The same way a government turns around and says that things like child pornography, human trafficking, terrorism, hate speech, bullying, piracy are not allowed on the internet. It may not be the most effective thing in the world when there is not a consensus from all governing and participating parties but that doesn't stop them from doing it and using it against an individual who is caught in the act of perusing/engaging said sites.
> The same way a government turns around and says that things like child pornography, human trafficking, terrorism, hate speech, bullying, piracy are not allowed on the internet.
I'm not so sure. Those are all things that most people consider to be bad, and that most countries have laws banning, or there's at least enough overlap between countries and languages to keep it mostly out of the mainstream internet content in certain languages.
These work because South Carolina doesn't have to "police the internet", instead things like FBI takedowns work, countries spend a lot of money on targeting trafficking organisations, and because companies like Twitter/Facebook/etc have some respect for national governments where they want to be able to conduct business.
What are SC going to do in this case? I guess they could prosecute sales of ads for these websites by companies based in SC, or maybe prosecute hosting providers in SC who are hosting these sites, but these are pretty weak actions.
Unless a large number of other governments get behind them, or they decide to build a Great Firewall of South Carolina this is going to have roughly zero effect.
Anything touching the internet is interstate commerce, so in this non-lawyer’s opinion, state laws aren't the last say on the matter. It would be very difficult for any state to block a citizen from saying something online that is legal federally.
Because it’s worked. The alternative, opening up the entire system of government for debate, simultaneously, continuously, predictably tears itself apart in a generation. (That or you wind up with an unwritten Constitution only the elites can decipher.) The Constitution isn’t sacred. But it’s far from worthless as a basis of our society.
Most modern, developed nations regularly update their constitutions. The US is somewhat anomalous in holding on to an ancient document and considering it sacred.
>The US is somewhat anomalous in holding on to an ancient document and considering it sacred.
The Constitution was amended 12 times in the 1900s, the last being 1992. There are still multiple pending amendments.
And, as a Union of States, each also with constitutions and amendments, how do you treat the overall legal entity? Most developed nations are about the size of a US state - and some are slowly banding into larger groups like the EU.
So how is this anomalous? Do you have some list of developed nations rate of constitution updates? Are any of the structure like the US as a union of semi-autonomous states?
It's missing state constitutions. The US is a United States of America - a union of semi-autonomous states.
Picking only a high level misses that there are higher levels (such as world treaties and laws we are entered into) and ignores that the US is a conglomeration. When you'd pick Germany, but ignore EU rules, it's somewhat like picking Texas, and ignoring US.
It seems you're not really comparing frameworks very well.
To listen to conservatives, we spent most of the 20th century creating violation after violation of the constitution. If they're correct, then to me that means that the constitution hasn't worked in about a century.
> to me that means that the constitution hasn't worked in about a century
The century that saw America exit WWII and the Cold War victorious while navigating a civil rights revolution? All amidst a series of peaceful transitions of powers, including the removal of a corrupt executive?
I believe a conservative would say those ends don't justify the constitutional defying means that we used to achieve them. I mean, they wouldn't say that because it sounds crazy, but if you piece together what they say about the constitution, that's the message that comes through to me.
This is separate from the question of whether the Constitution worked. It did. It produced a stable, powerful society. That some people are dissatisfied doesn’t refute that track record. It just points out there are dimensions on which it failed some.
My understanding is that conservative do not believe the constitution worked; they believe that the original intent is no longer honored and they have set about a legal project to correct that wrong which is now well in control of the court system and get back to the original intent of the constitution (the original intent being what they derive it to be from their readings of history and the text itself).
That those people who are dissatisfied with that track record are now in control of the judicial branch of the US government doesn't refute that track record, I agree, but it does suggest that we are probably on a different track now, no?
> it does suggest that we are probably on a different track now, no?
Possibly. Let’s see what happens. The limited claim was that the Constitution worked over the past century. Saying some people are unhappy about the particular way it worked doesn’t detract from the fact itself.
How do you separate out the confounders in this argument, like ww2 destroying Europe, or the natural resources available in N America?
Other countries have been very successful with other forms on basic documents. The American success may have been more successful with a document written to reflect a society without slaves, where you can travel across multiple state borders within a day, etc.
I mean, it’s a fine document and all, but can we please stop asserting without strong evidence that it’s the best ever or that it is the driving force of American success? That’s what I mean by fetishizing.
>Why are we using a 200+ year old document that represented the preferences of maybe 20% of the country to regulate the internet?
Because it and following interpretation provides the boundaries for law in the US.
And comparing it to a fetish, or labeling it a 200 year old document, when is has been changed since then (last amended in 1992, still has multiple amendments pending, and can be changed again) is also absurd.
The amendment that was ratified in 1992 was proposed in the 1700s.
The amendment prior to that was from 1971, over fifty years ago. We're rapidly approaching the point where we can say the constitution hasn't been updated with new ideas in generations.
The world today is wildly different from the world of the 1970s, and yet we've made no changes to the constitution. We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally, that makes it harder to change.
>The world today is wildly different from the world of the 1970s, and yet we've made no changes to the constitution.
No, it isn't. I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights is still a pretty good set of basic rights. Would you be willing to roll the dice on throwing a random out to get a new one? That is what can easily happen when you make changing it easy enough to be done quickly.
Also, why would you want to change the root of all laws at any crazy rate? There is a reason Congress makes new laws, and states make new laws, every single year. You should not need to make drastic changes to the base legal framework just because someone invented an internet - you should be able to apply current legal frameworks, and if that is not enough, make small changes to address such changes. Even small legal changes at the Federal and local levels have significant cost to make needed changes throughout society. Now allow tinkerers to make constitutional changes willy nilly, and guess what the cost will be.
Or do you think it would be better for short-lived political trends to simply rewrite major sections of the Constitution every few years? That seems like an absolutely terrible way to plan a stable society.
>We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally,
Conversely, maybe the overall framework is pretty good, despite each subgroup not getting their way, so it doesn't need changed to add amendments for every tiny whim.
If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s, I don't know that we're going to agree on much.
On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph, but the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level.
On a technological level, what we have today is unthinkable to someone in the seventies. The internet, cell phones, personal computers, autonomous vehicles and drones, machine learning, predictive policing... All these things have major impacts on our way of life.
The world has changed too. Militarily, economically, socially, religiously, politically, etc.
>On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph
Yet all of those were given protection based on Constitutional arguments, right? With no change needed to specifically add a new tiny rule to the Constitution for each single change in societal beliefs, right?
>If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s
People still work, buy houses, live by most of the same desires, needs, goals, interactions. Contract law is still useful. The Bill of Rights is still pretty useful.
In fact, I'd expect the vast majority of concepts in US law from the 1970s are still useful today. I think you overestimate the need to legislate every change in technology more than any country does.
>the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level
I seriously doubt that. Not a single issue you raised was not an issue in the 70s with a significant amount of people working on those issues. And fundamentally changed would mean things considered part of humanity in the 1970s are now gone, which I don't think is true at all. At best we've added some features and beliefs we now think are better. But we still care about people, about life, about dreams, about relationships, about dreams, about love, and death, and right to pursue happiness, and on and on.
If your system of laws is so weak as to been updating at a Constitutional level because someone invented a drone, then that system is fundamentally flawed, because it will break and never be able to be applied to life in any reasonable way. A good system has at a Constitutional level high level concepts that provide guidelines and boundaries that are refined by local, easier to change, and less system-breaking laws. That is the one we have.
Didn’t Thomas Jefferson advocate to throw out the constituion every 20 years and rewrite it to reflect the current generation? How do you think about his position, seems like at least one person thought it would be good to re randomize…
It sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. How could you possibly plan for any future with that much constant upheaval? Businesses couldn't function, since contracts across complete rewrites would not work. You may not own any of your property across a rewrite. Maybe things you did today become felonies tomorrow, and you get jailed, buy then maybe get freed in the next rewrite....
Having stable long term laws is a pre-requisite for any modern economy to function.
It is hardly absurd to point out that the rules used in a formal system are leading to absurd, bad, broken results.
And people do fetishize the 200 year old document. (At least, the parts they like.) You see it all the time, and saying otherwise is also form of fetish or worship.
Hasn't there been some issues for example with instructions of making bombs or chemical weapons? And both of those should be constitutional rights... So limiting harm to others by banning abortion information don't seem any less of overstepping boundaries.
Not in the United States. I run a web site that publishes information about the making of explosives, chemical weapons, and even restricted nuclear materials. It's all perfectly legal. Most of the information comes from government publications, patents, scientific journals, and books that you'd find in any well stocked university library. Even far less scholarly (and far less accurate) books like the Anarchist Cookbook or Poor Man's James Bond are legal in the US, despite the fact that both books contain instructions for activities that would be federal crimes if successfully carried out.
IIRC, if the industry can compete in an interstate market, it falls under the interstate commerce clause — even if the business only operates within a single state. So even forcing data to operate within a single state border would still not protect the bill. At least, that’s the theory behind regulating gun manufacturers that only operate with a single state. IANAL, but I don’t know if this theory has ever been tested at the USSC level.
The first amendment doesn't have anything to say about the Internet, so it doesn't apply.
Think I'm joking? This is the stated judicial philosophy of the majority of Supreme Court justices. There is no traditional deeply rooted in American tradition that says anything about the Internet, either.
> The first amendment doesn't have anything to say about the Internet, so it doesn't apply.
Moreover, when taking that mode of interpretation, it doesn't say anything about the States, nor does the 14th Amendment say anything about some of the rights protected against federal intrusion by the Bill of Rights.
What I am talking about is that the particular mode of originalism that seems to have been adopted in Dobbs (and especially the extension specifically naming the broader doctrine of substantive due process as needing reconsideration in Thomas’ concurrence) is one which it is hard to see incorporation under the due process clause surviving if applied in any intellectually consistent, coherent manner.
The goal isn’t whether or not it’s allowed via whatever clause. The goal is to force people to ask themselves “do you want to be made an example of to prove it”.
To be honest, I think the goal is more to get this in front of the current supreme court to try and chip away at more federal control over laws like this.
The interstate commerce clause was hollowed out and left undefended[0]. Go on Reddit/Twitter a you can find a bunch of people crying about abortion who were previously making fun of "StAteS RiGhtS". We tried to warn them but nobody wanted to listen.
> The interstate commerce clause was hollowed out and left undefended
Your citation to Wickard v. Fillburn for support of this is...bizarre. That case took what some view as an unreasonably expansive view of the federal power under the ICC, but that does the opposite of supporting the contention that it was “hollowed out” in a way that expands state power into the reserved federal space.
Take the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
It explicitly says Congress however it is currently interpreted that it applies to all governmental organizations. Federal, state and local. It has previously been argued that the same limitation on interstate law existed at the state level, as the authority of a state could not exceed that of the congress when it came to national matters. If congress effectively has no limitation, there is no limitation to exceed.
