically, violating her human rights.
This is a fallacious argument until you grapple with the reality that no HUMAN has the right to use another HUMAN to sustain life. It doesn't matter if a person is a fully grown adult that can cure cancer and world hunger, or a 1 year child. That person does not have the right to use another person to sustain their own life under any circumstances.
You are arguing a strawman. The question is not if the fetus is "human" or "life".
> This is a fallacious argument until you grapple with the reality that no HUMAN has the right to use another HUMAN to sustain life.
Says who? By that logic, abortion should be legal until birth, and even the most liberal countries in Europe reject that position.
Virtually everyone, including the Roe itself, recognizes that the mother’s right to bodily autonomy has a limit. The question everyone grapples with is where to draw the line.
Do you also support mandatory kidney transplants? It would help save another humans life. 99% of people need only one kidney. If your kidney is found to be a match for another kidney patient- you should be compelled to donate your spare kidney.
I agree you have a right to bodily autonomy, but there has got to be a limit!
The embryo technically develops in a cavity of the “body” of the mother. It is neither limb nor organ (vital or not) of the ‘host organism’ (mother). It is a distinct organism. The open Q is at what point it is a ‘human being’ with associated rights. (Just for FYI, in Islam this transition is held to occur after the development of eyes after which abortion is not acceptable. [I believe this window of ‘choice’ for parents is the first trimester.])
> tenant
Eviction is not something a landlord may decide on their own. Typically you have to take the tenant to court. Sometimes in fact they do end up staying rent free for months.
> We generally refer to it as the Fourth Amendment
Help me understand what protections against warrantless “searches and seizures” has to do with the State regulating medical procedures?
> 3rd amendment
Which says: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner.”
I’m at a loss. You understand the Constitution is a legal document, right? Not a sequence of metaphors and allegories? Is a fetus a “soldier?” No? Then the Third Amendment is irrelevant.
> Help me understand what protections against warrantless “searches and seizures” has to do with the State regulating medical procedures?
I'm sorry, you have to read the first 11 words of the Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons
> Which says: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner.”
I’m at a loss. You understand the Constitution is a legal document, right? Not a sequence of metaphors and allegories? Is a fetus a “soldier?” No? Then the Third Amendment is irrelevant.
I said the spirit of a right of abortion lives in this amendment. If the government bans abortions, this is precisely the same thing as effectively nationalizing fetuses and quartering them in bodies, yes, but also in houses, as those bodies live in houses. The point is consent... if a woman does not consent to a pregnancy...
You really have to try very very hard not to see it. Well done.
Not really, bodily/medical control is a popular perspective on the abortion debate and it's a fairly classic human right, and as we've seen in the recent pandemic, it's a right that the US takes very seriously, more seriously than almost every other country. Wanting the unrestricted freedom to choose what medical/physical procedures can be performed on your own body shouldn't be hard to understand, I'm sure I can find a link to a better explanation if you're really struggling to wrap your head around it.
I'm not really sure what mentioning those European countries is supposed to demonstrate. Are Western European countries supposed to be the last word on human rights? I can believe France, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Spain currently violate a variety of rights I consider human rights, rights that the US upholds. Europe will have substantial political differences with other countries on how it sees rights, this is to be expected. This is a very odd appeal to authority.
They're just the talking points of the last cycle, when the case was argued in front of the court. I don't think the poster as quite internalized what this opinion means in relation to those old talking points. The thinking back then was that the court was maybe going slightly soften Roe by changing something subtle like the line past which an abortion is no longer legal. With a decision like that, the defense would be "Well look at these European countries! You can't say we're worse than them, because Europe is so progressive and liberal, right?" It was supposed to be a way to short-circuit Democratic arguments.
With this newly leaked opinion, the calculus has changed -- it seems that the court will not go with a slight modification to Roe and is instead going with a complete overturning. I think the mistake is in assuming that that's where it all ends. The court has surprised the right and the left here (in opposite ways). So I think it's a valid question as to how far this goes. Because who can stop it? All it takes to invalidate gay marriage is for some religious conservative to put it before the court, and it's done if the court says so.
The attitude which results in this kind of extreme rhetoric and unjustified bashing of institutions will lead to the decline of the US. For a civilization to remain strong and flourish, it has to have some confidence in itself.
What if many don’t see it as unjustified? Given how the last few confirmations have gone, politicians seem to have even less respect for this institution in particular. They’ve shown the citizens how they will fight tooth and nail for every last drop of power they can grab onto. We will not remain strong and flourish; we’re more likely to have another civil war in the next few decades.
You're calling it the last authoritative institution, when two of the last three appointments (Coney and Gorsuch) to it have been made through an utterly insane hypocritical[1], and blatantly partisan circus.
[1] 2016 - It's inappropriate to do an appointment on election year! [2]
[2] 2020 - Of course we will fast-track an appointment on election year!
The credibility of the court only matters to people who want Republican outcomes. I’ve always resented that we have no Federal legal protections for mixed marriage, birth control or abortion.
Terrorism? Really? What law, specifically, has the source even broken? Anyone outraged by this leak should call their Senators and Congressional Representatives and demand more stringent ethical rules for the federal judiciary and funding for their implementation and enforcement.
Also interesting that one of the rare leaks was Roe v. Wade, where the outcome and the vote was published in Time magazine before it was officially announced.
Gay rights and gay marriage equality was one of the top culture war issues that Republicans were fighting against from the late 90s until Obergefell. It’s a best hit. They will definitely bring it back.
Now isn't then, then isn't now. There are no on going marches against gay sex or marriage.
Abortion is a on going divisive battle that goes beyond most issues.
This being said there are lot of R politicians who secretly hate this potential ruling. They want to say a few words about being pro-life, raise some money and thats it. They don't want the blow back of abortion actually becoming illegal.
Likewise in affirmative action. You just listed three things where the supposedly arch conservative Supreme Court is simply making our law the same as France.
> Likewise in affirmative action. You just listed three things where the supposedly arch conservative Supreme Court is simply making our law the same as France.
The reason abortion is not legal until 22 weeks in France is because the Netherlands allows it, and our left-and-center governments don't want to spend the political capital on it. Same stupid reason why Democrats haven't passed a bill since Roe vs Wade.
That said, I would not want to be a Republican right now, giving people something stupid that they want is the best way to get to stupid-ass results.
How do you figure this is bad for republicans? Most people are squishy on abortion. They support some level of abortion, but mostly in the first trimester or for life of mother or birth defects. All of which are consistent with the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court upheld.
Generally, when the current law is detached from public opinion, the party that seeks to change the law should stand to benefit from it. Of course liberals will use their vast media and cultural power to dupe people into thinking the Supreme Court just banned abortion. But most people will notice that the Supreme Court didn’t do that when blue states inevitably adopt liberal abortion laws as a reaction. And most of the people who will be really worked up about it will live in blue states that will quickly enact abortion until birth. I suspect most other states will pick some 13-15 week middle ground.
I can see Republicans fumbling the ball by trying to ban abortion nationwide. But I can also see a bunch of white liberals reacting to this by shouting “celebrate your abortion” and turning off the mostly Hispanic 3 out of 10 Democrats who identify as “Pro Life,” as well as a bunch of squishy moderates.
Apologies, but you are completely detached from political reality. Right now, multiple states have passed legislation banning all abortion, period, no exceptions. Texas’s legislation that SCOTUS refused to halt has made it legally perilous to move out of state to get an abortion.
And do you thinkt he cons on the SCOTUS are satisfied with this? They’ll be glad to ban abortion nationwide completely. They’re not gonna leave it to the states.
>And do you thinkt he cons on the SCOTUS are satisfied with this? They’ll be glad to ban abortion nationwide completely.
Did you read what Alito wrote? He's explicitly stating he doesn't want SCOTUS ruling on the legality of abortion. How, precisely, would SCOTUS "ban abortion" in this scenario?
Bostock was 6-3, with Gorsuch and Robert’s joining the majority. Even swapping RBG for Barret, Bostock still would have come out the same way. Also note that only Alito and Thomas wrote in criticism of Obergefell to concur in the denial of cert for the Kim Davis case.
I know you think conservatives are just as results oriented as liberals, but that’s not true. No liberal Justice will ever go wobbly on a liberal social issue. It’s always a conservative justice that breaks the party line on cases like Bostock (O’Conner, Kennedy, Roberts, and now Gorsuch).
Roe is uniquely at risk because it embraces the liberal notion of Supreme Court as national moral tribunal in its purest form. Even liberals struggle to defend the decision on its on merits. Tim Carney has collected an entire list of quotes from prominent liberal academics criticizing Roehttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/restori...
> One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” That's liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe.
Decisions like Oberrgefell and Bostock are on far firmer legal footing.
> And do you thinkt he cons on the SCOTUS are satisfied with this? They’ll be glad to ban abortion nationwide completely. They’re not gonna leave it to the states.
On what basis? Do you think they’ll make up a right to override state abortion laws the way Roe did?
You keep saying “conservative” but you don’t seem to understand the conservative position here. The right is split over abortion. What they’re united against is Roe, which is both egregious legal ju jitsu and enshrines a right extending to fetal viability that most Americans oppose.
There are six votes to overturn Roe. There aren’t six votes to overturn a federal enactment that protects some level of abortion rights.
There are three Republican senators and zero representatives, as far as I can see, that espouse anything close to a pro-choice position. It has been a litmus test for their candidates for decades.
I don’t see much evidence of what you’re asserting. 13 states have already pre-banned abortion, and another ten plan to when Roe falls. Doesn’t seem to be much of a split.
Republican politicians say that because they’re not in a position to actually ban abortion. It’s like how moderate democrats all purport to support all sorts of progressive things they didn’t support when they were actually in a position to enact them.
35% of republicans say abortion should be legal in all/most cases compared to 80% of democrats: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/06/about-six-i.... Until democrats got more liberal in 2008, there were about the same number of pro choice republicans as there are pro life democrats—over 35% in both parties.
Most Americans don’t know what Roe specifically requires and thinks abortion would become illegal if it were overturned.
