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The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the legislature from protecting the right to abortion. It merely decided that it is not currently prote

The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the legislature from protecting the right to abortion. It merely decided that it is not currently protected by constitution, which to me seems completely correct. If most people agree that it should be a constitutional right, no one stops the legislature from adding the required amendment. And if most people can't agree on that, well, adding that wouldn't be democratic.

FpUser 4y ago
>"If most people agree that it should be a constitutional right, no one stops the legislature from adding the required amendment. " Meanwhile bunch of states will make abortions illegal. I think Texas already has with some technicalities but correct me if I am wrong.
- standardUser 4y ago
  40 million women in about 20 states just lost all legal access to abortions. Additional states will follow soon, but there is no "meanwhile" for a lot of the country. It's already done.
  - hihihihi1234 4y ago
    I don't think all 40 million women have lost "all" legal access. Eg Florida and Virginia are banning abortion after 15 weeks - which is actually less restrictive than in most of western Europe. Eg France bans abortion after 14 weeks; Norway bans it after 12 weeks.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      For now. Desantis is already saying he will increase restrictions. Do you have any reason to believe this man, running for President in 2024, won’t race to claim he is the king of protecting fetuses? He’s not going to be able to stand on a stage next to anyone who claims they will restrict abortion in any and all cases, and he knows that. Pence was out yesterday calling for a blanket nationwide abortion ban. That’s were the GOP as a party will be in 2 years, and Florida will need to be there before then to shore up Desantis’ political position. Florida will not be a state where abortions happen soon enough.
      - hihihihi1234 4y ago
        Yeah, fair point. Time will tell I guess.
mirceal 4y ago
Cute take but I'm going to ask the question: why did something that was in place for 50 years needs to be revisited? Is it maybe needed for the nutjobs that do want to ban abortion to do their thing? Also, you need to ask yourself: is this about abortion? Or is it really about literally keeping the people poor, stupid and uneducated? Think about it: if you're not poor this is not an issue. If you have 5 kids instead of 1, good luck getting them the proper education. But it's cool...we can use all that almost free labor to drive our corporate empires forward.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  > why did something that was in place for 50 years needs to be revisited? Because it was poorly reasoned judicial activism and always has been. The amount of time that a decision stands should have no bearing on how good of a decision it is. One of the dissents in Casey v Planned Parenthood in 92 also wanted to overturn Roe, for the same reasons that the current court did. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought that Roe v Wade was poorly reasoned.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    But what is baffling is why they picked Roe V Wade to overturn rather than cut it at the root, such as Wickard v Filburn which would have undone a massive swath of the kind of unconstitutional expansion of the federal government. They could have applied their logic uniformly but bizarrely singled out an abortion case.
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      Because it was roe v wade in question. Not the other case. I don’t believe the Supreme Court can issue judgment on any law they choose. It has to be relating to the court case in question
      - notch656a 4y ago
        They get to pick which case they take cert on. There is absolutely gonna be _something_ out there that would allow them to work at the root of Wickard v Filburn. Framing it as "they have to work with this one case they got" is disingenuous. They intentionally chose to go for the contradictory choice of singling out abortion while not attacking the root -- which suggests to me think this is more about judicial activism than upholding the constitution.
andsoitis 4y ago
It is worth considering the larger shape of things. Do you imagine, if the Republicans control all three branches of government, that they would not create a federal law that bans abortions everywhere? All signals point to that, and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade is there to remove friction to get there.
- tenpies 4y ago
  - thebradbain 4y ago
    > I do, mostly because just a few years ago when they controlled the executive and legislative, they showed they had no interesting in "banning abortions everywhere". Because that would’ve been an obvious and flagrant violation of Roe and a waste of time. > This Handmaid's Tale scenario continues to be Leftist fan fiction to rally the troops. I mean, overturning a long-held right is the first big step on that path. It wouldn’t have such staying power if there was no concrete evidence, such as this ruling, to back up those fears. > The same cannot be said for some of the scenarios the Right warns about - as we're witnessing right now. Like what? Use your words
- andrew_ 4y ago
  It's just as feasible that Democrats control all three, and it's happened before. The Democratic party had complete control over both Houses and the presidency from 1933 to 1947, 1949–1953, and 1961–1969; 26 years of full control of the legislative and executive branches thanks to the New Deal Coalition. By 1939, FDR had formed a more liberal court through his appointments, and that lasted a while through this Democratic control of the branches into the 1950s. As the pendulum swings, so does policy. It would be more difficult IMHO if there were more than two parties.