> It explicitly says Congress however it is currently interpreted that it applies to all governmental organizations. Federal, state and local.
No, it isn't.
States are limited by the 14th Amendment. Now, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to apply a whole lot of substantive rights against the states, including rights exactly identical to those protected against federal interference by the 1st, 2nd, 3rd (but only, to date, but one Circuit Court), 4th, 5th, most of the 6th (except for the jury locality requirement), and 8th (but maybe not the excessive bail requirement) amendments.
> It has previously been argued that the same limitation on interstate law existed at the state level, as the authority of a state could not exceed that of the congress when it came to national matters.
The interstate commerce clause argument against the state isn't that states can't do what Congress can't: that states can regulate purely intrastate Commerce is not subject to serious dispute.
The argument is that the interstate commerce clause itself prohibits many state regulations of interstate commerce, and further empowers Congress to further narrow the permissible space of state regulations of interstate commerce.
> that states can regulate purely intrastate Commerce is not subject to serious dispute.
> The argument is that the interstate commerce clause itself prohibits many state regulations of interstate commerce
If you argue that states have the right to regulate interstate commerce AND the congress can pass a bill in regards to abortion because doing so is in the interest of interstate commerce. Then why can't a state pass a law that allows fathers of children that were aborted in another state to sue the abortion provider that did the procedure?
On the other hand what if we agreed that having an abortion isn't a matter of interstate commerce, then congress would not have the authority to regulate it nationally and states wouldn't be able to do so either.
> If you argue that states have the right to regulate interstate commerce
States have the power to regulate intrastate commerce within their own state. They have very limited power with regard to interstate commerce (limited, very roughly, to nondiscriminatory regulation of transactions within the state which impact interstate commerce and where such regulation also is not in conflict with federal regulation of interstate commerce), because interstate commerce is expressly Constitutionally a federal function, and state action in that domain otherwise interferes with that federal function. A more expansive view of the federal power here narrows, rather than expands, the state power.
Just weird that we apparently got it wrong for 150+ years before Roosevelt came along to set everyone straight.
The law isn't determined on a factual, textual or even a logical basis. Gitmo, civil asset forfeiture, mass surveillance, dread scott, alien and sedition, japanese american internment camps, executive order 6102, roe. It's a political system and it reflects the political thinking at the time. The consensus you outline here is a bad idea, full of logical leaps, and it will lead to ruin, but I guess it will take the other guys getting into power to prove that to some people.
You are talking about how things are, I'm trying to say that they could be something else.
>How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause?
Laws are allowed until the Court rules on them. The states can pass all manner of fucked up laws (and they will), and they will stand while we figure this out -- or, until the Supreme Court rules in their favor.
Edit: changing Supreme Court to Courts, since the appellate court exists. But the point is the same.
My understanding is that this can go to a federal court pretty quickly who can then rule on this and block it, and it can be appellead up to the Supreme court, but for the time being it will be stopped, then I am assuming the Supreme Court will defer to whatever the appellate court decided because it is so open and shut.
>I am assuming the Supreme Court will defer to whatever the appellate court decided because it is so open and shut.
Out of curiosity, what about the current makeup of appellate courts in this region + the Supreme Court makes you think this is going to get shut down quickly?
I can't predict the future, but I also will point out if it gets to the SC it won't be now, it will be the SC 10 years from now.
That being said I would hope this is an open and shut enoght case under the 1st Amendment and the Interstate Commerce clause to justify this. Which I would hope overrules personal agendas in the court.
I know a lot of people are upset with the overturn of Roe v Wade, but even the initial judges in that case said the constitutional ground that case was ruled on was shaky, which my understanding is the basic job of the SC is to rule on the constitutionality of laws. Now decades of an activist judiciary have distorted that concept as the legislative branch has chosen to abdicate their responsibility for their own gain, but the fact still stands, congress should be making the laws and the courts deciding if they are constitutional.
> Now decades of an activist judiciary have distorted that concept as the legislative branch has chosen to abdicate their responsibility for their own gain, but the fact still stands, congress should be making the laws and the courts deciding if they are constitutional.
The Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality the first time. If it’s up to Congress to make the laws, then why did the Supreme Court intervene this time? They could have kicked this back to congress and said: “We already ruled on this. If you want a different outcome, do your job.” But they didn’t.
> Laws are allowed until the Supreme Court rules on them
No, they aren't. Unconstitutional laws are unconstitutional ab initio, and lower courts can and do refuse to enforce laws on that basis, and the Supreme Court may never even get to rule on them since appeal to the Supreme Court is not by right; the farthest that cases in the federal system get by right is the Court of Appeals.
>and lower courts can and do refuse to enforce laws on that basis
Courts don't enforce laws, but I get what you mean. I have no confidence whatsoever that appellate courts will do anything about these laws. There has been a willful, deliberate, strategic stacking of the judiciary starting in the early 2000s to get us to this place.
Sorry to repeat myself, but we really can't all sit back and reference our civics books as if this system is still functioning to protect us against these fucked up laws. It's over. Stare decisis is now at the whim of the political affiliation of the courts.
> How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause?
It's complicated.
Obviously a website cannot simply proclaim to only facilitate the dissemination of information to people exclusively in one state, or to exclude people in another. There is practically no concept of mutual exclusivity or mutual inclusivity on the internet, so then it's abjectly "interstate" or even "international". But it's not that simple.
The commerce clause tends to apply to federal laws, of things that transit state or territorial lines. Just because something could transit a state line, does not mean the all things in all states are automatically under federal regulation, or that federal regulation has supremacy. Obviously certain things are legal in one state but not in others, and things might be legal or illegal at a federal level regardless of interstate commerce.
The question is, is free speech subject to interstate commerce? What about commercial speech (which is afforded less 1st amendment protections)? Since we are talking about free speech, commercial or otherwise, does the idea of commerce clauses even apply? According to Heller case, and recently reaffirmed by the NY v Bruen case, when dealing with civil liberties the courts must apply strict scrutiny.
So it might boil down to a simple 1st amendment case without any commerce clause mental gymnastics.
From the article: "South Carolina state senators introduced legislation that would make it illegal to “aid, abet or conspire with someone” to obtain an abortion."
This bill isn't law, which is what I thought based on the headline.
The headlines says "South Carolina bill outlaws websites...". That is dishonest, because of the verb tense. The honest phrasing would be "South Carolina bill would outlaw websites..."
Nobody would say "Terrorist bombed subway" when they meant "Terrorist would have bombed subway" (except that they were stopped, and didn't get the chance).
Really? You can't see how the present tense is clearly intended to mislead the reader into believing that these websites are right now outlawed? Sure, it may fail to mislead some readers who are alert to the technical distinction between "bill" and "law". But they will succeed in misleading many readers.
So you're fine with the media trying to exploit common misconceptions to mislead their readers? Maybe they could get you to believe something false if you have the common misconception regarding the meanings of "infer" and "imply". Or how about "flaunt" versus "flout" - getting readers to believe falsehoods with clever use of those words it totally fair game, I guess?
No, that is not okay. But I did some searching, and it did not seem like a common misconception. I was simply ignorant in this situation and somehow got to the age of 35 equating bill and law.
I even went back to this popular kids’ video to confirm if I was misremembering, but I could not find anywhere “official” that refers to bills as passed laws.
>> Phrasing a proposed bill as if it has taken effect is a standard tactic to evoke extra emotion resulting in extra clicks.
> A bill is a proposed law, by definition. You're assuming bad faith where there isn't any.
All kinds of crazy bills gets proposed that are DOA, especially at the state level. Evaluating some outrage-inducing one for clicks is still bad faith. The real question is "does it have a realistic chance of going anywhere?" If it doesn't, why is it being covered?
However, I can't really judge in this particular case, because the article is paywalled.
It's not a "proposed bill," it's a bill. A bill by definition is a proposed law. If someone reads the word "bill" in a headline and confuses it for a law that has been passed, that says more about that person's lack of engagement in the basic workings of government (or more charitably, just momentarily inattentive reading) than it does about some supposed tactics. Anybody can fool themselves once by eliding the difference between "bill" and "law," but if it keeps happening, blaming the writers for being tricky seems a bit misplaced.
> For the NRLC, which wrote the model legislation, limiting communication is a key part of the strategy to aggressively enforce laws restricting abortion. “The whole criminal enterprise needs to be dealt with to effectively prevent criminal activity,” Jim Bopp, the group’s general counsel, wrote in a July 4 memo, comparing the group’s efforts to fighting organized crime.
This basically tells you everything you need to know. These people want to put women in jail and they don't care about niceties like "inter-state commerce" because in their mind they're fighting Al Capone. I hope commenters on here stop minimizing what these groups are trying to achieve. The reversal or Roe was not about "kicking it back to the states", it was the first step in trying to make abortion access illegal nationwide.
>The reversal or Roe was not about "kicking it back to the states", it was the first step in trying to make abortion access illegal nationwide.
Yes, and it makes me angry that so many commenters on this and other forums said, "Well, they have a point. It should be left to the states." As if women whose lives are at risk can wait for their judicial philosophy to cleanly play out; as if the raped 10 year old being forced to travel out of state to have an abortion was just how it goes while we figure out how to get the book keeping figured out; as if the woman who was forced to carry a dead fetus inside her for weeks because the hospital didn't want to risk being sued was just one of those tragic, unforeseeable, unavoidable victims of our imperfect democracy.
These are lives we're talking about here. And it's only going to get worse. Sorry to use a cliche, but wake the fuck up y'all.
Yep. It's frustrating to see the threads on HN of people talking about this as if it's only hypothetical. Like it's a change to the Linux kernel and not something that impacts thousands of people every day. I don't care about the technical mechanisms of implementation, I care about how it affects the people around me dammit.
People in the US are able to freely travel between states, this isn't the case elsewhere in the world. Some things are crimes in some jurisdictions and not others, this is normal.
If you think it's inadequate, pass an amendment to the constitution, that's what the amendment process if for. If you think the process to too burdensome, encourage your state to secede.
> People in the US are able to freely travel between states
This is not a right that is specifically enumerated by the Constitution. The current Supreme Court has indicated that rights that are not specifically enumerated by the Constitution are subject to evaluation and curtailment.
This comment isn’t acknowledging that long-term solutions are necessary but not sufficient to make whole the continued injustice of trauma and death that will result from laws that deprive reproduce rights. It’s important to keep in mind there is a current and ongoing number of people who are dying, who have died, who are being deprived medical care (some who aren’t even pregnant!) and that an amendment to the constitution will not right the wrongs made to them.