If you actually ask people where they think the line should be drawn, most people don’t support Roe’s full scope. They think it should be legal in the first trimester, and support other restrictions that Roe precludes. 44% of democrats think life begins sometime in the first trimester.
The same thing that stops legislatures from doing that in other countries, and the same thing that forced Ireland to legalize abortion a few years ago: voters.
Around time Roe was decided, the high courts of several developed countries (Italy, West Germany, etc.) all took up the same issue. The US was the only one to find a fundamental right to abortion. Germany found the opposite, a fundamental right to life. The other courts determined it was an issue for the legislature.
The difference is that the US is a country and Europe is not. Generally speaking it might limit your liberties if one state did not recognize your spouse and another did.
> Generally speaking it might limit your liberties if one state did not recognize your spouse and another did.
That would violate the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution. Even before Obergefell v. Hodges, states that didn't allow gay couples to marry still had to honor the marriages of gay couples who were married in other states that did allow it.
And abortion is illegal in Poland, and was illegal in Ireland until recently. So what? Somehow the folks in France manage to be part of the same EU as the folks in Poland without getting too worked up about abortion laws that don’t affect them.
Um have you ever looked at the base of the republicans? If you mean the political part of the republicans - probably not but it will get the base out to vote.
Latest sign that the republic is falling. Of course it will still look like it's here for a long time (e.g. the Roman Empire mostly had the same institutions, in name, as the republic) and the decline will be slow-ish.
Oh, well. Roe is really bad law. I mean, just pure made-up gibberish. A real defilement of the Constitution. You should be able to love abortion and hate dada arguments for it at the same time. (I think?)
Abortion will still be legal as a practical matter. Some people might have to travel to the next state over, of course.
We'll have to see how the courts view laws trying to criminalize abortions over state lines; several states are investigating ways to do this or have proposed legislation to do this. I can't really see them surviving serious legal challenge, but then, here we are having this conversation today.
People focusing on the leak rather than what was actually leaked is testament to just how effective conservatives are at propaganda and messaging..
We don't know if this is a majority opinion. It may be a minority opinion in the hopes of becoming a majority opinion. It may not even be real (although that seems unlikely). It could've been leaked by someone on the right to drum up on support but my guess is it's more likely to be someone liberal-leaning who leaked such a bombshell opinion as a massive regression for bodily autonomy and social rights.
If so, that person is a hero. Straight up. Just like then Bradley now Chelsea Manning leaking Benghazi video was (and is) a hero.
People have consciences whether you agree with them or not. Even in wartime and with unprecedented security measures the Manhattan Project was leaked to the Soviets basically immediately by people who saw the US having a monopoly on atomic weapons as being bad for the world.
It's also why I basically don't believe pretty much every conspiracy theory out there, particularly if it involves a lot of people (eg faked Moon landings). Governments are terrible at keeping secrets simply because they're made up of people and those people have motivations of their own.
The Supreme Court is and always has been a political institution. All of the talk about constitutionality is just moralizing and window dressing in expressing a political view as law. This is the same Supreme court that ruled that "citizens" did not include people of African descent [1]. This is the same Supreme Court that in the Reconstruction / Redeemer era completely undermined rights of former slaves.
If you concentrate on the leaker here you're missing the big picture. You're falling into right-wing propaganda about the sanctity of the Supreme Court. It's a myth and a lie.
I have read it. My understanding from reading elsewhere is these situations can be fluid. At the time it was written it may well have been a draft majority opinion. Votes can change. Also, if you accept that the court voted to overturn Roe, the reasoning for doing so can still change. There may be other competing draft majority opinions that are, say, more limited in scope (eg 15 weeks instead of 20).
Nothing is really final until it's published so I am cautious of taking it at face value as established fact. That's all.
> People focusing on the leak rather than what was actually leaked is testament to just how effective conservatives are at propaganda and messaging..
HN is focusing on the leak, but I do not think the larger point here can possibly be missed. I think the male/female ratio here has something to do with the framing of the issue. Women tonight are not thinking about how the leak affects workplace relations between supreme court justices. I mean... my God, what are they going to talk about around the watercooler?
Excuse me, we're looking at a total abortion ban in half the country soon if this decision is to be the law of the land. This idea that it might be limited to a 3.5 month restriction is an old talking point that has been obviated by the news from the Supreme Court. If what was released last night comes to fruition, abortion bans predating Roe and trigger laws passed in the interim will bring full abortion bans into effect immediately. Currently candidates for State AG are campaigning on the promise they will enforce the ban in cases of rape, incest, and life-threatening health conditions caused by the fetus.
How would it make you feel if your wife, daughter, or mother had to die because the government would not let a doctor perform a life-saving operation on them, on the basis that they had a moral objection to it?
Not really no. It's functionally not possible to get an abortion in Tennessee now due to the laws they've been passing there. Also in Texas. Any perception that abortion rights aren't currently dissolving in this country will be laughably aged in a couple months.
So sure, I'll save the majority of my feelings for when total abortion bans are actually in effect in 20+ states across the country in mere weeks. But let's not pretend that the writing isn't on the wall.
> People focusing on the leak rather than what was actually leaked is testament to
...the fact that standard politics tends to be off-topic here, but the meta about how the very unusual leak might impact the system is the sort of thing that's interesting to hackers.
I don't think you have fully thought through your position. See below.
> People have consciences whether you agree with them or not.
Yes, exactly. And many people's consciences in this country tell them that abortion is murder. Particularly abortion of a fetus after 15 weeks (which is when the Mississippi law under review here bans abortion), when the fetus, as the brief for petitioners in this case describes in some detail, already is recognizably human. You might not agree with those people's consciences, but they have them, and they're not going to go away.
And on an issue like this, where different people's consciences are telling them very different things, the Federal Government--any branch of it, whether it's the Supreme Court, Congress, or the Executive--should not be dictating one policy. It should be left to the states, who will enact varying policies according to what the consciences of the majority of their citizens tell them. Some states will be more liberal about abortion, some will be more conservative--because the consciences of their citizens tell them so. That's how the US system is supposed to work.
> a massive regression for bodily autonomy and social rights.
This is nonsense. You talk about right-wing propaganda about the sanctity of the Supreme Court; this claim is left-wing propaganda trying to push a concept of "autonomy" that completely denies personal responsibility, without which no republic like ours can endure.
As noted above, the Mississippi law under review in this case only bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. 15 weeks is more than enough time for a woman to make a decision about her "bodily autonomy and social rights" if she has an unexpected pregnancy. "Bodily autonomy and social rights" does not mean the right to dawdle over an important, life-altering decision indefinitely. The deadline this Mississippi law sets is perfectly reasonable.
So how is someone who leaked a draft Supreme Court decision that will undermine our trust in a valuable institution, in the name of a policy goal that doesn't even make sense, and which goes against the consciences of many Americans, a hero, again?
Ah, yes. The same “states’ rights” used to subjugate black people with chattel slavery should now be repurposed to subjugate women by robbing them of bodily autonomy.
Your 15 weeks bit is actually where I expected this to go. Robert’s, who I genuinely believe is aware of and concerned with the perceived legitimacy of the Court, I expected him to broker a compromise that looked like that. But that’s not what this draft looks like.
You may believe abortion is murder but that’s a completely arbitrary and, more importantly, a religious doctrine. As an aside, even that view is a modern reinterpretation that has its roots in segregation. In the early 1970s, Baptists said the Bible was silent on the issue.
Your religion is your business. I draw the line at you imposing it on others.
> The same “states’ rights” used to subjugate black people with chattel slavery
States' rights is in the Constitution: the Tenth Amendment. And there is another amendment that abolished slavery, so we fixed the issue that you are talking about here. But that fix did not abolish states' rights. It still leaves things to the states that should be left to the states.
> should now be repurposed to subjugate women by robbing them of bodily autonomy.
I already explained why this is nonsense.
> You may believe abortion is murder but that’s a completely arbitrary and, more importantly, a religious doctrine.
Not everyone who believes abortion is murder believes that on religious grounds. There are valid non-religious grounds for considering a fetus, or at least a fetus after 15 weeks, which is the deadline in the law under review, to be a person, at least to a sufficient extent that aborting it would be murder. (The brief for petitioners in this case describes some of them.) You might not agree with them, but that doesn't make them "arbitrary".
It's not mine, it's what the law under review says.
> I expected him to broker a compromise that looked like that.
Upholding the law under review would "look like that" no matter what. 15 weeks is what the law already says. The Court wouldn't have to rule that every state law has to use the 15 weeks deadline; indeed, I don't think it should. It would just have to rule that the 15 weeks deadline is within the power of the state's legislature to enact.
> That went well for Texas' abortion law, didn't it..?
That would depend on what your conscience says, wouldn't it?
> Majority is also not always right, not when it's used to tyrannise the minority.
If a person's conscience tells them that abortion is murder, how would enacting a law against it, for that person, be any different than enacting a law against murder? Nobody argues that laws against murder are "tyrannizing the minority" who want to commit murder.
Or, to look at it the other way, if a person's conscience tells them that abortion is murder, but the majority in the state they live in think it isn't, and the laws of the state they live in, which are in accord with the wishes of the majority, permit abortions liberally, is that majority "tyrannizing" that person?
Why isn't then the anti-abortion laws similar to laws for murder? Can you sue strangers for murdering some other strangers?
I don't buy the "my point is that it's murder"-arguments, as the behaviors from those people don't really align with that. Why not instead focus on stuff that science and experience tell will reduce the amount of abortions and human suffering? My guess: Because it's mostly about control of others, right?
Isn't this whole thread about those people getting rid of an impediment to changing the laws (in some places) to make it be treated more like murder? You seem to be condemning the pro-life contingent for doing the very thing they're now being also condemned for.
> Why not instead focus on stuff that science and experience tell will reduce the amount of abortions and human suffering?
That kind of argument would not support the Roe and Casey viability standard for when states can ban abortions, since our current science and experience says that an abortion will cause suffering to the fetus well before viability.
> Because it's mostly about control of others, right?
A woman getting an abortion is controlling another: the fetus. She is determining the fate of that fetus without the fetus being able to defend itself.
A big part of the problem with the "bodily autonomy" side of the abortion issue is that they only talk about the woman, never about the fetus. The hard truth is that once a woman is pregnant, it's no longer just about her. Any reasonable concept of personal responsibility will require the woman to take the fetus's interests into account and will not support a claim that a woman has a right to an abortion just because she has a right to "autonomy".
My point was really that if you want to reduce the amount of abortions, do stuff that actually helps: promote sexual education, support free and available contraceptive, support government programs that help families so that having a kid is less of a financial burden, support longer maternity leave.
Etc etc etc. All stuff that will reduce abortions. Isn't that the goal? So why are mist people against abortion also against most of this stuff?
And we all know that outlawing abortions doesn't stop them. It just makes them more dangerous and lead to more suffering for everyone involved.
> if you want to reduce the amount of abortions, do stuff that actually helps: promote sexual education, support free and available contraceptive, support government programs that help families so that having a kid is less of a financial burden, support longer maternity leave.
Our society already does most of these things. One I would add is adoption.
> All stuff that will reduce abortions. Isn't that the goal?
I don't think reducing the number of abortions is the goal of many pro-abortion people, no. I think they just want a convenient way to not have to deal with a child they don't want by making it just go away.
> why are mist people against abortion also against most of this stuff?
Many people who are for abortion are also against much of this stuff.
> we all know that outlawing abortions doesn't stop them. It just makes them more dangerous and lead to more suffering for everyone involved.
This argument assumes that abortion is not inherently wrong. Many people who oppose abortion do believe that it is inherently wrong. If abortion is inherently wrong, it should not be legal even if some people will choose to do it knowing it is illegal, and having to do it by more dangerous means. If they choose to do it knowing it's illegal, that's their choice and they will have to bear the consequences.
> what is really your goal here?
As far as I my personal policy preference? I think the fact that there is such profound disagreement about whether abortion is wrong means that there should not be one single policy dictated to everyone. Different states should be able to have different policies.
You managed to weasel out of most of my points, which doesn't make for very fruitful discussion. But I have one more thing to add:
> This argument assumes that abortion is not inherently wrong. Many people who oppose abortion do believe that it is inherently wrong.
No. If they believed it, they wouldn't themselves get an abortion when having a child would be bad. Soooo many stories of pro-lifers preaching one thing, and doing something else when they themselves face a situation wanting to abort. They are "excused" because of the circumstances, but when others have the same problems, they are "immoral" for getting into the situation.
That's hypocritical, and shows it's more about imposing moral values onto others and controlling them, not a belief about it being inherently wrong.
> You managed to weasel out of most of my points, which doesn't make for very fruitful discussion.
It seems to me that you are the one weaseling, since the points you are responding to bear no resemblance to any points I've actually made.
> Soooo many stories of pro-lifers preaching one thing, and doing something else when they themselves face a situation wanting to abort.
I am not any such "pro-lifer" (I'm not a "pro-lifer" at all, that's a buzzword, just like "pro-choice" or "bodily autonomy"). So whoever you think you are responding to here, it isn't me. Nor are all people who believe abortion is wrong "pro-lifers".
> The Supreme Court is and always has been a political institution. All of the talk about constitutionality is just moralizing and window dressing in expressing a political view as law.
I agree that many Supreme Court decisions do do this. And I think that two of those are Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. So I think the Court overturning those decisions would be a good thing, as it would send a signal that the Court is willing to back off from expressing political views as law and try to return to its proper function.
Hmm I don't know. I could possibly see some room for a compromise between blue and red states where a constitutional addmenment would protect a right to abortion in the first trimester and ban it afterwords. It would be likey be opposed by many on both extremes but ALOT of people are in the fuzzy gray space between the two sides on this very complex issue.
Red states aren't going to compromise now that they know the Supreme Court is in their pocket. If they go for a constitutional amendment it will be for an explicit and unconditional ban on abortion, and probably an amendment banning gay marriage as well.
They consider themselves fighting a holy war where these things are concerned, not mere politics, and doesn't compromise with the enemy when one can destroy them utterly.
From where I sit, the pro-gay-marriage people also think they are fighting a "holy" war, or something equivalent to one. They (at least some of them) certainly act as "destroy them utterly" as the conservatives.
In fact, I would guess that at least part of the conservative rage on this issue comes not from gay marriage being legalized, but from liberals who attempt to stamp out and punish any remaining counter-opinion.
A big part of Russia's game has been to try to divide the US politically. Well, this is probably the single biggest hand grenade they could have thrown into the middle of our society. And it's at a time when they'd really love to distract us from what they're doing in Ukraine.
So they have motive. It fits their MO. Do they have the means to breach the Supreme Court? Probably.
Does that mean that they definitely did it? No. It's just an idea - a pattern that seems to fit.
No, the "narrative" is not based just on Clinton's claims. There's way more than that. There's research into fake social media accounts, what they do, and who runs them.
To me, the one that really stands out was when sock puppet Facebook accounts organized a BLM rally and a MAGA rally at the same time and place. That seems pretty clear what the intent was.
And virtually all that research is wrong. It's full of stuff like "here's a Russian bot whoops no that's actually a Scottish car park attendant". Or "here's an ML model that detects Russian bots oops it detected Biden as a bot".
The quality of evidence for this idea (really, this conspiracy theory) is absurdly low. And it remains true that nobody was spreading this idea up until the moment it became clear that the supposed Russian sock puppets appeared to be supporting both sides in the election. I remember it quite clearly. The supposed Russian master plan changed overnight after that.
Whoever did this is a Chelsea Manning-tier hero. As long as the conservatives keep ratfucking democracy and human rights, they do not deserve the quarter afforded by the usual closed-door processes.
This is true. However, we need to start somewhere and the GOP is overtly a far-right, terrorist organization. It would only take a declaration from the President to that effect, and then the government could legitimately freeze its assets and lock it out of political life, setting the stage for a Democrats-Greens bipartisan political axis. When the farthest right party that's still acceptable is the Democrats, maybe real work can begin.
> It would only take a declaration from the President to that effect, and then the government could legitimately freeze its assets and lock it out of political life, setting the stage for a Democrats-Greens bipartisan political axis.
LOL, the Nazis rose to power and it wasn't until they were defeated in war that they did so. It is an entirely different situation, and Germans also lost certain political freedoms including certain video games.
357 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 302 ms ] threadMain topic is the leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abort...
I can see why that got leaked.
In terms of a breach, I don't believe I've seen anything like this. They seem to have figured out who leaked this. That person will have to live with their decision. I don't know how they will justify or rationalize it, but I don't fathom I would want to be them right now.
Insider threat is very commonly a breach/leak issue. People who have legitimate reason to have access can decide what to do afterwards. No magic DLP is ever stopping someone who has real access. You have to pat people down and wand them for metals and even look for concealed sd cards. It far more security than they are ever subjecting to these people. So the hole is open.
The only way to prevent a breach when the hole is open is to ensure there's no need to leak. If discussing or planning to repeal roe vs wade. The supreme court should be doing this all in public. It doesn't have to be all out news event or even live for that matter.
Source? Can you elaborate? This is the first I’ve seen anything even mentioned about identifying the source of the leak.
I wonder if politico will acknowledge whether or not they paid for the leak.
https://twitter.com/stevenmazie/status/1521298950011207680
Because the opinion can still change. The votes can still change.
We can only speculate until (unless?) the details come out. It certainly could be for the money. On a hot potato political issue like this, someone who is seen as "helping the cause" could easily make millions from a Gofundme or a book deal. There is also the social capital to be gained among those who would view this person's "sacrifice" as heroic. And of course there are always true believers like Reality Winner who are blinded by ideology and fail to consider the potential consequences of their actions.
I see two likely outcomes here:
1) The leaker is not publicly identified and their career goes along as well as it would have had they not leaked.
2) The leaker is identified. They lose their clerkship but the leak will end up pleasing about half the country and they get a really nice job with some ideologically aligned law firm/NGO, a book deal, and a lucrative speaking career as the one who bravely risked their job to save the right to abortion.
The courts will make a decision and then it's up to Congress to draft new laws if it wants.
Undermining the process of the judicial branch is not going to end well at all.
Now, the justices will be facing intense public discontent from those who want a different decision to be made before the draft is finalized (not that I suspect anything can realistically be changed at this point).
If you favor the decision, then it also speaks to money not getting a significant motivating factor (taking money to leak would betray someone they are supporting, which seems less than likely).
By this line of reasoning, I am assuming it was done by someone who deeply opposes the result.
Yes, there is. You potentially lock in someone who’s been waffling on their final vote by making their initial vote public.
Seems to be working quite well, I'd say a success overall.
When members do not have a way to change their opinion and save face, they won't change their opinion.
Politico should have been more thoughtful about its disclosure if they preferred to see changes because now the names on that opinion will never change and we could very well see the exact language become the published opinion.
They are humans that have to live in society just like the rest of us. No one is completely invulnerable to society. I imagine being the target of some of these radical abortion groups (anti or pro) would be scary, especially for officials that are normally not in the limelight.
Pro-life / anti-abortion people believe that a fetus is a unique human life; from their perspective, that's 60 million murders committed against the unborn.
Of course, for any who do not think a fetus is a living human, it is a hollow argument.
These are federal supreme court justices that rule on often (by the nature of the cases they receive) controversial topics constantly. It's not a position you take if you value privacy.
I'm sure now it's especially dangerous, but I don't think this is a novel factor in their life at this point.
Edit: No, no law is “settled” and impossible to overturn. The comment said “casually overturned”, not “never overturned”.
It’s how it’s supposed to work
You don’t get to pick and choose what decisions you like and then attack the ones you don’t. If you do you undermine the decisions you don’t agree with AND the ones you do.”
And again, there is nothing stopping Congress from turning around and passing a new abortion law that maintains the status quo.