Personally, I don't feel the idea of government is legitimate, but if you do, then you must abide by the process, for better or worse. There was plenty of time between Roe v Wade and present to pass an amendment or secede, so clearly the matter wasn't urgent.
No, there is nothing saying that just because you believe government is necessary that one must consider the government wholly, uncritically sufficient.
Again, you ignore the actual realities of politics. Obama promised to codify Roe v Wade his first day in office. He then refused to, since it was better for democrats to keep it on as a political bargaining chip.
Now, what are US liberals supposed to do? Not vote and lose? Vote for the Republicans and see abortion criminalized federally? No, they have to vote for the Democrats again and maybe hope they finally try to pass their agenda. There is a false choice presented. It was urgent to the voters, but not to the politicians.
Laws should be made based on reason, justice, and after due consideration and we'll reasoned discussion not empathy, emotion, or crises of the moment. Doing that will only lead to poorly conceived and implemented laws that fail at their purpose and give power to demogauges and the power hungry.
I never said laws should be based on empathy. I just said that OP had no empathy in order to make the point that taking an aloof legalist stance is stupid when it has actual real world negative impacts on others that they were incapable of considering.
My second paragraph expands upon the reason and justice aspect.
Also the current constitutional crisis we are in demolishes the legalist justification anyways. States being able to ban travel to other states for abortion, states allowing private citizens to sue others for getting abortions in other states. States limiting access to websites that are legal in other states and limiting the first amendment.
Because repealing Roe was done on an ideological basis it has caused a cascade of problems around how much power states should have, one that has been largely settled since the Civil War.
I don't pretend to know what is best for everyone nor dictate my morals to them. So if SC thinks they should have a law to do whatever, that's their business. If the people living there don't like it, they should work to change the law, or start lynching politicians, whichever is easier, that's for the people of SC to decide.
As for the people not in South Carolina, they should work to pass an amendment or secede from the union, those are the only legal options if you believe in how the federal government is supposed to work (maybe there's a 3rd option to kick out SC?).
> As for the people not in South Carolina, they should work to pass an amendment or secede from the union, those are the only legal options if you believe in how the federal government is supposed to work
It's not legal to secede from the US, we fought an entire war because it was not a right of the states. Most of what you say ignores the reality of our political system, voter suppression, who draw districts, filibuster, etc. Which makes it more difficult than "just vote". Which is why the Republicans went the route of Supreme Court justice appointment, so they could legislate via the court.
> Since you have shown you have limited capacity for empathy, try imagining that this 10 year old girl was someone related to you. Maybe even your own daughter. Would you still be aloofly invoking the legalist stance, as if it's ridiculous to demand that laws be just? No, you would be kicking and screaming and crying because of how unfair it is.
The rule of law exists precisely because of the temptation to think with our "empathy" instead of our brains.
See my reply to the other person who made this argument. You ignore my second half of the comment where I debunk the argument with "logic".
> The rule of law exists precisely because of the temptation to think with our "empathy" instead of our brains.
Assumptions galore are made here. First off, the rule of law exists because of power heirarchies. People create laws to protect THEMSELVES and THEIR interests. Monarchs didn't create laws for the benefit of everyone, neither do dictators. Furthermore many laws exist to augment our empathy. Speeding laws exist because many people are incapable of comprehending the danger they could pose to someone else. Animal cruelty is illegal because the majority of people understand it's wrong, and we will force that wisdom upon others who don't.
> the temptation to think with our "empathy" instead of our brains
Where do you think empathy comes from if not our brains? Empathy is a tool of reason, not orthogonal to it. Would you praise someone for only using one of their senses? Or would you think they are ridiculous for constructing a worldview based only around their sense of smell? Thinking that empathy is somehow a trait to be overcome and not a tool is the same as eating soap regardless of how it tastes, because it "smells good". Empathy allows us to consider the conditions and experiences of those outside of our immediate sphere of influence. In a democracy this is especially invaluable, since individuals make decisions that influence society at large.
The inability to see outside of your every day experience is not logical or rational, it's the exact opposite. Empirical evidence can be a great tool for analyzing macro trends, but empathy allows us to better understand the causality.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do that because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Personal attacks are particularly not ok, so please don't post like that again.
p.s. It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's another line at which we ban accounts (even if they're not breaking the other guidelines) - for past explanations, see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
I'm not going to ban you right now because if I scroll back far enough in your commenting history I do see comments that are in line with the intention of the site, but if you'd please correct this going forward, we'd be grateful.
Note that this is in addition to what I said at the start of this comment—there are two separate issues here.
> People in the US are able to freely travel between states, this isn't the case elsewhere in the world.
Do you know of countries with a federal government and where people can't travel freely between the member states? The ones I know don't have this problem so I'm not sure how that's something unique to the US.
Any amendment or law would be subject to review by the current SC - an entity which is currently very goal orientated - and it's quite likely they would find an argument to nullify or void it entirely.
One really simple example of what the SCOTUS could do is they could rule that an unborn child - from the time of conception - is covered by the rights laid out in the 14th amendment.
Takes all choice back away from the state once more.
You've got it precisely backwards. It is because the abortion issue is so weighty that it should be resolved according to the legal processes set out in the Constitution. Federalism, separation of powers, etc., aren't for the easy stuff. They exist to allow a large and diverse nation--full of people who have different values and often actively hate each other--to cohere as a single unit.
No other developed country has approached the abortion issue by saying "pfft the rules don't matter." The EU Court of Human Rights just last year refused to recognize a universal right to elective abortions. In every European country where abortion is legal, advocates of abortion made their case to the people, and the people decided whether to allow it and under what circumstances. In some cases it took a long time--Ireland legalized it just in 2018. But that's how civilized societies operate.
Your thinking is how third world countries operate. They say "lives are at stake" (or something similarly weighty) and use that to justify ignoring the legal process. As someone from one of those countries let me tell you that you do not want to go down that road. The rules are more important than anything else. They are more important than any individual lives. Because the rules are what make civilization possible. If you disregard the rules on issues that you deem sufficiently important to you, that frees the other side to ignore the rules on issues they deem sufficiently important to them, and it goes quickly downhill from there.
I understand where you're coming from, however this exact type of logic of separation of powers has only ever been invoked when trying to protect inhumane policies in the US.
For example, Colorado and other states have legalized weed. They don't need to wax poetic about separation of powers etc to defend their position, because everyone understands that this is exactly what the Federal system was designed for. To allow states to augment their economies and taxation systems as they see fit (going back to colonial era reasoning).
Throughout US history the most vocal proponents of states rights have been those who attempt to limit personal liberties. They first use the constitution as a jumping board, arguing that "it's not explicitly stated in the constitution!" because the constitution is limited and vague (The founding fathers intentionally kicked the can down the road for racial issues). Technically, the regressives are right here, but they are hiding behind legalism to protect their abhorrent viewpoints.
"If it's so popular then just vote on it then!"
Unfortunately it's not so simple. At the Federal level, a filibuster proof majority is required in the Senate (non-proportional) as well as full control of all three branches of government (president and congress are also non-proportional, although in a different way). So it's incredibly difficult to pass overwhelmingly popular legislature/amendments in the US. Which is precisely why we have seen most of our civil rights gains over the last 50 years be accomplished through the court system. At the state level, there is no filibuster (mostly) and so there is no mechanism for a minority to halt legislation at the state level.
This kind of game has been played out for the last 200 years. Yes rules are important, but the reactionaries in US history have typically "meta-gamed" the flaws in our system that were overlooked by the founding fathers in order to preserve horrendous practices. That's not to say that there is no benefit to our checks and balances, but when it comes to things like civil rights, gay marriage, and abortion, the opposing side is mostly meta-gaming and exploiting checks and balances negatively.
To sum up, corruption in the third world occurs by circumventing the laws. Corruption in the US occurs when you put someone in a position of power to interpret the laws the way you want them to. If you need sources, I can provide.
> No other developed country has approached the abortion issue by saying "pfft the rules don't matter."
The Roe decision was not made on "rules don't matter" it was an extension of the due process clause in the 14th amendment. The overturning of it was made on interpretations of common law going back to the 14th century, the main point of argument being that there was "no innate protection of abortion as a fundamental right".
> that frees the other side to ignore the rules on issues they deem sufficiently important to them, and it goes quickly downhill from there.
We’re already there. That’s already happened. Stare decisis — remember when all the justices who just ruled to overturn Roe called it “settled law”? Remember when the Republican Senate refused to consider Obama’s Supreme Court nominee? Remember when the courts gutted the voting rights act? Remember when the courts determined the outcome of Bush v Gore? The side that “won” this argument didn’t do it by playing by the rules. Because the court doesn’t have rules. The constitution doesn’t outline any of the philosophy that you are calling “rules.” So sitting back and saying “let’s just play by the rules” is handing a victory to a side that doesn’t care for them.
The principle of Stare decisis does not mean the supreme court can't overturn any decision it's ever made. It's routinely overturned previous decisions, many times overturning previous conservative rulings to put in place liberal ones.
If you watch this youtube video of Kavanaugh answering questions I never get the idea that he says he won't overturn Roe v Wage, or that it is a binding or super precedent.
Sure. When prior decisions are “unworkable or are badly reasoned,” then the Supreme Court may not follow precedent, and this is “particularly true in constitutional cases.” [0] But the prior decision was certainly workable, since it had been working for almost 50 years. And it certainly wasn’t too badly reasoned, since the same reasoning was applied to many other cases — situations which also were quite workable, since they were an expansion of rights, not a circumscription of them. If anything, the court created an unworkable situation by ruling the way it did; it has created chaos in the medical field for half of the states.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
The phrase is often used as if it's meant to suggest that they're fighting off federal government overreach. In fact, it's used exactly to allow them to have overreach over you, at the level that they can make it happen. When they get the opportunity to control it at the federal level, it will stop being "left to the states".
It's very much about denying individual liberties, using Orwellian language making it seem otherwise.
I always worry when we start painting large groups of people with a single brush and labeling them the enemy.
There are plenty of people who oppose abortion that are appalled at something like this or the Texas bounty hunting law. If we continue to try and paint each other group as a monolithic enemy other division will continue to rise and polarization will increase and the effects will be devestating.
I agree with this broadly but I actually disagree with this point for this specific poster. “These people” is a phrase referring distinctly to the national right to life organization, whose goal is in fact to make abortion illegal nationwide. In this case, that organization is about as monolithic an enemy of pro choice people as possible.
(Edited to add: there is a separate frustration of the poster of people claiming that diverting reproductive justice to state determination is reasonable. The poster is saying they are frustrated with that statement because it ignore the above fact. I also don’t think this is painting anyone with a broad brush… it is painting specific people’s specific argument as being myopic.)
> You're conflating a lot of things here, none of which are really related.
Speaking of things that aren't related. I don't see how those things being legal is even somewhat related to making abortion illegal or making it legal to bounty hunt women. You're going to have to explain that connection to me a bit more.
> largely pulled back because it's constitutional basis was too weak to defend in the Supreme Court
"large pulled back" belies the fact that the motives are ulterior.
> consequences are largely left up to the people who choose to use those things
In the case of banning abortion, you're denying choice and autonomy. You're saying a woman HAS to give birth even if it wasn't her choice. Even if she was raped. Even if she's 10 years old.
If you don't find that stance appalling, I don't know what to say.
Damaging oneself e.g. by reckless consumption of substances is one thing.
Forcing a birth of a badly unwanted human being, who is going to suffer through life being badly unwanted, is a rather different thing.
And forcing a woman to keep carrying a pregnancy which is dangerous to her life (and thus to the prospective baby's life anyway) is not just indifference, it's a direct opposite of care.
The effects are already devastating. From the point of view of a women unable to access medical services due to these laws it is literally a matter of life and death right now.
I'm speaking about groups like the NRLC and the Federalist Society who have been working towards this goal for decades. I'm sure some conservatives are opposed to the extremity of what's being proposed, but if they continue to vote Republican I'm not sure what good that does anyone.
I don't know about that; I think it is possible to oppose abortion, but not seek to do so via legal remedies. Like opposing drinking or smoking, or game microtransactions, or IoT devices.
I think that want/need is doing a lot of work here.
One can be in favor of abortions for medical necessity or when the choice to get pregnant was not consensual while still being wildly opposed to abortions for convenience reasons.
How big must the government be to investigate every miscarriage to see whether or not it was deliberate and for medical necessity, or done because the pregnancy was the result of rape? We're talking about hiring a lot of medical professionals and expanding our already large tracking apparatuses.
If we're not talking about expanding government along these lines then maybe we should just leave the choice to the people immediately involved.
I've known women who have had miscarriages, and I've known women who for various reasons have had to terminate their pregnancies. Abortion is only "convenient" compared to being stuck raising a kid you aren't ready and willing to raise, giving birth to a kid that's going to have special needs because of genetic defects, or trying to carry a pregnancy to term that's likely to kill you.
See here's the problem that is plaguaging the discourse right now, instead of having a rational discussion the argument has devolved to people's emotions overruling everything.
I understand this is an emotional issue but until everyone can agree to at least have a discussion about this without getting overemotional we can't have any discussion or compromise only polarization and that eventually leads to shooting and a civil war.
I mean my own sister told me she hopes my 2 year old daughter gets raped because of my position on this issue. Doesn't that strike anyone else as something that would deplorable under other circumstances but we excuse it right now because we believe the cause is righteous?
> we can't have any discussion or compromise only polarization and that eventually leads to shooting and a civil war.
Some things are not compromise-able.
> I mean my own sister told me she hopes my 2 year old daughter gets raped because of my position on this issue. Doesn't that strike anyone else as something that would deplorable under other circumstances but we excuse it right now because we believe the cause is righteous?
Source that “we” excuse wishing harm on another person for no reason, and an innocent toddler at that? It is so deplorable that I would need considerable proof to believe it even occurred, especially from an aunt to a niece.
I'm pro-choice but I disagree with your comment. There is an enormous moral gulf between an abortion early into pregnancy and abortion late into pregnancy.
There absolutely are misogynists and hypocrites among the pro-life/anti-choice movement, but not everyone in that movement is at the extreme. Those of us who want abortion to be legal nationwide must acknowledge the ethical complexity of terminating an unwanted pregnancy.
> There is an enormous moral gulf between an abortion early into pregnancy and abortion late into pregnancy.
According to your morals, perhaps. But I don't share your morals. As far as I'm concerned, if it can't breathe on its own it's not a baby. Likewise if it hasn't been gestated long enough that it can be cared for in the NICU.
We tried to be reasonable and limit abortion access to the end of the second trimester, but that wasn't good enough for some people. No, some of these assholes want to ban abortion after six weeks when some women can go that long before even realizing they're pregnant.
I'm sick of "acknowledging the ethical complexity". Our opposition doesn't, and that's why they keep kicking our fucking asses.
Given the way "start of pregnancy" is calculated in this country, my understanding is that most women would struggle to be able to get an abortion before six weeks.
When you miss your period, and take a pregnancy test, the "start of pregnancy" is apparently considered to have been the start of your last period. That means that at the earliest time you could be generally expected to find out you're pregnant, you are considered to have been pregnant for 4-5 weeks.
Then, of course, you'll need to make a decision about what to do about it, contact a doctor, and have a procedure scheduled...and in states with restrictive abortion laws, you can bet that that's going to be more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be.
To me, the bounty hunter law is reprehensible, but not as much as the motivation behind it. Those with that motivation can be treated as a single group.
And to be frank, I don't care if they're unhappy to be lumped together. Lie with dogs and all that.
Frankly I don’t think that the problem is that individuals who are part of the pro life movement are lumped in with the worst in the group. Rather, many who hold even less extreme pro life positions are still across the line of what others deem acceptable.
Conversely, should every movement be painted with the brush of their best people?
This is a bit... difficult to take seriously. They are being painted by the general actions at large that they are causing. If you want them to be seen in their best light, try to get their best light into the spotlight.
> If we continue to try and paint each other group as a monolithic enemy other division will continue to rise and polarization will increase and the effects will be devestating.
Then perhaps the other group should not have monolithically spent decades fighting against and removing human rights from people I care about.
I remember when folks were telling us we were being hysterical because of our concern a right-leaning SC would overturn Roe. Of course that is exactly what happened. Are these same people now telling us not to worry, they won't imprison women for getting abortions?
Some of these same people are now telling us "of course treatment for ectopic pregnancies will be allowed" (there are already laws preventing that in places) "of course no one will be penalized for a miscarriage" (there are already women in prison for that) "of course there will be exceptions for people who really need it"—this is, in fact, the mindset of a lot of conservatives. It's closely related to Frank Wilhoit's cogent observation of what conservatives believe [0]: "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
It's also very much the "surely the face-eating leopards party won't let leopards eat my face!" mindset.
I've heard anecdotal reports from some people who have more conservative family members than I that some of them are actually starting to realize that there won't be the "reasonable exceptions" they were just assuming would exist, and getting genuinely worried.
“Oh it was decided with bad reasoning. We can fix it now.” — bureaucratic apologists
“We could have acknowledged it was bad reasoning in a legal context but not a human rights and that a fix would just create the same status quo and left it.” — sane people
Agreed; this was a political flex to remind the proles grandpa is still sitting in the corner rambling nonsense.
This is a distraction. There have always been antiabortion crazies lurking in the woodwork. The state just chose to pull the trigger on this particular shitshow at this particular moment because it suits their agenda.
Don't get me wrong. There is definitely an abortion rights disaster in progress. It's just that this disaster was manufactured only to distract from a larger, more powerful, disaster.
Have you noticed how expensive everything is lately?
> Have you noticed how expensive everything is lately?
Have you noticed that supply and demand can change prices? Such as supply of young people performing labor in an aging country demanding ever more labor, or international conflicts and responses to infectious diseases disrupting supply chains. And of course, the government’s monetary response, but the point is that unless you have a source for a conspiracy, I do not see why it should merit consideration.
Voting itself is a sham. I'm provided with the choice of a baboon and chimp for a leader, alternately I can stand for elections for a troop of monkeys, what can I say?
> The reversal or Roe was not about "kicking it back to the states", it was the first step in trying to make abortion access illegal nationwide.
Was this motive ever hidden?
Abortion should be illegal. I hope each state passes laws criminalizing it. That has always been the goal.
The ‘judicial philosophy’ crap emerged due TO roe V. wade. The decision made a mockery of the constitution.
The millions upon millions of people working and praying and picketing and voting on this issue for the past 40 years we’re doing it to save babies… not to defend some abstract philosophy.
Genuinely asking, have you considered that banning abortion doesn’t save babies who have already died or are dying in the womb? And doesn’t save situations where there are no babies involved at all, and there are chronically ill people who are being denied medication because the medication can cause abortions?
If one ‘bans’ murder, the legislatures and courts will need to grapple with killing in self-defense, pulling the plug on a brain-dead vegetable, administering drugs in some cases that have a high risk of death, assisting in a suicide, accidentally causing a death vs intentionally, etc.
This isn’t new.
Each state crafts it’s own laws to address these things, each prosecutor uses his discretion in applying them, each jury or grand jury weighs in, each judge crafts a sentence taking these things into consideration, etc.
In short your edge cases are nothing new… every law is over and under inclusive. The judicial system as a whole has been dealing with these issues for centuries.
How do we decide which cases to prosecute? Do we convene a grand jury for every miscarriage? Do you have any idea how many investigations this would be per year?
If you don't investigate every miscarriage, what's the criteria for getting the state involved? Do you wait for family or neighbors to report a crime? Do you track medical appointments and make a judgement as to when a birth was expected and didn't happen?
Indeed, every death is investigated to some extent. Every county has a coroner, some states have full-blown inquests after each death.
Do you think when grandma dies of old age she’s just taken to a funeral home and that’s that?
There’s more to it.
If something looks suspicious, it’s kicked up to the next level. If questions remain, it’s kicked up another level.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but you seem to have little experience with the day-to-day legal processes surrounding every death. You may be more familiar with a crime like arson. As you MAY know, every single structure fire is investigated. Some turn out to be arson. Some don’t. These processes exist, always have existed, and I think you’re straining.
>I’m not sure you’ve thought this through.
I’ve been doing this for a living for over 25 years.
Whether your pro-choice or pro-life isn’t my concern. God bless you either way. But, the criminal process regarding abortion existed for centuries prior to Roe v. Wade. It’s really not as complicated as you make out.
Before roe v wade the complications of botched self-administered abortions was one of the major causes of early death and disability of women. I don’t think it’s nearly as simple as one would believe, because even the Bible doesn’t recognize a fetus as being alive until well into the second or third trimester.
> These people want to put women in jail and they don't care about niceties.... The reversal or Roe was not about "kicking it back to the states", it was the first step in trying to make abortion access illegal nationwide
Which "these people" are you referring to? Roe was remarkable in its ability to unify disparate groups: evangelicals and Catholics who oppose abortion categorically, right-leaning independents who support some level of abortion but want more restrictions than Roe allows, and Constitutionalists who find Roe incomprehensible as an assertion of Constitutional law.
Now that Roe is gone, some of those folks will indeed try to "make abortion access illegal nationwide." But hardly everyone who opposed Roe to begin with: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/06/wide-partis.... Just 13% of Republicans are true believers who think abortion should be categorically illegal. The vast majority, 38% think it should be "legal in all or most cases." Most fall in the mushy middle.