It may not be perfect but if you don’t respect the process then you might as well throw the whole system out the window.
Stare decisis, aka precedent.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/is-roe-v-wade-settled-la...
"During his confirmation to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh convinced Sen. Susan Collins that he thought a woman’s right to an abortion was 'settled law,' calling the court cases affirming it 'precedent on precedent' that could not be casually overturned."
> A person familiar with the court’s deliberations said that four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices after hearing oral arguments in December, and that line-up remains unchanged as of this week.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/21/brett-kavanaugh-ro...
> “We talked about whether he considered Roe to be settled law,” Collins told reporters. “He said that he agreed with what [Chief] Justice [John] Roberts said at his nomination hearing in which he said that it was settled law.”
Lisa Murkowski now openly claims to have been misled by the nominees, as well. https://twitter.com/SamanthaJoRoth/status/152152291819859148...
https://theconversation.com/the-supreme-court-has-overturned...
> degressing(?)
regressing ("deteriorating" or "degenerating" could also work)
Sure I do. This one hurts people and is being decided by a broken court, formed by illigitimate means.
Nothing except Congress being useless. When empty land gets to vote, and half of it votes against functioning government, unsurprisingly nothing gets done.
Government is ignoring processes and right at all levels to some degree. I sympathize with the idea that rule of law has become a joke since nobody can enforce it on the people in power.
Which, while perhaps unethical to someone on the other side of the political debate, doesn't contravene any rules as far as I'm aware. Same here, so I think the leak is fine.
If people dont vote for the opposition party then what exactly can the opposition do when they dont have the majority?
RBG could have retired earlier when democrats had majority but probably for some selfish reason she did not do that.
His did.
I've made it myself.
Again: it did not subvert process or go against precedent. Numerous justices have long-overstayed their terms.
At that point the Court itself is fubar. It probably already is fubar since Trump anyway. Clarence Thomas and his wife’s Jan 6th involvement is just the cherry on top of a shit show.
In the end they are falliable humans like the rest of us so perhaps we hold too high an opinion.
Roe is so bad that it has long united libertarian conservatives (who hate it because it makes up a right out of thin air) and social conservatives (who had abortion on the merits).
In addition to that it manages to be wildly out of line with international norms, which:
1) Generally recognize abortion as an issue for the legislature.
2) Typically draw the line for elective abortions at the end of the first trimester, not viability. The abortion laws in Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain would be unconstitutional under Roe.
Isn't our take on freedom of speech rather out of line with international norms? And probably also our take on bearing arms being a right?
I don't think I buy the implied claim that being out of line with norms is necessarily a bad thing.
I'm not following how you think these are comparable.
And even if accepting this framing -- which "process" exactly has been undermined? Has someone suggested stripping the courts of jurisdiction for certain cases? Have the courts been defunded or had their staffers taken away? Have the number of courts been reduced or the justices circulated to another court? These are all "process" changes well within the power of the other political branches, that aren't happening here.
In short -- quit changing the topic and perhaps read the draft opinion, which waxes philosophically about the value of public debate on controversial opinions.
Are you aware of “separation of powers”?
Are you aware that no such leak has ever occurred before it interferes with judicial independence?
Are you aware that the courts job is to decide if laws are constitutional/valid and Congress’ job to actually create law?
You hand wave away “process” when the entire function of the government is based on process.
If you throw away process you throw away the entire system.
Specifically -- are you aware that before the Roe v. Wade decision was released in 1973, that news of the decision leaked to the Washington Post? The idea that this has "never occurred" is absurd when a) it has, b) it literally happened in the case that this will overturn.
Are you aware that there was a series of leaks during the Berger court and that everything ended up fine?
> Judicial independence, separation of powers
If the leak came from within the judiciary, how does this threaten the independence of the court?
That's not the same you realize?
Not to mention, the basic premise of THIS OPINION is that public debate about controversial issues is healthy. Anyone complaining about this leak being damaging are doing a great job of undermining the basic premise of the opinion.
Yes! That the entire point of the Supreme Court.
It’s amazing how many comments don’t even understand basic civics and how the US government is structured.
But more specifically -- when the country was founded jurisdiction of the court was limited in nature and mainly involved mediating disputes between state governments. The idea that the Court was the ultimate arbiter of constitutional interpretation was a radical idea that was essentially imposed by the first Supreme Court justice.
If you think that the Court shouldn't be concerned with public opinion, well, the court staying out of public opinion is a large part of Alitio's reasoning here and that belies his argument. If being tasked with issuing public and controversial opinions, the justices shouldn't be political activists who are imposing their own personal agendas regardless of political opinion.
I mean, that's correct, but isn't that relevant to the discussion of the Court's role 230 years later.
I think what you want to say is "when the court rules the way I like, it's correct, but when it doesn't, the court is acting incorrectly".
It doesn't work that way
And what’s most hilarious is nobody actually read the draft opinion it says “Roe vs Wade has not resolved it, far better to have Congress resolve it”.
How is that an opinion worthy of attack?
HN likes to think it has as a more intelligent and logical discussion but looking at these comments it’s clear about 90% of it typical social media commentary you’d find anywhere. The few well thought out comments are downvoted to oblivion.
yes, the point of the supreme court is to interpret established law (which IS made through public opinion) and make judgement that isn't trying to appeal for their re-election campaign.
>These nine people are unelected and appointed to their positions for life.
in a vacuum, yes. In reality, they are appointed by the president (elected official) with approval from the senate (elected officials). Checks and balances, it's not perfect but it's made so that no one person can basically rule the country like a monarchy.
>the basic premise of THIS OPINION is that public debate about controversial issues is healthy.
no, the basic premise you replied to is "things are so polarized that even state officials are trying to skew opinions through leaks".
Whether it be revealed yesterday or in 2 years, this ruling would not have changed the obviously charged discourse that such a landmark case would bring. There isn't any particular justification that it's in the public's interest to hear this ruling earlier (since, well...it's been ruled over by now I assume. They aren't just going to re-judge the case over some pre-emptive protests). It is in the courts' interests to not have employees release documents off cue.
That's not entirely true, the people voted for them by proxy. We live in a republic not an athenian democracy, this is how a lot of things work, it's how it's supposed to work.
And I would further argue that the justices are pillars of the government in that the foundations are not easily swayed if indeed they are impervious to the temporal whims of galvanized crowds.
This was ultimately the choice of the country within the current framework of the government.
Roe exists only because Supreme Court Justices in their ivory tower overturned the laws the “public” had supported. People are afraid of Roe being overturned only because they are afraid of the laws duly elected officials will enact with public support when it’s gone.
The Supreme Court, as conceived by liberals, is an ivory tower where elite lawyers dish out rulings on moral issues without regard to the public perception.
That's a kind of technical nerdery despite having nothing to do with computers. And it's interesting, and fun to (argue|watch arguments) about.
https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog/status/1521295411545260035?t=...
It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.
I'm looking forward to a post-leak Supreme Court, at least for now. I can't foresee negative outcomes yet so I'm open to a counter-thought to the one I presented above.
Judges care about their legacy, and most of the time, most of them don't want a legacy of being the asshole on the wrong side of history.
Why?
(And why is abortion itself not a death sentence for the aborted fetus?)
What arguments? The parent to my post didn't make an argument, they made a claim unsupported by argument. If the claim is so obvious, it should be simple to post a sentence or two of supporting argument instead of me having to guess what they're talking about.
Also it means that someone other than a doctor will be deciding on whether the abortion is medically necessary, and that decision will not be made on the basis of the woman's health (because if it were, the woman and the doctor would be the only ones to make it, and the government and the supreme court would have no say whatsoever). Life and death decisions related to a woman's health that are not grounded purely in actual medicine rather than politics and religion will necessarily result in more deaths (otherwise then I think we should make lawyers and priests into doctors because they are more effective at saving lives).
> the Mississippi law under review in this case does not make abortion illegal until after 15 weeks of pregnancy (and even then there are exceptions like the health of the mother)
I don't think you understand what's happened here. The Mississippi law was written for a world where Roe is still active. This opinion eviscerates Roe. Mississippi has a "trigger law" already on the books for just this occasion, and it will place a total ban on abortion as soon as the opinion is issued. Total abortion bans are going to be a thing very soon, even in the case of rape, even in the case of incest, and yes, even in the case where the health of the woman is threatened. That is all currently on the table.
Ah, I see. Thank you for providing these critical details.
If you're referring to having to get an illegal abortion, the Mississippi law under review in this case does not make abortion illegal until after 15 weeks of pregnancy (and even then there are exceptions like the health of the mother). 15 weeks is more than enough time to get a legal abortion. (Note also that the abortion clinic that challenged the Mississippi law only provides abortions up to 16 weeks of pregnancy anyway, so we're only talking about a difference of one week in the time women have to get an abortion.)
People are gonna die because of this and you're here AXTUALLTIing this?
But at the end of the day the rule of law and the process matters. Roe prohibited Americans from banning second trimester abortions, which most Americans think should be banned, and which most liberal European countries do ban. It was substituting the moral views of an elite against the judgment of the public on a fundamental moral line drawing issue.
It's even worse than that. As the brief for petitioners [1] notes, only three countries in the world do not ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The US is one. The other two? China and North Korea.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/184703/202...
[0] https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/150627311232057754...
The subject of public discourse at this hour.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abort...
I've yet to see a work that puts such a concept in a good light. Even if humans are prone to corruption, the theoretical point of a judicial system is to deal with the edge cases that are never clear cut.
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
It doesn't have to be written down for it to be one.
Similarly, a right to privacy of some level is generally considered to stem from the Fourth Amendment. The right to freedom of movement is inferred from the Privileges and Immunities Clause.
An attempt by the FDA to ban dairy would likely meet Constitutional challenges, and I'd expect SCOTUS to find some way to deem it a legislative overreach.
English common law has meaning in the US because of State-level actions, not Federal/Constitutional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_statute (Entertainingly, this means oddities like theoretically having the right to trial by combat in Virginia.)