If we accept the premise that abortion is baby murder, then the moral implications are clear: (1) exceptions on rape are grotesque as we'd be condoning baby murder as a form of trauma relief, (2) cross-state or even cross-country baby murder is just as grotesque, (3) doctors and medical systems must have extreme culpability as they are part of an assembly line of baby murder.
How does Constitutional case law factor into the question of mass baby murder?
Even if you consider it murder-more-or-less, the hard dependence on another person's body puts it in a different category of transgression.
Consider:
You watch someone die in front of you while you hold in your hands the thing that could save their life, but refuse to give it. Is that murder? Maybe, possibly, there's an argument that it's something else but I'm comfortable with this. Should a person be allowed to do it? Again maybe, but I'm ok with no, that's a bad crime, they shouldn't be allowed to do it.
You watch someone die in front of you while the thing that could save them comes from your own body. A blood transfusion, say, or whatever, a fingernail clipping, it doesn't matter really. This is morally the same transgression as the first example. But in this case we have clearly and consistently decided that you are allowed to make this choice. It may be evil but it is not a crime.
If you don't allow the second choice, then you open the door to things like medical experiments on nonconsenting people and organ harvesting. The boundary around bodily autonomy needs to be firm or you permit atrocities.
Abortion may be murder! You can believe it is. But the fact that the life depends on the body of another person means they have the choice not to render aid.
Not a lawyer but doesn't this have serious 1st amendment problems?
Article gets into this a bit:
"Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said the First Amendment and Section 230, a bill that shields internet providers and tech companies from liability for the posts, photos and videos people share on their sites, provide a strong defense in many instances for websites and providers facing lawsuits over hosting information about abortion access."
The purpose of the law isn’t made with any consideration of its legality. This is a signal to force people to ask themselves if they’re willing to be prosecuted to prove out their rights.
Agreed. The future path for this law (if it gets passed) is obvious: the South Carolina agency charged with enforcing the law gets sued in federal court, the law is likely put on hold and eventually struck down as unconstitutional. But the "chilling" effect of the law still has a serious impact, despite it being unserious legislation.
It's basically the Republican version of states that ban websites from hosting blueprints that tell how to make firearms.
It's more about scoring brownie points with your base and tying up your opponents in litigation for years... Even if they know the law is blatantly unconstitutional, there's no real downside to the legislatures (assuming their constituents support the unconstitutional law)
It only has 1st amendment problems if the courts care. Making abortion illegal is an ideological project that the majority of the current SCOTUS and their acolytes has been working towards for at least 40 years. If you think they're going to let the plain text of the constitution, federal law, or its interpreted tradition get in the way of that you have not been paying attention.
I have been paying attention :). For what it's worth, a handful of recent state laws restricting speech have been struck down by the courts (Florida social media bill) or are blocked from being enforced (Texas social media bill blocked by Supreme Court) or are in the process of being litigated (Florida stop WOKE act).
While none of those bills related to abortion, I'm still skeptical the courts would let this bill stand
There is speech that is not considered protected by the first amendment. I suspect the states would argue the promotion of committing unlawful acts to be unprotected speech.
Where this would fall afoul is likely interstate commerce. South Carolina can't declare a website hosted in California illegal due to jurisdiction. They might be able to convince ISPs to block them, though.
Just waiting for that batshit bounty law (in Texas) to spread to other states. Basically, any citizen can sue anyone if they suspect aiding or abetting an abortion. There are seemingly no recourses either, for the defendant. If successful, the plaintiff can be awarded up to $10k - therefore a bounty law.
So by that logic, you should be able to sue the owner of a website - as long as it is within the state, because they're aiding and abetting a person with her abortion, by providing the knowledge?
The bounty law was implemented while Roe v Wade was in effect. Texas also passed a trigger law that, essentially, supersedes the bounty law by changing it from a civil matter to a criminal matter. Since SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade, the trigger law goes into effect.
Prior to SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade, other states were preparing their own bounty laws. I believe those have since been abandoned in favor of criminalizing abortion after overturning Roe v Wade. So I don't think we're going to see dedicated bounty laws, though bounties may be built into anti-abortion laws going into criminal code.
If bounties are ok for constitutionally protected rights (which abortion was when the bounty law was upheld), what's to stop blue jurisdictions from placing bounties on behaviors such as voting for Republicans or attending church? It's not a path we want to go down as a society, but we absolutely must defend ourselves from theocratic fascists.
> Texas also passed a trigger law that, essentially, supersedes the bounty law by changing it from a civil matter to a criminal matter.
False. The trigger law does not supersede the bounty law, it complements it. Acts can be torts and crimes simultaneously, and when they are both, they can be pursued as either or both.
you can keep your puritan personal take on this, and live by it all you want. All the rest of us ask is that you don't try and impose your restrictive personal beliefs on
us, directly or via appartus of the state. That shouldnt be controversial.
Unlike religion, government policies are derived not from an absolute source of truth but are related only to the values of the people being governed by them. So, you know, may the best man win.
Absolute truth. Lol. Buddy. God doesn’t exist, you have been lied to all your life by controlling beings who wish to fill you mind with ancient fairy tales to keep you in submission. Religion is a refuge for the ignorant.
Hacker news is not the place to be spreading fear, it is a house of science and engineering. We like logic, and freedom. You are advocating for ignorance and superstition.
For what it’s worth Russell’s Teapot is an illogical, fallacious analogy, and almost always the reason atheists think they’re smarter than everyone else.
What religion are you talking about here? Can’t be christianity because the bible never talks about premarital sex directly. Not to mention the abortion instructions given by Moses in Numbers 5:11-31.
God didn't tell anyone that. A few old people wrote some stuff down in a book and now a whole lot of people believe they should follow some but not all of the rules in that book. Do you follow all the rules in your holy book?
Please go back to 1400 in your time machine. Those of us who live in the 21st century have no interest in your medieval fantasies.
The only controversy is that your parents, your peers have totally warped your world view to remove compassion, logic and reason. If it wasn’t so such a deadly result for the rest of us, I would say it was sad. But we must not be sad, me must call out a destructive though process that actively regresses humanity and ensure that it cannot harm others.
You broke the site guidelines very badly several times in this thread. Even compared to the other religious flamewar comments in this thread, yours were particularly aggressive, particularly personal, and particularly unacceptable.
Since you've been breaking the site guidelines egregiously in other threads as well (some examples below), I've banned this account until we get some indication that you intend to use HN properly in the future. Among other things, that means not using the site for ideological battle, flamewar, or personal attacks. If you want to commit to that, you can reach us at hn@ycombinator.com. Please make sure to review the rules first: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
None of these states passing these laws can even pay for their own infrastructure.
So much for that whole "taking responsibility for our decisions" nonsense.
Also, if you're gonna discuss religion, then you should know that there's a fairly plausible non-supernatural explanation for how Mary became pregnant with Jesus without having sexual relations with Joseph. It's not even particularly interesting when you think about it.
>... I have a feeling the whole conversation would be a lot different if that's all we were discussing and having to take responsibility for our decisions wasn't part of the discussion.
I need to make sure that you understand that many organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, make education around contraceptives and the magnitude of one's sexual decisions a part of their program, right? These are conversations people want to be having with others, concepts people want to be teaching to kids or adults before they fuck up, but you'll find that many of the states that outlaw (or want to) abortion also prevent proper sex ed curriculum from being taught in the classroom.
Putting "@dang" in a comment doesn't do anything. I just saw this randomly. If you want a delivered message, you need to send it to hn@ycombinator.com. And yes, it's certainly helpful to alert us to threads that were as bad as this. Users watching out for the quality of HN threads is probably the biggest moderation asset HN has—it makes a huge difference.
I've replied to many of the accounts that were breaking the site guidelines. I'm not sure I've got them all, though. If you (or anyone) do contact us about this kind of thing in the future, links would be helpful.
This is an important time to ensure your representatives aren’t making and voting for policies that take away peoples rights, even if they aren’t your rights they’re violating right now. There is no right deprivation of a minority group that doesn’t also deprive the rights of majority people in the purpose of enforcing oppression.
> What with the Democrats being further left than ever
I'm not sure where you're getting that idea. The democrats have been moving towards "the center" so hard that it has pushed the republicans to the extreme right such that many of them now simply refuse to recognize the results of elections that don't go their way.
About the only thing in the platform that's gotten more progressive is the stuff about LGBTQ+.
My armchair theory is that most folks are still in the middle but people on the extreme edges of each party have gotten really big internet megaphones.
ok So maybe I read right past it, but who exactly is this targeting?
Is this targeting private citizens (or companies) that put up websites regardless of where the servers are located?
And/or is this targeting servers running these website within South Carolina.
Obviously both are bad, But I have to wonder if it is the second what this could mean for states like VA where AWS has a datacenter. If they were to enact similar laws.
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[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 86.5 ms ] threadI'm not so sure. Those are all things that most people consider to be bad, and that most countries have laws banning, or there's at least enough overlap between countries and languages to keep it mostly out of the mainstream internet content in certain languages.
These work because South Carolina doesn't have to "police the internet", instead things like FBI takedowns work, countries spend a lot of money on targeting trafficking organisations, and because companies like Twitter/Facebook/etc have some respect for national governments where they want to be able to conduct business.
What are SC going to do in this case? I guess they could prosecute sales of ads for these websites by companies based in SC, or maybe prosecute hosting providers in SC who are hosting these sites, but these are pretty weak actions.
Unless a large number of other governments get behind them, or they decide to build a Great Firewall of South Carolina this is going to have roughly zero effect.
And it's hardly trying to be North Korea. Hysterics don't help, and actually hurt any rational discussion.
Rather, as long as it doesn't run afoul of the intents and preferences of very conservative US judges.
That seems so completely absurd, almost like people are turning it into a holy book or fetishizing it.
Because it’s worked. The alternative, opening up the entire system of government for debate, simultaneously, continuously, predictably tears itself apart in a generation. (That or you wind up with an unwritten Constitution only the elites can decipher.) The Constitution isn’t sacred. But it’s far from worthless as a basis of our society.
The Constitution was amended 12 times in the 1900s, the last being 1992. There are still multiple pending amendments.
And, as a Union of States, each also with constitutions and amendments, how do you treat the overall legal entity? Most developed nations are about the size of a US state - and some are slowly banding into larger groups like the EU.
So how is this anomalous? Do you have some list of developed nations rate of constitution updates? Are any of the structure like the US as a union of semi-autonomous states?
> Do you have some list of developed nations rate of constitution updates?
Yes. https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/chronology/#
Picking only a high level misses that there are higher levels (such as world treaties and laws we are entered into) and ignores that the US is a conglomeration. When you'd pick Germany, but ignore EU rules, it's somewhat like picking Texas, and ignoring US.
It seems you're not really comparing frameworks very well.