It’s easier to find some rights implied than others. And the US Supreme Court is unusual in how aggressively it overrules legislatures in finding implied rights.
For example, the European Convention on Human Rights contains an express right to marriage. Yet in 2016, the European Court of Human Rights found that there was no implied right to same sex marriage in the Convention. But the year before, the US Supreme Court had found the same right in the US Constitution, which doesn’t even contain an express marriage right.
The Supreme Court was not designed to be a tribunal of experts that overrules the people on moral questions. Not only is there no basis for that in our Constitution, it’s a departure from how most developed nations understand democracy to work.
They've ruled EU states have to recognize other countries' same-sex unions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coman_and_Others_v_General_Ins...) and required at least civil unions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliari_and_Others_v._Italy), which puts them well ahead of the pre-Obergefell USA.
> Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life
> 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
> 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
> Article 12- Right to marry
> Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right
Even a dedicated textualist could find the above provisions ample justification for finding a right of same-sex couples to marry. Instead, the EU court adhered to a traditional definition of "marriage" and only found a right to civil unions and to mutual recognition across member states.
The U.S. Constitution, by contrast, contains no remotely similar provisions on which to premise a right for same-sex couples to marry. Yet, five justices, including a Reagan appointee, did just that. The U.S. Supreme Court is vastly less respectful of our democratic process than its counterparts in other developed countries.
But it seems to be getting closer to the point where we can say AI judges are generally unwise based on real experiment rather than on thought experiment. (Assuming it turns out the way I expect.)
Like, truth is stranger than fiction levels of insane. From what I learned of the Supreme Court in the most advanced classes offered at my highschool, to then seeing that debacle go down…
Like, it’s impossible to not view the joint as one of the biggest jokes & public failures of our government.
Furthermore, it’s very much an “and this is what’s in plain view” sort of thing. I, and I presume most HN users, have always known the US gov is a bit of a gigantic joke… but I can’t really imagine how much worse things probably are in private after seeing that play out.
But to go further and say the Supreme Court “has lost all credibility” by returning US law to the international norm—where abortion is a legislative determination—is breathtaking.
And what have they been saying they would do for the past 20 years? Get rid of Roe vs. Wade. And what happens as soon as they get control of the court? As fast as they humanly could they tested Roe in front of their new court, and now they've overturned the entire decision in the most brazen way possible.
That was item 1 on their list. In the intervening 20 years there have been other items added to the list as reasons for wanting control of the Supreme Court. Gay marriage has been absolutely listed as a top target since 2015.
Given how they've stated they want to overturn Roe and they followed through, why do you consider the idea that they will go after gay marriage a slippery slope? They've told us they want to do it. Why are we not to take them at their word at this point?
* It reads like an incredible conspiracy theory that the makeup of the court has been engineered. In addition, abortion has been hotly contested and debated, even from just looking at this site. Gay marriage is far less so, and I'm willing to bet that even the most conservative poster on this site would not be against gay marriage. There isn't simply a reason to be against it.
* Even if it were true, same-sex rights are not deeply rooted in history, as is stated in the leaked ruling. The law and rulings should be made without bias of public pressure, and with the knowledge that citizens who votes for these representatives who voted for these justices are getting what they voted for. Who are we to say what is legally right or wrong, without morals?
It's not a conspiracy theory or a theory at all. You just had to listen and watch what they were doing for the past 20 years. It's not a conspiracy to have a long term project that you telegraph to everyone by campaigning on it. That's called a political platform. It's not some shadowy thing they've done in private; they've done it in the open, slowly, but deliberately. I don't think this is even a question, so I'm surprised you're pushing back on that point unless you don't pay attention to politics. I'm not giving them credit for anything they haven't already taken credit for.
And although I say engineering, it wasn't something they could entirely control. But what they did do was exercise power in pretty craven ways to end up at this 6/3 split (I'm thinking precisely of McConnell holding a seat open with the argument that the people should decide through the upcoming election; and then filling the next vacancy at lightning speed despite being even closer to an election than the last opening).
> I'm willing to bet that even the most conservative poster on this site would not be against gay marriage.
Missing from this site are the fervently religious conservatives. The objection isn't grounded in reason. They're the ones who don't want gay marriage, and they're also actually in power right now in many places. This opinion is a testament to that.
> The law and rulings should be made without bias of public pressure
This presumes that the actors on the court are apolitical and the opinion is grounded firmly in law and logic. I'm still reading the full opinion but my feeling so far is... not positive on that front.
in all fairness, that is prime conspiracy narrative. "just follow the line of strings and it all makes sense!".
The US has been in a swing between the two parties for the past 40 years. to suggest that there's been some kind of plan to fill the courts up an convince the country to overturn a previous ruling would only be possible if you believe the opposing party was in cohoots with the plan. Which is a conspiracy level take that I'd need signifigant, official documents to be swayed on.
Occam's razor still supports your point while keeping the story simple: there's been decades of swing votes with each party getting a justice in over the decades. with the last case happening right towards the end of a controversial president with a controversial 2016 and 2020 election period.
It's a platform, sure. But I think this comes down to a series of happensstance for their plans lining up rather than some carefully crafted web of plans like some sort of thriller movie. We don't need to turn into reddit and make things out to be some grand conspiracy to discuss a topic
No I'm not saying follow any strings, I'm saying this is exactly what they said they'd do, and then they did it. How is that a conspiracy? Not every coordinated human movement is a conspiracy. I'm not articulating a conspiracy theory, I'm articulating the Republican Party Platform as expressed by them. Go back and read the platform for any year and it's in there.
I didn't say it was a carefully crafted plan, you're reading that yourself with your assumption that I'm describing a conspiracy. What I'm saying is that when given power, Republicans used it maximally and with purpose to advance the objective of overturning Roe v. Wade. Your observation that parties have swung back and forth does not imply Democrats would have to be in on the plan because Supreme Court appointments are for life, so every time Republicans appoint one Democrats cannot get rid of them.
Republicans did get lucky in 2016 with Trump winning the election, but only because they had previously used their power to unilaterally hold that seat open. And they held that seat open for the express purpose of putting someone on the court who would overturn Roe. And look, that person they put on has voted to overturn. Republicans also got lucky in 2020 when RBG died, but only because they had decided they would abandon their rationale for keeping the previous seat open, and they filled the newly opened seat anyway. That person will be voting to overturn as well. They say that opportunity is luck + being prepared. Yes Republicans got lucky in some ways, but they were prepared at every turn to use all available levers of power to advance this singular objective.
> Occam's razor still supports your point while keeping the story simple
This is an inappropriate usage of Occam's razor, as it requires us to put our heads in the sand about how politics and power work in relation to the supreme court. Saying "there's been decades of swing votes with each party getting a justice in over the decades" implicitly gives weight to the fact that Supreme Court Justices are appointed as part of a political process, driven by political parties, who have stated they intend to use the appointments to further political goals. To that end, conservatives erected an entire vetting system of rating SC nominees on the basis of their friendliness to the anti-choice cause. Only those who were friendly enough have been confirmed.
That the justices then go on to do exactly what they were put there to do is therefore completely unsurprising. But to discount it as mere happenstance and a confluence of factors completely ignores that the process of appointing and confirming them was considered (they didn't just pick the names out of a hat, they picked the names from a list of judges approved by groups who are anti-choice). Arguments were given for appointing these justices, and they always included a recognition that they supported the anti-choice position.
The alternative, that Republicans have been attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade for 50 years, yet when it happens attributing it to happenstance is much more unbelievable to me. It would seem to imply that political parties are completely powerless in advancing their own political goals, and even when they are achieved they can't be attributed to their own deeds. It would mean that Republicans worked feverishly with a singular mind to overturn Roe v. Wade for decades, and ended up doing so on accident. How would the world even work if that were the case?
There is an HN poster who is well known for losing his position as a CEO for failure to deal with the PR backlash over his opposition to gay marriage, and others have argued against it on either direct religious grounds or on grounds like the need for marriage to be associated with the production of children.
So, you’d lose that bet.
That would imply that there is no conservative Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, etc. readership on this site?
https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/...
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/republican-marria...
https://jezebel.com/yes-republicans-are-coming-for-gay-marri...
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1521296185977417732
https://twitter.com/notstevenwhite/status/152129472044988825...
One of my acquaintances who's a lawyer says in particular certain personal rights to privacy/autonomy that Griswold is built around is a target of the federalist society for a variety of reasons, some of which are business related. Can't remember the details but if you combine a wealth/profit-driven interest with a social conservatives christian patriarchy, the idea that Griswold is just safe because the court wouldn't go there looks pretty thin.
The courts are going to go for broke here, they've got a certain makeup that's been in the making for decades and McConnell's manipulations and Trump's victory got them across the finish line. They're not kidding around with power, they're going to use it.
EDIT: Downvoters, while we're all entitled to the use of that pointy disapproval button, if you think it's fundamentally incorrect to state that Obergfell or Griswold are going to be targeted by the court, you have no idea how thrilled I'd be to be persuaded you're correct. Please, make your case.
Well yes, this is the part that people are most objecting to and calling a human rights violation. How do you gloss over the fact that millions of people in the US will lose a basic right that practically all the rest of western world guarantees its citizens?
This isn't true. The US is somewhat of an outlier in how liberal the abortion laws are here. What's likely is that, should SCOTUS not bow to the inevitable mob that will come after this leak, blue states keep their liberal abortion laws and red states don't. Most of the country will probably have abortion laws that look pretty similar to those of e.g. Germany.
I don't see an issue; this is Federalism and it's by design.
I didn't say "the US will lose a basic right...".
I said "millions of people in the US will lose a basic right...".
No one thinks this will result in a federal abortion ban, but over a dozen states will immediately ban abortion upon the overturning of Roe v Wade. Those states contain millions of people who will lose the right to an abortion.
Because if that's your argument it sort of gives away the game about the robustness of the Roe/Casey decision(s) in the first place.
The Federal government abdicating the protection of certain rights means states will infringe on those rights. I can be upset that my fellow citizens will lose those rights even if I live in state that will continue to protect my rights.