The century that saw America exit WWII and the Cold War victorious while navigating a civil rights revolution? All amidst a series of peaceful transitions of powers, including the removal of a corrupt executive?
One can say many things. At the end of the day, the track record stands for itself.
This is separate from the question of whether the Constitution worked. It did. It produced a stable, powerful society. That some people are dissatisfied doesn’t refute that track record. It just points out there are dimensions on which it failed some.
That those people who are dissatisfied with that track record are now in control of the judicial branch of the US government doesn't refute that track record, I agree, but it does suggest that we are probably on a different track now, no?
Possibly. Let’s see what happens. The limited claim was that the Constitution worked over the past century. Saying some people are unhappy about the particular way it worked doesn’t detract from the fact itself.
Other countries have been very successful with other forms on basic documents. The American success may have been more successful with a document written to reflect a society without slaves, where you can travel across multiple state borders within a day, etc.
I mean, it’s a fine document and all, but can we please stop asserting without strong evidence that it’s the best ever or that it is the driving force of American success? That’s what I mean by fetishizing.
Straw man. None of this was asserted. All that was claimed is that it worked for the last century.
Because it and following interpretation provides the boundaries for law in the US.
And comparing it to a fetish, or labeling it a 200 year old document, when is has been changed since then (last amended in 1992, still has multiple amendments pending, and can be changed again) is also absurd.
The amendment prior to that was from 1971, over fifty years ago. We're rapidly approaching the point where we can say the constitution hasn't been updated with new ideas in generations.
The world today is wildly different from the world of the 1970s, and yet we've made no changes to the constitution. We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally, that makes it harder to change.
No, it isn't. I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights is still a pretty good set of basic rights. Would you be willing to roll the dice on throwing a random out to get a new one? That is what can easily happen when you make changing it easy enough to be done quickly.
Also, why would you want to change the root of all laws at any crazy rate? There is a reason Congress makes new laws, and states make new laws, every single year. You should not need to make drastic changes to the base legal framework just because someone invented an internet - you should be able to apply current legal frameworks, and if that is not enough, make small changes to address such changes. Even small legal changes at the Federal and local levels have significant cost to make needed changes throughout society. Now allow tinkerers to make constitutional changes willy nilly, and guess what the cost will be.
Or do you think it would be better for short-lived political trends to simply rewrite major sections of the Constitution every few years? That seems like an absolutely terrible way to plan a stable society.
>We used to update it every decade (at least). Something has changed, culturally,
Conversely, maybe the overall framework is pretty good, despite each subgroup not getting their way, so it doesn't need changed to add amendments for every tiny whim.
If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s, I don't know that we're going to agree on much.
On social issues, you could be arrested for being gay. You could legally be denied housing loans based on your race. It was considered impossible to rape your spouse. I could continue this paragraph, but the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level.
On a technological level, what we have today is unthinkable to someone in the seventies. The internet, cell phones, personal computers, autonomous vehicles and drones, machine learning, predictive policing... All these things have major impacts on our way of life.
The world has changed too. Militarily, economically, socially, religiously, politically, etc.
Yet all of those were given protection based on Constitutional arguments, right? With no change needed to specifically add a new tiny rule to the Constitution for each single change in societal beliefs, right?
>If you believe the world of today isn't materially different from the 70s
People still work, buy houses, live by most of the same desires, needs, goals, interactions. Contract law is still useful. The Bill of Rights is still pretty useful.
In fact, I'd expect the vast majority of concepts in US law from the 1970s are still useful today. I think you overestimate the need to legislate every change in technology more than any country does.
>the point is we're fundamentally different with our understanding of humanity on a social level
I seriously doubt that. Not a single issue you raised was not an issue in the 70s with a significant amount of people working on those issues. And fundamentally changed would mean things considered part of humanity in the 1970s are now gone, which I don't think is true at all. At best we've added some features and beliefs we now think are better. But we still care about people, about life, about dreams, about relationships, about dreams, about love, and death, and right to pursue happiness, and on and on.
If your system of laws is so weak as to been updating at a Constitutional level because someone invented a drone, then that system is fundamentally flawed, because it will break and never be able to be applied to life in any reasonable way. A good system has at a Constitutional level high level concepts that provide guidelines and boundaries that are refined by local, easier to change, and less system-breaking laws. That is the one we have.
Having stable long term laws is a pre-requisite for any modern economy to function.
And people do fetishize the 200 year old document. (At least, the parts they like.) You see it all the time, and saying otherwise is also form of fetish or worship.
SC would have no recourse for web hosts that have no nexus within it's borders?
Are they going to start to force local ISP's to block out of state hosts?
Think I'm joking? This is the stated judicial philosophy of the majority of Supreme Court justices. There is no traditional deeply rooted in American tradition that says anything about the Internet, either.
Moreover, when taking that mode of interpretation, it doesn't say anything about the States, nor does the 14th Amendment say anything about some of the rights protected against federal intrusion by the Bill of Rights.
The Court will rely on this precedent where convenient, I suspect.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Your citation to Wickard v. Fillburn for support of this is...bizarre. That case took what some view as an unreasonably expansive view of the federal power under the ICC, but that does the opposite of supporting the contention that it was “hollowed out” in a way that expands state power into the reserved federal space.
It explicitly says Congress however it is currently interpreted that it applies to all governmental organizations. Federal, state and local. It has previously been argued that the same limitation on interstate law existed at the state level, as the authority of a state could not exceed that of the congress when it came to national matters. If congress effectively has no limitation, there is no limitation to exceed.
No, it isn't.
States are limited by the 14th Amendment. Now, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to apply a whole lot of substantive rights against the states, including rights exactly identical to those protected against federal interference by the 1st, 2nd, 3rd (but only, to date, but one Circuit Court), 4th, 5th, most of the 6th (except for the jury locality requirement), and 8th (but maybe not the excessive bail requirement) amendments.
> It has previously been argued that the same limitation on interstate law existed at the state level, as the authority of a state could not exceed that of the congress when it came to national matters.
The interstate commerce clause argument against the state isn't that states can't do what Congress can't: that states can regulate purely intrastate Commerce is not subject to serious dispute.
The argument is that the interstate commerce clause itself prohibits many state regulations of interstate commerce, and further empowers Congress to further narrow the permissible space of state regulations of interstate commerce.
> The argument is that the interstate commerce clause itself prohibits many state regulations of interstate commerce
If you argue that states have the right to regulate interstate commerce AND the congress can pass a bill in regards to abortion because doing so is in the interest of interstate commerce. Then why can't a state pass a law that allows fathers of children that were aborted in another state to sue the abortion provider that did the procedure?
On the other hand what if we agreed that having an abortion isn't a matter of interstate commerce, then congress would not have the authority to regulate it nationally and states wouldn't be able to do so either.
States have the power to regulate intrastate commerce within their own state. They have very limited power with regard to interstate commerce (limited, very roughly, to nondiscriminatory regulation of transactions within the state which impact interstate commerce and where such regulation also is not in conflict with federal regulation of interstate commerce), because interstate commerce is expressly Constitutionally a federal function, and state action in that domain otherwise interferes with that federal function. A more expansive view of the federal power here narrows, rather than expands, the state power.
The law isn't determined on a factual, textual or even a logical basis. Gitmo, civil asset forfeiture, mass surveillance, dread scott, alien and sedition, japanese american internment camps, executive order 6102, roe. It's a political system and it reflects the political thinking at the time. The consensus you outline here is a bad idea, full of logical leaps, and it will lead to ruin, but I guess it will take the other guys getting into power to prove that to some people.
You are talking about how things are, I'm trying to say that they could be something else.
Laws are allowed until the Court rules on them. The states can pass all manner of fucked up laws (and they will), and they will stand while we figure this out -- or, until the Supreme Court rules in their favor.
Edit: changing Supreme Court to Courts, since the appellate court exists. But the point is the same.
Out of curiosity, what about the current makeup of appellate courts in this region + the Supreme Court makes you think this is going to get shut down quickly?
That being said I would hope this is an open and shut enoght case under the 1st Amendment and the Interstate Commerce clause to justify this. Which I would hope overrules personal agendas in the court.
I know a lot of people are upset with the overturn of Roe v Wade, but even the initial judges in that case said the constitutional ground that case was ruled on was shaky, which my understanding is the basic job of the SC is to rule on the constitutionality of laws. Now decades of an activist judiciary have distorted that concept as the legislative branch has chosen to abdicate their responsibility for their own gain, but the fact still stands, congress should be making the laws and the courts deciding if they are constitutional.
The Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality the first time. If it’s up to Congress to make the laws, then why did the Supreme Court intervene this time? They could have kicked this back to congress and said: “We already ruled on this. If you want a different outcome, do your job.” But they didn’t.
No, they aren't. Unconstitutional laws are unconstitutional ab initio, and lower courts can and do refuse to enforce laws on that basis, and the Supreme Court may never even get to rule on them since appeal to the Supreme Court is not by right; the farthest that cases in the federal system get by right is the Court of Appeals.
Courts don't enforce laws, but I get what you mean. I have no confidence whatsoever that appellate courts will do anything about these laws. There has been a willful, deliberate, strategic stacking of the judiciary starting in the early 2000s to get us to this place.
Sorry to repeat myself, but we really can't all sit back and reference our civics books as if this system is still functioning to protect us against these fucked up laws. It's over. Stare decisis is now at the whim of the political affiliation of the courts.
It's complicated.
Obviously a website cannot simply proclaim to only facilitate the dissemination of information to people exclusively in one state, or to exclude people in another. There is practically no concept of mutual exclusivity or mutual inclusivity on the internet, so then it's abjectly "interstate" or even "international". But it's not that simple.
The commerce clause tends to apply to federal laws, of things that transit state or territorial lines. Just because something could transit a state line, does not mean the all things in all states are automatically under federal regulation, or that federal regulation has supremacy. Obviously certain things are legal in one state but not in others, and things might be legal or illegal at a federal level regardless of interstate commerce.
The question is, is free speech subject to interstate commerce? What about commercial speech (which is afforded less 1st amendment protections)? Since we are talking about free speech, commercial or otherwise, does the idea of commerce clauses even apply? According to Heller case, and recently reaffirmed by the NY v Bruen case, when dealing with civil liberties the courts must apply strict scrutiny.
So it might boil down to a simple 1st amendment case without any commerce clause mental gymnastics.
This bill isn't law, which is what I thought based on the headline.
Edit: seems I was wrong because bill means proposed law, so the clarification would have been redundant
Nobody would say "Terrorist bombed subway" when they meant "Terrorist would have bombed subway" (except that they were stopped, and didn't get the chance).
I even went back to this popular kids’ video to confirm if I was misremembering, but I could not find anywhere “official” that refers to bills as passed laws.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Otbml6WIQPo
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HiZu6SxOaCE
> A bill is a proposed law, by definition. You're assuming bad faith where there isn't any.
All kinds of crazy bills gets proposed that are DOA, especially at the state level. Evaluating some outrage-inducing one for clicks is still bad faith. The real question is "does it have a realistic chance of going anywhere?" If it doesn't, why is it being covered?
However, I can't really judge in this particular case, because the article is paywalled.
[0]https://www.govinfo.gov/help/bills
This basically tells you everything you need to know. These people want to put women in jail and they don't care about niceties like "inter-state commerce" because in their mind they're fighting Al Capone. I hope commenters on here stop minimizing what these groups are trying to achieve. The reversal or Roe was not about "kicking it back to the states", it was the first step in trying to make abortion access illegal nationwide.
Yes, and it makes me angry that so many commenters on this and other forums said, "Well, they have a point. It should be left to the states." As if women whose lives are at risk can wait for their judicial philosophy to cleanly play out; as if the raped 10 year old being forced to travel out of state to have an abortion was just how it goes while we figure out how to get the book keeping figured out; as if the woman who was forced to carry a dead fetus inside her for weeks because the hospital didn't want to risk being sued was just one of those tragic, unforeseeable, unavoidable victims of our imperfect democracy.
These are lives we're talking about here. And it's only going to get worse. Sorry to use a cliche, but wake the fuck up y'all.
People in the US are able to freely travel between states, this isn't the case elsewhere in the world. Some things are crimes in some jurisdictions and not others, this is normal.
If you think it's inadequate, pass an amendment to the constitution, that's what the amendment process if for. If you think the process to too burdensome, encourage your state to secede.
This is not a right that is specifically enumerated by the Constitution. The current Supreme Court has indicated that rights that are not specifically enumerated by the Constitution are subject to evaluation and curtailment.
Again, you ignore the actual realities of politics. Obama promised to codify Roe v Wade his first day in office. He then refused to, since it was better for democrats to keep it on as a political bargaining chip.
Now, what are US liberals supposed to do? Not vote and lose? Vote for the Republicans and see abortion criminalized federally? No, they have to vote for the Democrats again and maybe hope they finally try to pass their agenda. There is a false choice presented. It was urgent to the voters, but not to the politicians.
Easier said than done, for many.
My second paragraph expands upon the reason and justice aspect.
Also the current constitutional crisis we are in demolishes the legalist justification anyways. States being able to ban travel to other states for abortion, states allowing private citizens to sue others for getting abortions in other states. States limiting access to websites that are legal in other states and limiting the first amendment.
Because repealing Roe was done on an ideological basis it has caused a cascade of problems around how much power states should have, one that has been largely settled since the Civil War.
As for the people not in South Carolina, they should work to pass an amendment or secede from the union, those are the only legal options if you believe in how the federal government is supposed to work (maybe there's a 3rd option to kick out SC?).
It's not legal to secede from the US, we fought an entire war because it was not a right of the states. Most of what you say ignores the reality of our political system, voter suppression, who draw districts, filibuster, etc. Which makes it more difficult than "just vote". Which is why the Republicans went the route of Supreme Court justice appointment, so they could legislate via the court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
The rule of law exists precisely because of the temptation to think with our "empathy" instead of our brains.
> The rule of law exists precisely because of the temptation to think with our "empathy" instead of our brains.
Assumptions galore are made here. First off, the rule of law exists because of power heirarchies. People create laws to protect THEMSELVES and THEIR interests. Monarchs didn't create laws for the benefit of everyone, neither do dictators. Furthermore many laws exist to augment our empathy. Speeding laws exist because many people are incapable of comprehending the danger they could pose to someone else. Animal cruelty is illegal because the majority of people understand it's wrong, and we will force that wisdom upon others who don't.
> the temptation to think with our "empathy" instead of our brains
Where do you think empathy comes from if not our brains? Empathy is a tool of reason, not orthogonal to it. Would you praise someone for only using one of their senses? Or would you think they are ridiculous for constructing a worldview based only around their sense of smell? Thinking that empathy is somehow a trait to be overcome and not a tool is the same as eating soap regardless of how it tastes, because it "smells good". Empathy allows us to consider the conditions and experiences of those outside of our immediate sphere of influence. In a democracy this is especially invaluable, since individuals make decisions that influence society at large.
The inability to see outside of your every day experience is not logical or rational, it's the exact opposite. Empirical evidence can be a great tool for analyzing macro trends, but empathy allows us to better understand the causality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
Personal attacks are particularly not ok, so please don't post like that again.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
p.s. It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's another line at which we ban accounts (even if they're not breaking the other guidelines) - for past explanations, see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
I'm not going to ban you right now because if I scroll back far enough in your commenting history I do see comments that are in line with the intention of the site, but if you'd please correct this going forward, we'd be grateful.
Note that this is in addition to what I said at the start of this comment—there are two separate issues here.
PS: I didn't post that comment.
Do you know of countries with a federal government and where people can't travel freely between the member states? The ones I know don't have this problem so I'm not sure how that's something unique to the US.
One really simple example of what the SCOTUS could do is they could rule that an unborn child - from the time of conception - is covered by the rights laid out in the 14th amendment.
Takes all choice back away from the state once more.
No other developed country has approached the abortion issue by saying "pfft the rules don't matter." The EU Court of Human Rights just last year refused to recognize a universal right to elective abortions. In every European country where abortion is legal, advocates of abortion made their case to the people, and the people decided whether to allow it and under what circumstances. In some cases it took a long time--Ireland legalized it just in 2018. But that's how civilized societies operate.
Your thinking is how third world countries operate. They say "lives are at stake" (or something similarly weighty) and use that to justify ignoring the legal process. As someone from one of those countries let me tell you that you do not want to go down that road. The rules are more important than anything else. They are more important than any individual lives. Because the rules are what make civilization possible. If you disregard the rules on issues that you deem sufficiently important to you, that frees the other side to ignore the rules on issues they deem sufficiently important to them, and it goes quickly downhill from there.
For example, Colorado and other states have legalized weed. They don't need to wax poetic about separation of powers etc to defend their position, because everyone understands that this is exactly what the Federal system was designed for. To allow states to augment their economies and taxation systems as they see fit (going back to colonial era reasoning).
Throughout US history the most vocal proponents of states rights have been those who attempt to limit personal liberties. They first use the constitution as a jumping board, arguing that "it's not explicitly stated in the constitution!" because the constitution is limited and vague (The founding fathers intentionally kicked the can down the road for racial issues). Technically, the regressives are right here, but they are hiding behind legalism to protect their abhorrent viewpoints.
"If it's so popular then just vote on it then!"
Unfortunately it's not so simple. At the Federal level, a filibuster proof majority is required in the Senate (non-proportional) as well as full control of all three branches of government (president and congress are also non-proportional, although in a different way). So it's incredibly difficult to pass overwhelmingly popular legislature/amendments in the US. Which is precisely why we have seen most of our civil rights gains over the last 50 years be accomplished through the court system. At the state level, there is no filibuster (mostly) and so there is no mechanism for a minority to halt legislation at the state level.
This kind of game has been played out for the last 200 years. Yes rules are important, but the reactionaries in US history have typically "meta-gamed" the flaws in our system that were overlooked by the founding fathers in order to preserve horrendous practices. That's not to say that there is no benefit to our checks and balances, but when it comes to things like civil rights, gay marriage, and abortion, the opposing side is mostly meta-gaming and exploiting checks and balances negatively.
To sum up, corruption in the third world occurs by circumventing the laws. Corruption in the US occurs when you put someone in a position of power to interpret the laws the way you want them to. If you need sources, I can provide.
> No other developed country has approached the abortion issue by saying "pfft the rules don't matter."
The Roe decision was not made on "rules don't matter" it was an extension of the due process clause in the 14th amendment. The overturning of it was made on interpretations of common law going back to the 14th century, the main point of argument being that there was "no innate protection of abortion as a fundamental right".
We’re already there. That’s already happened. Stare decisis — remember when all the justices who just ruled to overturn Roe called it “settled law”? Remember when the Republican Senate refused to consider Obama’s Supreme Court nominee? Remember when the courts gutted the voting rights act? Remember when the courts determined the outcome of Bush v Gore? The side that “won” this argument didn’t do it by playing by the rules. Because the court doesn’t have rules. The constitution doesn’t outline any of the philosophy that you are calling “rules.” So sitting back and saying “let’s just play by the rules” is handing a victory to a side that doesn’t care for them.
If you watch this youtube video of Kavanaugh answering questions I never get the idea that he says he won't overturn Roe v Wage, or that it is a binding or super precedent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjs-qO0N2ZI
[0]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stare_decisis
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
The phrase is often used as if it's meant to suggest that they're fighting off federal government overreach. In fact, it's used exactly to allow them to have overreach over you, at the level that they can make it happen. When they get the opportunity to control it at the federal level, it will stop being "left to the states".
It's very much about denying individual liberties, using Orwellian language making it seem otherwise.
There are plenty of people who oppose abortion that are appalled at something like this or the Texas bounty hunting law. If we continue to try and paint each other group as a monolithic enemy other division will continue to rise and polarization will increase and the effects will be devestating.
(Edited to add: there is a separate frustration of the poster of people claiming that diverting reproductive justice to state determination is reasonable. The poster is saying they are frustrated with that statement because it ignore the above fact. I also don’t think this is painting anyone with a broad brush… it is painting specific people’s specific argument as being myopic.)
Speaking of things that aren't related. I don't see how those things being legal is even somewhat related to making abortion illegal or making it legal to bounty hunt women. You're going to have to explain that connection to me a bit more.
"large pulled back" belies the fact that the motives are ulterior.
> consequences are largely left up to the people who choose to use those things
In the case of banning abortion, you're denying choice and autonomy. You're saying a woman HAS to give birth even if it wasn't her choice. Even if she was raped. Even if she's 10 years old.
If you don't find that stance appalling, I don't know what to say.
Forcing a birth of a badly unwanted human being, who is going to suffer through life being badly unwanted, is a rather different thing.
And forcing a woman to keep carrying a pregnancy which is dangerous to her life (and thus to the prospective baby's life anyway) is not just indifference, it's a direct opposite of care.
So you can worry or you can act.
I don't know about that; I think it is possible to oppose abortion, but not seek to do so via legal remedies. Like opposing drinking or smoking, or game microtransactions, or IoT devices.
One can be in favor of abortions for medical necessity or when the choice to get pregnant was not consensual while still being wildly opposed to abortions for convenience reasons.
If we're not talking about expanding government along these lines then maybe we should just leave the choice to the people immediately involved.
I understand this is an emotional issue but until everyone can agree to at least have a discussion about this without getting overemotional we can't have any discussion or compromise only polarization and that eventually leads to shooting and a civil war.