Yes, that's exactly the point. States run themselves like little countries and the glowies handle issues that are truly interstate or effect the entire nation.
The idea that someone in "practically Canada" Maine and someone in "practically Mexico" California and someone in "I can see russia" (lol) Alaska all have to run their businesses in some particular way because some jerk on Wall Street ruined it for everyone and got a law made after them is asinine.
Very few countries around the world think that there is a “right” to abortion until viability. It was created out of whole cloth by elite lawyers in the US.
Abortion isn’t like civil rights, where southern states passed laws directed at a minority that had a unique historical position. States where voters choose to ban abortion have women the same as states who choose to allow abortion and those women agree with the bans. The majority of Black women in Mississippi think abortion should be illegal. Why should anyone in New York get a say?
Nope, anybody paying attention thinks this will result in a federal ban.
Conservatives are already calling for a senate majority to specifically apply a 6 week abortion ban nation wide. And that is just the start.
That has nothing to do with a majority of people imposing restrictions on themselves. 59% of people in Mississippi oppose abortion, including the majority of women. There is no need for California or New York to parachute in and tell them otherwise.
You could also argue that if 59% of people in Mississippi oppose abortion there's no need to make it illegal. No one will ever force that 59% to start having abortions.
The 59% could simply _choose_ not to have an abortion.
The same doesn't hold for aborting a fetus, because that can be key to the mother's wellbeing. Whether the scale tips toward that of the mother or that of the fetus is the debate, and since it's not cut and dry, individual choice makes sense.
Many people said “gay marriage won’t stop there” and that argument is irrelevant too.
We don’t stop making good decisions because it might lead to bad decisions later.
Edit: And the fun part about this leak? If the Court comes out differently, people will wonder if it was pressured. If anything this leak just will just HARDEN the opinion. The person who leaked probably caused the exact opposite response they wanted.
There have been attacks and denunciations against the court and its credibility for quite a while. At the very least since that one nomination got deliberately stalled at the end of Obama's last term, but I hear there were people attacking the court even before then, when I wasn't paying much attention yet. Something about hanging chads in Florida for one. Or the previous before-my-time attempt at court packing.
In short, America is soon going to switch from a system where a pregnant woman has a human right to self-preservation and instead in many states the life of the unborn child will be privileged over the pregnant woman which is rather far outside international norms.
Women should be able to control their own bodies, so let's change state laws to make that clear in a way that doesn't depend on judicial interpretation. This shouldn't even be a federal issue to begin with.
Courts are not supposed to legislate from the bench. Roe v Wade was clearly inappropriate ruling from day one. It undermined the integrity of the supreme court.
Abortion should be ingrained as legal via state/federal law.
Alito's opinion deciding that there isn't a right, or distinguishing one case from another, is as much a way of "legislating" as Roe was.
And frankly, due to the high likelihood of conflicts in law, this SHOULD be a federal issue. Should states be able to decide who is, and who is not, a human being? Under the Constitution, full faith and credit must be given to the rights afforded by those in other states. If state A says that an unborn child is a person and state B says that they're not, and a pregnant woman travels from state A to B, which state law controls?
The purpose of a judiciary is often to interpret laws that are complicated, often ambiguous, and sometimes in conflict. When people say that judges should just "interpret law" and not "make law," or that these issues should be determined by states... well, the issue will eventually come back to the federal level.
I can't imagine a ruling stronger than saying "a state must provide a means for citizens to legally carry a firearm outside their home". Even in that case, there are all kinds of legal impediments that blue states would use to make it as difficult as possible.
> In short, America is soon going to switch from a system where a pregnant woman has a human right to self-preservation and instead in many states the life of the unborn child will be privileged over the pregnant woman which is rather far outside international norms.
I'm not aware of any other major country where abortion third-trimester abortions are legal, as is the case in the US today. Most countries set the gestational limit at ~12 weeks.
No one ever said that... and apparently you've entirely missed the ProChoice argument. Does a government have the right to prevent you from having an appendectomy? Where does the government end and you begin? ProChoice is about limiting absolute government authority, like, over your cells and junk.
btw the rights in question are already in the Constitution. We generally refer to it as the Fourth Amendment, though an explicit line limiting what the government can do also lives in the Third Amendment. With the 3rd and the 4th Amendments, any ban on abortion is necessarily unconstitutional, in that we have a right to be secure in our persons free from government intrusion, and the government can't force anyone to take on a tenant, even if for only 9 months.
There are also credible pro-life arguments. The 14th amendment's Equal Protection clause is arguably provides the strongest legal basis for banning abortion: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So the legal question is whether a baby that hasn't yet been born is a person - if so, their life ought to be protected by state laws in the same way they protect anyone else's life.
It's a pretty straightforward question - is this baby an individual human being or not? I for one can't accept that I wasn't me while I was yet inside my mom (we know scientifically that after fertilization, I was a distinct human from my mom and dad) - and I see no reason to deny that personhood to fellow people. Answering in the affirmative, and various reasons for such an answer, forms the basis of the pro-life view.
Zooming out a bit, pro-life people see abortion as a modern analog to slavery in the US (where enslaved African-Americans were viewed as 3/5 of a person), except that unborn babies are viewed as not a person at all -- and this framing is used to justify killing them, not merely enslaving them and denying them the right to vote.
If I hadn’t made it out alive, I wouldn’t care about a thing, same as I won’t care 70 years or so from now. Would have been fine with not experiencing the life I’ve had.
A newborn is completely dependent and isn’t meaningfully any more of an individual. Also can be killed at will?
A foetus is dependent upon its mother. Specifically. One person to whom it is biologically attached. Not society generally.
Technology is advancing, but costs of transferring care are extraordinarily high, and outcomes quite uncertain.
I would argue the better slavery analogy is taking away the bodily autonomy of one individual and forcing them to go through an unwanted and dangerous process for the sole benefit of another individual. That would be like making it a legal requirement for us all to regularly donate bone marrow. Even if we acknowledge the fetus as a person, my rights over my body should still supersede anyone else's rights over my body.
I haven't heard anyone seriously challenging the extent of parental responsibility, only when it begins.
I don't have to argue against you. I can just point to the leaked draft that argues against you. It specifically cites safe haven laws which allow people to anonymously put their child up for adoption. These laws have no consideration on what the child's life would be like with their biological parents or after they become a ward of the state. The mere existence of those laws is legal precedent that it is acceptable to abdicate care over a child post-birth. Why shouldn't that be possible pre-birth?
I think this is wrong too, but I think banning abortions is much worse because it's a more direct interference with an individual's body. One is like a a tax, money is taken from you without consent but you are mostly free to get the money however you like. The other is like a mix between forced organ harvesting and slavery where somebody else asserts direct ownership/control over your body.
If you can abandon a child without repercussion, how is that not directly affecting parental responsibility?
Whether there are specific exceptions to these rules is irrelevant. Almost no one is pushing for unrestricted abortions up to birth. The analog is that we give people potential outs so they are not forced to be responsible for another person.
I wonder if you take the same position regarding fathers and child support.
I don't think it is fair for one parent to bear 100% of the financial responsibility for a child. I would be in support of a system that allowed a parent to relinquish any financial obligation to a child in exchange for forsaking any familial rights parenthood would traditionally grant them as long as the state would step in and assume that financial obligation. Until the state does that, I think expecting the father to contribute to supporting the child is fair.
If someone advocates for a parent to not have an obligation to pay child support without a way for the other parent to receive the money that child support would traditionally provide them, then they aren't truly concerned about the wellbeing of the child. I therefore will ignore any anti-abortion argument they make that places the wellbeing of the unborn child above the wellbeing of the mother.
Do you mean a system that provides for the needs of poor children (based solely on financial need)? That already exists, and I'd support expanding it.
Or do you mean a system that reduces the financial burden on a wealthy woman who can afford to provide for her children but simply doesn't want to? I don't see the compelling need for a system like that.
Government support for children should be provided based on their financial need, not an alternative to child support based on the father's income. That's how the available funds can most improve children's welfare.
During pregnancy a woman should be able to terminate her pregnancy to avoid obligation to the child. The rights of the woman supersede the rights of both the child and the father because it is her body that needs to go through pregnancy.
After the birth the parental rights should be equal. Both parents should be able to renounce their obligation to the child. In this situation, the state should step in and assume that responsibility. That applies to both guardianship and financial obligation. The state will only take over guardianship if both parents give up their obligation. The state will step in financially if one parent gives up their obligation.
It is acceptable to put limited restrictions on these such as establishing a reasonable cutoff for abortions as Roe v. Wade allows or the short windows of time that safe haven laws usually establish. What is important is that the parents at least have a choice at some point in the process. Once the parents make that decision, I am fine with them being held to it.
Always? Like, if two millionaires have a child and one gives up their obligation, the government would pay child support to the other millionaire parent?
I couldn't support that. I think whether the state steps in should be based on the child's financial need, not the number of responsible parents.
I'm 100% in favour of unrestricted abortions up to birth. Bodily autonomy doesn't have a time-limit and it doesn't suddenly become okay for another person to decide what someone can do with their body just because they waited past a particular deadline.
That's not the important question. The question is can one person be compelled to use their body to sustain another persons life. We can't even force DEAD people to use their body to sustain life (i.e., a person has to consent to donate organs before they die).
You have no business telling anyone what to do with their body.
What about your supposed encroachment of our freedoms? Does that not apply here?
Oh, right, when it's the CDC making public health recommendations that's your freedoms being eroded, but when it's the government limiting a woman's autonomy, your all for it.
You are insufferable.
This debate hinges entirely on a disagreement over which moral question is the most important.
Edit: One thing I don't see mentioned is how a ethically consistent Pro-Life stance seems to require support for state sponsored healthcare. Requiring people to bear the costs of pregnancy to achieve the state's moral obligations seems unreasonably cruel and counter productive if the infant's well being is the priority. Banning abortions without covering pregnancy costs seems more interested in imposing culture than in protecting the helpless.