I mean my own sister told me she hopes my 2 year old daughter gets raped because of my position on this issue. Doesn't that strike anyone else as something that would deplorable under other circumstances but we excuse it right now because we believe the cause is righteous?
This is how fanatics and extremists are made.
Some things are not compromise-able.
> I mean my own sister told me she hopes my 2 year old daughter gets raped because of my position on this issue. Doesn't that strike anyone else as something that would deplorable under other circumstances but we excuse it right now because we believe the cause is righteous?
Source that “we” excuse wishing harm on another person for no reason, and an innocent toddler at that? It is so deplorable that I would need considerable proof to believe it even occurred, especially from an aunt to a niece.
There absolutely are misogynists and hypocrites among the pro-life/anti-choice movement, but not everyone in that movement is at the extreme. Those of us who want abortion to be legal nationwide must acknowledge the ethical complexity of terminating an unwanted pregnancy.
According to your morals, perhaps. But I don't share your morals. As far as I'm concerned, if it can't breathe on its own it's not a baby. Likewise if it hasn't been gestated long enough that it can be cared for in the NICU.
We tried to be reasonable and limit abortion access to the end of the second trimester, but that wasn't good enough for some people. No, some of these assholes want to ban abortion after six weeks when some women can go that long before even realizing they're pregnant.
I'm sick of "acknowledging the ethical complexity". Our opposition doesn't, and that's why they keep kicking our fucking asses.
https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/premature-babies....
When you miss your period, and take a pregnancy test, the "start of pregnancy" is apparently considered to have been the start of your last period. That means that at the earliest time you could be generally expected to find out you're pregnant, you are considered to have been pregnant for 4-5 weeks.
Then, of course, you'll need to make a decision about what to do about it, contact a doctor, and have a procedure scheduled...and in states with restrictive abortion laws, you can bet that that's going to be more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be.
The cruelty of it all is the point.
And to be frank, I don't care if they're unhappy to be lumped together. Lie with dogs and all that.
This is a bit... difficult to take seriously. They are being painted by the general actions at large that they are causing. If you want them to be seen in their best light, try to get their best light into the spotlight.
Then perhaps the other group should not have monolithically spent decades fighting against and removing human rights from people I care about.
One party unanimously voted in favor of it.
The other party voted 96% against it.
I'll leave which party is which as an exercise to the reader.
It's also very much the "surely the face-eating leopards party won't let leopards eat my face!" mindset.
I've heard anecdotal reports from some people who have more conservative family members than I that some of them are actually starting to realize that there won't be the "reasonable exceptions" they were just assuming would exist, and getting genuinely worried.
[0]: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
“We could have acknowledged it was bad reasoning in a legal context but not a human rights and that a fix would just create the same status quo and left it.” — sane people
Agreed; this was a political flex to remind the proles grandpa is still sitting in the corner rambling nonsense.
Don't get me wrong. There is definitely an abortion rights disaster in progress. It's just that this disaster was manufactured only to distract from a larger, more powerful, disaster.
Have you noticed how expensive everything is lately?
And how will this debacle affect your vote?
Have you noticed that supply and demand can change prices? Such as supply of young people performing labor in an aging country demanding ever more labor, or international conflicts and responses to infectious diseases disrupting supply chains. And of course, the government’s monetary response, but the point is that unless you have a source for a conspiracy, I do not see why it should merit consideration.
Voting itself is a sham. I'm provided with the choice of a baboon and chimp for a leader, alternately I can stand for elections for a troop of monkeys, what can I say?
Was this motive ever hidden?
Abortion should be illegal. I hope each state passes laws criminalizing it. That has always been the goal.
The ‘judicial philosophy’ crap emerged due TO roe V. wade. The decision made a mockery of the constitution.
The millions upon millions of people working and praying and picketing and voting on this issue for the past 40 years we’re doing it to save babies… not to defend some abstract philosophy.
If one ‘bans’ murder, the legislatures and courts will need to grapple with killing in self-defense, pulling the plug on a brain-dead vegetable, administering drugs in some cases that have a high risk of death, assisting in a suicide, accidentally causing a death vs intentionally, etc.
This isn’t new.
Each state crafts it’s own laws to address these things, each prosecutor uses his discretion in applying them, each jury or grand jury weighs in, each judge crafts a sentence taking these things into consideration, etc.
In short your edge cases are nothing new… every law is over and under inclusive. The judicial system as a whole has been dealing with these issues for centuries.
If you don't investigate every miscarriage, what's the criteria for getting the state involved? Do you wait for family or neighbors to report a crime? Do you track medical appointments and make a judgement as to when a birth was expected and didn't happen?
I'm not sure you've thought this through.
Every felony charge goes through a grand jury.
Indeed, every death is investigated to some extent. Every county has a coroner, some states have full-blown inquests after each death.
Do you think when grandma dies of old age she’s just taken to a funeral home and that’s that?
There’s more to it.
If something looks suspicious, it’s kicked up to the next level. If questions remain, it’s kicked up another level.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but you seem to have little experience with the day-to-day legal processes surrounding every death. You may be more familiar with a crime like arson. As you MAY know, every single structure fire is investigated. Some turn out to be arson. Some don’t. These processes exist, always have existed, and I think you’re straining.
>I’m not sure you’ve thought this through.
I’ve been doing this for a living for over 25 years.
Whether your pro-choice or pro-life isn’t my concern. God bless you either way. But, the criminal process regarding abortion existed for centuries prior to Roe v. Wade. It’s really not as complicated as you make out.
Which "these people" are you referring to? Roe was remarkable in its ability to unify disparate groups: evangelicals and Catholics who oppose abortion categorically, right-leaning independents who support some level of abortion but want more restrictions than Roe allows, and Constitutionalists who find Roe incomprehensible as an assertion of Constitutional law.
Now that Roe is gone, some of those folks will indeed try to "make abortion access illegal nationwide." But hardly everyone who opposed Roe to begin with: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/06/wide-partis.... Just 13% of Republicans are true believers who think abortion should be categorically illegal. The vast majority, 38% think it should be "legal in all or most cases." Most fall in the mushy middle.
How does Constitutional case law factor into the question of mass baby murder?
Consider:
You watch someone die in front of you while you hold in your hands the thing that could save their life, but refuse to give it. Is that murder? Maybe, possibly, there's an argument that it's something else but I'm comfortable with this. Should a person be allowed to do it? Again maybe, but I'm ok with no, that's a bad crime, they shouldn't be allowed to do it.
You watch someone die in front of you while the thing that could save them comes from your own body. A blood transfusion, say, or whatever, a fingernail clipping, it doesn't matter really. This is morally the same transgression as the first example. But in this case we have clearly and consistently decided that you are allowed to make this choice. It may be evil but it is not a crime.
If you don't allow the second choice, then you open the door to things like medical experiments on nonconsenting people and organ harvesting. The boundary around bodily autonomy needs to be firm or you permit atrocities.
Abortion may be murder! You can believe it is. But the fact that the life depends on the body of another person means they have the choice not to render aid.
In their mind they think they're fighting Satan.
Article gets into this a bit: "Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said the First Amendment and Section 230, a bill that shields internet providers and tech companies from liability for the posts, photos and videos people share on their sites, provide a strong defense in many instances for websites and providers facing lawsuits over hosting information about abortion access."
It's more about scoring brownie points with your base and tying up your opponents in litigation for years... Even if they know the law is blatantly unconstitutional, there's no real downside to the legislatures (assuming their constituents support the unconstitutional law)
While none of those bills related to abortion, I'm still skeptical the courts would let this bill stand
Where this would fall afoul is likely interstate commerce. South Carolina can't declare a website hosted in California illegal due to jurisdiction. They might be able to convince ISPs to block them, though.
So by that logic, you should be able to sue the owner of a website - as long as it is within the state, because they're aiding and abetting a person with her abortion, by providing the knowledge?
Prior to SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade, other states were preparing their own bounty laws. I believe those have since been abandoned in favor of criminalizing abortion after overturning Roe v Wade. So I don't think we're going to see dedicated bounty laws, though bounties may be built into anti-abortion laws going into criminal code.
False. The trigger law does not supersede the bounty law, it complements it. Acts can be torts and crimes simultaneously, and when they are both, they can be pursued as either or both.
Hacker news is not the place to be spreading fear, it is a house of science and engineering. We like logic, and freedom. You are advocating for ignorance and superstition.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32200805.
If we look at 5:28 in particular, it could be describing either continued fertility or continued pregnancy: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Bamidbar%205:28
Then why are so many characters in the Bible having sex outside marriage, or engaging in polygamy?
The only controversy is that your parents, your peers have totally warped your world view to remove compassion, logic and reason. If it wasn’t so such a deadly result for the rest of us, I would say it was sad. But we must not be sad, me must call out a destructive though process that actively regresses humanity and ensure that it cannot harm others.
Since you've been breaking the site guidelines egregiously in other threads as well (some examples below), I've banned this account until we get some indication that you intend to use HN properly in the future. Among other things, that means not using the site for ideological battle, flamewar, or personal attacks. If you want to commit to that, you can reach us at hn@ycombinator.com. Please make sure to review the rules first: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31997209
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32036852
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32125093
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32124237
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379
So much for that whole "taking responsibility for our decisions" nonsense.
Also, if you're gonna discuss religion, then you should know that there's a fairly plausible non-supernatural explanation for how Mary became pregnant with Jesus without having sexual relations with Joseph. It's not even particularly interesting when you think about it.
I need to make sure that you understand that many organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, make education around contraceptives and the magnitude of one's sexual decisions a part of their program, right? These are conversations people want to be having with others, concepts people want to be teaching to kids or adults before they fuck up, but you'll find that many of the states that outlaw (or want to) abortion also prevent proper sex ed curriculum from being taught in the classroom.
I've replied to many of the accounts that were breaking the site guidelines. I'm not sure I've got them all, though. If you (or anyone) do contact us about this kind of thing in the future, links would be helpful.
I'm not sure where you're getting that idea. The democrats have been moving towards "the center" so hard that it has pushed the republicans to the extreme right such that many of them now simply refuse to recognize the results of elections that don't go their way.
About the only thing in the platform that's gotten more progressive is the stuff about LGBTQ+.
Is this targeting private citizens (or companies) that put up websites regardless of where the servers are located?
And/or is this targeting servers running these website within South Carolina.
Obviously both are bad, But I have to wonder if it is the second what this could mean for states like VA where AWS has a datacenter. If they were to enact similar laws.
Hosting a website:Free Speech/Freedom of the Press(You are the Press when you're hosting a website)
If they try to go the interstate commerce route, they'll be punting up to Federal jurisdiction which will be DoA.
Also hello, new incentive to creatively communicate in code if they even try to effectively enforce this.