Nobody is forced to support anyone with universal healthcare. We won't (and shouldn't) send people to jail for not working. Taxes are a part of participating in the economic activity of your country and the amount you pay back into the system is mostly proportional to the amount you get out of it. Disputing the fundamental role of taxes is morally inconsistent in a Kantian sense as the income that is taxed relies on the economy enabled by the government those taxes support. There is plenty to debate about how much to tax and what to spend it on, but I can't take anyone seriously who claims taxes and government shouldn't exist.
While there is room for a range of opinion on what government should be doing, d
Death happens... it's only a crime if someone intentionally caused it.
To clarify my position further, I'm not entirely convinced a woman who intentionally aborts her own baby should be subject to legal review. Though I believe she's morally culpable for doing so, at least at present there are a lot of practical issues with enforcing such a law.
That being said, it's very different if someone else can be shown to have caused the miscarriage (or abortion) to occur -- whether directly or indirectly.
In the most extreme case, consider someone who pointed a loaded gun at a woman's pregnant belly, unprovoked, and fired it, causing the baby's death and injury to the woman. That person ought to be charged with 1 count of first-degree murder and 1 count of aggravated assault, at minimum.
If someone wants to commit suicide, the law can't do anything about it - they're morally culpable before God for that. But if someone helps them, that ought to be against the law.
If someone helps a woman kill her baby (whether through providing abortifacient drugs, performing an abortion, etc.), that also ought to be against the law.
Maybe I'm equivocating by saying maybe we shouldn't create a law against a woman taking action to terminate her own pregnancy. And I probably would change my mind if I became convinced that such a law could be enforced justly without subjecting grieving victims of miscarriages to a miscarriage of justice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
You are arguing a strawman. The question is not if the fetus is "human" or "life".
Says who? By that logic, abortion should be legal until birth, and even the most liberal countries in Europe reject that position.
Virtually everyone, including the Roe itself, recognizes that the mother’s right to bodily autonomy has a limit. The question everyone grapples with is where to draw the line.
I agree you have a right to bodily autonomy, but there has got to be a limit!
Then why do I pay so much for welfare and Medicare? You're clearly okay forcing people to sustain other people on some level.
> tenant
Eviction is not something a landlord may decide on their own. Typically you have to take the tenant to court. Sometimes in fact they do end up staying rent free for months.
Help me understand what protections against warrantless “searches and seizures” has to do with the State regulating medical procedures?
> 3rd amendment
Which says: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner.”
I’m at a loss. You understand the Constitution is a legal document, right? Not a sequence of metaphors and allegories? Is a fetus a “soldier?” No? Then the Third Amendment is irrelevant.
I'm sorry, you have to read the first 11 words of the Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons
> Which says: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner.” I’m at a loss. You understand the Constitution is a legal document, right? Not a sequence of metaphors and allegories? Is a fetus a “soldier?” No? Then the Third Amendment is irrelevant.
I said the spirit of a right of abortion lives in this amendment. If the government bans abortions, this is precisely the same thing as effectively nationalizing fetuses and quartering them in bodies, yes, but also in houses, as those bodies live in houses. The point is consent... if a woman does not consent to a pregnancy...
You really have to try very very hard not to see it. Well done.
I'm not really sure what mentioning those European countries is supposed to demonstrate. Are Western European countries supposed to be the last word on human rights? I can believe France, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Spain currently violate a variety of rights I consider human rights, rights that the US upholds. Europe will have substantial political differences with other countries on how it sees rights, this is to be expected. This is a very odd appeal to authority.
They're just the talking points of the last cycle, when the case was argued in front of the court. I don't think the poster as quite internalized what this opinion means in relation to those old talking points. The thinking back then was that the court was maybe going slightly soften Roe by changing something subtle like the line past which an abortion is no longer legal. With a decision like that, the defense would be "Well look at these European countries! You can't say we're worse than them, because Europe is so progressive and liberal, right?" It was supposed to be a way to short-circuit Democratic arguments.
With this newly leaked opinion, the calculus has changed -- it seems that the court will not go with a slight modification to Roe and is instead going with a complete overturning. I think the mistake is in assuming that that's where it all ends. The court has surprised the right and the left here (in opposite ways). So I think it's a valid question as to how far this goes. Because who can stop it? All it takes to invalidate gay marriage is for some religious conservative to put it before the court, and it's done if the court says so.
[1] 2016 - It's inappropriate to do an appointment on election year! [2]
[2] 2020 - Of course we will fast-track an appointment on election year!
The comments about institutions and trust and process seem to miss the point: those are the first casualties. It gets uglier from here.
https://twitter.com/jonathanwpeters/status/15213098161483448...
I miss deeply 2015 reddit.
But they’re just warming up. Obergefell v. Hodges, Affirmative Action… a lot of unwinding in the next generation.
Remember, both sides are the same. /s
This being said there are lot of R politicians who secretly hate this potential ruling. They want to say a few words about being pro-life, raise some money and thats it. They don't want the blow back of abortion actually becoming illegal.
I’m getting pretty tired of watching what might as well be 4+ parities pretend to be 2.
Likewise in affirmative action. You just listed three things where the supposedly arch conservative Supreme Court is simply making our law the same as France.
The reason abortion is not legal until 22 weeks in France is because the Netherlands allows it, and our left-and-center governments don't want to spend the political capital on it. Same stupid reason why Democrats haven't passed a bill since Roe vs Wade.
That said, I would not want to be a Republican right now, giving people something stupid that they want is the best way to get to stupid-ass results.
Roe guarantees elective abortions to the end of the second trimester with few restrictions, and is well to the left of what the public supports: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-....
Generally, when the current law is detached from public opinion, the party that seeks to change the law should stand to benefit from it. Of course liberals will use their vast media and cultural power to dupe people into thinking the Supreme Court just banned abortion. But most people will notice that the Supreme Court didn’t do that when blue states inevitably adopt liberal abortion laws as a reaction. And most of the people who will be really worked up about it will live in blue states that will quickly enact abortion until birth. I suspect most other states will pick some 13-15 week middle ground.
I can see Republicans fumbling the ball by trying to ban abortion nationwide. But I can also see a bunch of white liberals reacting to this by shouting “celebrate your abortion” and turning off the mostly Hispanic 3 out of 10 Democrats who identify as “Pro Life,” as well as a bunch of squishy moderates.
And do you thinkt he cons on the SCOTUS are satisfied with this? They’ll be glad to ban abortion nationwide completely. They’re not gonna leave it to the states.
Did you read what Alito wrote? He's explicitly stating he doesn't want SCOTUS ruling on the legality of abortion. How, precisely, would SCOTUS "ban abortion" in this scenario?
What's your point?
They largely won’t even uphold the VRA.
I know you think conservatives are just as results oriented as liberals, but that’s not true. No liberal Justice will ever go wobbly on a liberal social issue. It’s always a conservative justice that breaks the party line on cases like Bostock (O’Conner, Kennedy, Roberts, and now Gorsuch).
Roe is uniquely at risk because it embraces the liberal notion of Supreme Court as national moral tribunal in its purest form. Even liberals struggle to defend the decision on its on merits. Tim Carney has collected an entire list of quotes from prominent liberal academics criticizing Roe https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/restori...
> One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” That's liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe.
Decisions like Oberrgefell and Bostock are on far firmer legal footing.
On what basis? Do you think they’ll make up a right to override state abortion laws the way Roe did?
There are six votes to overturn Roe. There aren’t six votes to overturn a federal enactment that protects some level of abortion rights.
I don’t see much evidence of what you’re asserting. 13 states have already pre-banned abortion, and another ten plan to when Roe falls. Doesn’t seem to be much of a split.
https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/map-23-states-ban-abor...
Similarly, polling of what “most Americans oppose” says the opposite of what you assert.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/03/most-amer...
35% of republicans say abortion should be legal in all/most cases compared to 80% of democrats: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/06/about-six-i.... Until democrats got more liberal in 2008, there were about the same number of pro choice republicans as there are pro life democrats—over 35% in both parties.
Most Americans don’t know what Roe specifically requires and thinks abortion would become illegal if it were overturned.
If you actually ask people where they think the line should be drawn, most people don’t support Roe’s full scope. They think it should be legal in the first trimester, and support other restrictions that Roe precludes. 44% of democrats think life begins sometime in the first trimester.
https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abort...
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-...
Around time Roe was decided, the high courts of several developed countries (Italy, West Germany, etc.) all took up the same issue. The US was the only one to find a fundamental right to abortion. Germany found the opposite, a fundamental right to life. The other courts determined it was an issue for the legislature.
That would violate the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution. Even before Obergefell v. Hodges, states that didn't allow gay couples to marry still had to honor the marriages of gay couples who were married in other states that did allow it.
30 days: http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/cf_pdf/2021-22%20INT/SB/SB...
South Dakota is working on 5 weeks. There are something like a 100 state bills in work this year.
The religious base? Absolutely wants this.
Abortion will still be legal as a practical matter. Some people might have to travel to the next state over, of course.
For the wealthy, this is no big deal. For the poor, that's a huge problem.
Especially since the next state over might well have their own restrictions that, e.g., require multiple doctor visits and a waiting period.
Poor women will die as a consequence of this decision.
How many?
Whose is going to pay the transportation costs if you are poor?
We don't know if this is a majority opinion. It may be a minority opinion in the hopes of becoming a majority opinion. It may not even be real (although that seems unlikely). It could've been leaked by someone on the right to drum up on support but my guess is it's more likely to be someone liberal-leaning who leaked such a bombshell opinion as a massive regression for bodily autonomy and social rights.
If so, that person is a hero. Straight up. Just like then Bradley now Chelsea Manning leaking Benghazi video was (and is) a hero.
People have consciences whether you agree with them or not. Even in wartime and with unprecedented security measures the Manhattan Project was leaked to the Soviets basically immediately by people who saw the US having a monopoly on atomic weapons as being bad for the world.
It's also why I basically don't believe pretty much every conspiracy theory out there, particularly if it involves a lot of people (eg faked Moon landings). Governments are terrible at keeping secrets simply because they're made up of people and those people have motivations of their own.
The Supreme Court is and always has been a political institution. All of the talk about constitutionality is just moralizing and window dressing in expressing a political view as law. This is the same Supreme court that ruled that "citizens" did not include people of African descent [1]. This is the same Supreme Court that in the Reconstruction / Redeemer era completely undermined rights of former slaves.
If you concentrate on the leaker here you're missing the big picture. You're falling into right-wing propaganda about the sanctity of the Supreme Court. It's a myth and a lie.
[1]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-americans-really-t...
Have you taken the time to read it? It is the majority opinion. They vote first, then go to write opinions and dissents. It is not a dissent..
Nothing is really final until it's published so I am cautious of taking it at face value as established fact. That's all.
HN is focusing on the leak, but I do not think the larger point here can possibly be missed. I think the male/female ratio here has something to do with the framing of the issue. Women tonight are not thinking about how the leak affects workplace relations between supreme court justices. I mean... my God, what are they going to talk about around the watercooler?
How would it make you feel if your wife, daughter, or mother had to die because the government would not let a doctor perform a life-saving operation on them, on the basis that they had a moral objection to it?
So sure, I'll save the majority of my feelings for when total abortion bans are actually in effect in 20+ states across the country in mere weeks. But let's not pretend that the writing isn't on the wall.
...the fact that standard politics tends to be off-topic here, but the meta about how the very unusual leak might impact the system is the sort of thing that's interesting to hackers.
I don't think you have fully thought through your position. See below.
> People have consciences whether you agree with them or not.
Yes, exactly. And many people's consciences in this country tell them that abortion is murder. Particularly abortion of a fetus after 15 weeks (which is when the Mississippi law under review here bans abortion), when the fetus, as the brief for petitioners in this case describes in some detail, already is recognizably human. You might not agree with those people's consciences, but they have them, and they're not going to go away.
And on an issue like this, where different people's consciences are telling them very different things, the Federal Government--any branch of it, whether it's the Supreme Court, Congress, or the Executive--should not be dictating one policy. It should be left to the states, who will enact varying policies according to what the consciences of the majority of their citizens tell them. Some states will be more liberal about abortion, some will be more conservative--because the consciences of their citizens tell them so. That's how the US system is supposed to work.
> a massive regression for bodily autonomy and social rights.
This is nonsense. You talk about right-wing propaganda about the sanctity of the Supreme Court; this claim is left-wing propaganda trying to push a concept of "autonomy" that completely denies personal responsibility, without which no republic like ours can endure.
As noted above, the Mississippi law under review in this case only bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. 15 weeks is more than enough time for a woman to make a decision about her "bodily autonomy and social rights" if she has an unexpected pregnancy. "Bodily autonomy and social rights" does not mean the right to dawdle over an important, life-altering decision indefinitely. The deadline this Mississippi law sets is perfectly reasonable.
So how is someone who leaked a draft Supreme Court decision that will undermine our trust in a valuable institution, in the name of a policy goal that doesn't even make sense, and which goes against the consciences of many Americans, a hero, again?
Ah, yes. The same “states’ rights” used to subjugate black people with chattel slavery should now be repurposed to subjugate women by robbing them of bodily autonomy.
Your 15 weeks bit is actually where I expected this to go. Robert’s, who I genuinely believe is aware of and concerned with the perceived legitimacy of the Court, I expected him to broker a compromise that looked like that. But that’s not what this draft looks like.
You may believe abortion is murder but that’s a completely arbitrary and, more importantly, a religious doctrine. As an aside, even that view is a modern reinterpretation that has its roots in segregation. In the early 1970s, Baptists said the Bible was silent on the issue.
Your religion is your business. I draw the line at you imposing it on others.
States' rights is in the Constitution: the Tenth Amendment. And there is another amendment that abolished slavery, so we fixed the issue that you are talking about here. But that fix did not abolish states' rights. It still leaves things to the states that should be left to the states.
> should now be repurposed to subjugate women by robbing them of bodily autonomy.
I already explained why this is nonsense.
> You may believe abortion is murder but that’s a completely arbitrary and, more importantly, a religious doctrine.
Not everyone who believes abortion is murder believes that on religious grounds. There are valid non-religious grounds for considering a fetus, or at least a fetus after 15 weeks, which is the deadline in the law under review, to be a person, at least to a sufficient extent that aborting it would be murder. (The brief for petitioners in this case describes some of them.) You might not agree with them, but that doesn't make them "arbitrary".
It's not mine, it's what the law under review says.
> I expected him to broker a compromise that looked like that.
Upholding the law under review would "look like that" no matter what. 15 weeks is what the law already says. The Court wouldn't have to rule that every state law has to use the 15 weeks deadline; indeed, I don't think it should. It would just have to rule that the 15 weeks deadline is within the power of the state's legislature to enact.
The opinion goes beyond just saying “this one law is fine”.
That went well for Texas' abortion law, didn't it..?
Majority is also not always right, not when it's used to tyrannise the minority.
That would depend on what your conscience says, wouldn't it?
> Majority is also not always right, not when it's used to tyrannise the minority.
If a person's conscience tells them that abortion is murder, how would enacting a law against it, for that person, be any different than enacting a law against murder? Nobody argues that laws against murder are "tyrannizing the minority" who want to commit murder.
Or, to look at it the other way, if a person's conscience tells them that abortion is murder, but the majority in the state they live in think it isn't, and the laws of the state they live in, which are in accord with the wishes of the majority, permit abortions liberally, is that majority "tyrannizing" that person?
I don't buy the "my point is that it's murder"-arguments, as the behaviors from those people don't really align with that. Why not instead focus on stuff that science and experience tell will reduce the amount of abortions and human suffering? My guess: Because it's mostly about control of others, right?
That kind of argument would not support the Roe and Casey viability standard for when states can ban abortions, since our current science and experience says that an abortion will cause suffering to the fetus well before viability.
> Because it's mostly about control of others, right?
A woman getting an abortion is controlling another: the fetus. She is determining the fate of that fetus without the fetus being able to defend itself.
A big part of the problem with the "bodily autonomy" side of the abortion issue is that they only talk about the woman, never about the fetus. The hard truth is that once a woman is pregnant, it's no longer just about her. Any reasonable concept of personal responsibility will require the woman to take the fetus's interests into account and will not support a claim that a woman has a right to an abortion just because she has a right to "autonomy".
Etc etc etc. All stuff that will reduce abortions. Isn't that the goal? So why are mist people against abortion also against most of this stuff?
And we all know that outlawing abortions doesn't stop them. It just makes them more dangerous and lead to more suffering for everyone involved.
So what is really your goal here? Tell me.
Our society already does most of these things. One I would add is adoption.
> All stuff that will reduce abortions. Isn't that the goal?
I don't think reducing the number of abortions is the goal of many pro-abortion people, no. I think they just want a convenient way to not have to deal with a child they don't want by making it just go away.
> why are mist people against abortion also against most of this stuff?
Many people who are for abortion are also against much of this stuff.
> we all know that outlawing abortions doesn't stop them. It just makes them more dangerous and lead to more suffering for everyone involved.
This argument assumes that abortion is not inherently wrong. Many people who oppose abortion do believe that it is inherently wrong. If abortion is inherently wrong, it should not be legal even if some people will choose to do it knowing it is illegal, and having to do it by more dangerous means. If they choose to do it knowing it's illegal, that's their choice and they will have to bear the consequences.
> what is really your goal here?
As far as I my personal policy preference? I think the fact that there is such profound disagreement about whether abortion is wrong means that there should not be one single policy dictated to everyone. Different states should be able to have different policies.
> This argument assumes that abortion is not inherently wrong. Many people who oppose abortion do believe that it is inherently wrong.
No. If they believed it, they wouldn't themselves get an abortion when having a child would be bad. Soooo many stories of pro-lifers preaching one thing, and doing something else when they themselves face a situation wanting to abort. They are "excused" because of the circumstances, but when others have the same problems, they are "immoral" for getting into the situation.
That's hypocritical, and shows it's more about imposing moral values onto others and controlling them, not a belief about it being inherently wrong.
It seems to me that you are the one weaseling, since the points you are responding to bear no resemblance to any points I've actually made.
> Soooo many stories of pro-lifers preaching one thing, and doing something else when they themselves face a situation wanting to abort.
I am not any such "pro-lifer" (I'm not a "pro-lifer" at all, that's a buzzword, just like "pro-choice" or "bodily autonomy"). So whoever you think you are responding to here, it isn't me. Nor are all people who believe abortion is wrong "pro-lifers".
I agree that many Supreme Court decisions do do this. And I think that two of those are Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. So I think the Court overturning those decisions would be a good thing, as it would send a signal that the Court is willing to back off from expressing political views as law and try to return to its proper function.
They consider themselves fighting a holy war where these things are concerned, not mere politics, and doesn't compromise with the enemy when one can destroy them utterly.
In fact, I would guess that at least part of the conservative rage on this issue comes not from gay marriage being legalized, but from liberals who attempt to stamp out and punish any remaining counter-opinion.
Hear me out before you shred...
A big part of Russia's game has been to try to divide the US politically. Well, this is probably the single biggest hand grenade they could have thrown into the middle of our society. And it's at a time when they'd really love to distract us from what they're doing in Ukraine.
So they have motive. It fits their MO. Do they have the means to breach the Supreme Court? Probably.
Does that mean that they definitely did it? No. It's just an idea - a pattern that seems to fit.
Shred away...
To me, the one that really stands out was when sock puppet Facebook accounts organized a BLM rally and a MAGA rally at the same time and place. That seems pretty clear what the intent was.
The quality of evidence for this idea (really, this conspiracy theory) is absurdly low. And it remains true that nobody was spreading this idea up until the moment it became clear that the supposed Russian sock puppets appeared to be supporting both sides in the election. I remember it quite clearly. The supposed Russian master plan changed overnight after that.
That is how you give up democracy.