- coryfklein 4y ago
  > if the Republicans control all three branches of government, that they would not create a federal law that bans abortions everywhere? If the voting public of the US shifts to where it adopts a view you disagree with then of course the democratic institution would continue to reflect the public. But we have good reason to believe this will never happen. Polling shows that most individuals support a woman's right to abortion. And even if the Republican party gained control of all 3 branches, they aren't a monolithic and unified block when it comes to policy. "States rights" is a HUGE motivation for most Republicans, and a federal policy banning abortion would be a big stumbling block for getting the votes to pass such legislation even with a Republican majority.
darth_avocado 4y ago
63% of Americans support Roe v Wade and 80% support abortions in some cases. People agree on that. Adding it to the constitution hasn’t happened because politics.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  It's getting the states to ratify the amendment that's difficult. General population poll numbers don't equate to state ratification support.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  In polling I've seen, roughly 2/3 are pro-Roe, but roughly 2/3 also misunderstand what it would mean to overturn Roe. They believe that abortion would be illegal everywhere, not that the legality would devolve to the states. So while it's true that 2/3 of Americans say they want Roe kept in place, it's also true that many of them don't know what that actually means.
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    >They believe that abortion would be illegal everywhere. While that will not be true, access to abortion will be very limited everywhere. With 26 states limiting it seriously and no constitutional protections on getting abortions in a different state, you could see a vast majority of population not have access to abortions. Even if everyone starts traveling for abortions, a huge amount of the population won’t be able to travel. And the ones who travel will stress the medical facilities to the extent that people living in states that have legal abortion access, will still have it’s populations access to abortions severely limited. It doesn’t matter if 2/3 Americans don’t know what it actually means. What matters is 2/3 Americans want access to abortions, and that access will be severely limited regardless of whether it’s legal in your state.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      > access to abortion will be very limited everywhere This is surely not true. Forty percent of the US population lives in states with laws protecting access to abortion. The AP is reporting that 20 states have heavy restrictions/bans, and the remainder are to-be-determined. [1] I've seen the 26 state reference floating around on social media and wonder which states are included, beyond what news outlets are reporting. I'm open to the possibility that the AP has this wrong — the reason I'd like to know the source of the 26 figure is to compare it to the mostly-trusted sources that are giving lower numbers. To be clear, I'm not weighing in on whether today's decision is good or bad. I just wanted to clear up some of the statistics that people hear a lot, since they are sometimes based on misunderstandings of the law (which are reasonable since the case was decided a long time ago, and until recently most people thought it would not be overturned anytime soon, if ever). 1: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-supreme-court-decision-854f60302f21c2c35129e58cf8d8a7b0 https://apnews.com/article/abortion-supreme-court-decision-8...
ausbah 4y ago
most people do think that abortion should be law in some form, but since the US doesn't have a democratic basis in 5/6 of the federal government - "leaving jit to the legislature" is just as bad as letting SCOTUS decide the law. that doesn't even touch upon how constitutional amendments aren't even on the table with how hard they are to pass and no matter what, you're dealing with laws regarding the bodily autonomy of 50% of the populace. if that can't be considered a fundamental right, what really can?
notch656a 4y ago
What's perplexing is why they don't apply this to the rest of the federal powers. Overturn Wickard v Filburn and cut it at the root. The federal government has no legitimacy to regulate intrastate trade, most gun laws, most of the civil rights act, the controlled substance act, etc. The fact that they picked abortion but not the root of anti-constitutional federal expansionism is truly baffling.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  They decide what's in front of them. If you've got a good challenge case for Wickard v Filburn, they might hear it. But this case wasn't a case that could overturn Wickard v Filburn.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- andrew_ 4y ago
  Agree it was a weird hill to choose. I can see more expansionism being picked at over the next few years.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  I hope to god that regulation of interstate trade gets shot down, so California and New York can tax goods from red states into oblivion. That would be a poetic response to this egregious use of "state's rights."
  - scythe 4y ago
    That's not what Wickard v. Filburn was about. Wickard held that regulation of individual behavior could be legislated under the Interstate Commerce Clause insofar as that individual behavior had a "rational basis" effect on the interstate market for a commodity. This effectively allowed Congress to regulate most aspects of our lives under the auspices of the power to regulate interstate commerce.
  - ryan93 4y ago
TameAntelope 4y ago
The problem with this legal OCD is that in the meantime, people suffer. This isn't a codebase refactor, this is people's lives. Pulling this ruling before you have "what the people want" in place is like deleting a feature you plan on rebuilding later before you actually rebuild it. Nobody in their right mind thinks that's a good idea in any other context, so why would it make sense here?
- bushbaba 4y ago
  You’re assuming the rest of the country shares your views. A large portion of America views abortion as murder. I do NOT share that viewpoint. But we are a republic. And the Supreme Court doesn’t issue law, that’s Congress’s responsibility. What this represents is not a code refactor but a Change to a comment in the code base on what a function does.
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
    The point is if you believe this to not be up to the Supreme Court to decide, then you don't believe it's up to the Supreme Court to undo until the people have decided. The Supreme Court didn't issue a law here, they changed their interpretation of a decision they had made 50 years prior, for no reason at all except that the composition of the court had changed. That's like hiring a new guy and his first action is to remove an entire technology that was propping up your infrastructure, because it wasn't being stored in the "correct" VCS.
    - hossbeast 4y ago
      That is actually a great analogy
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      Say a supreme court 50 years ago interpreted the constitution that woman did not have a right to vote. Then today the court ruled, the constitution doesn't actually state anything of the sort and overturns that past judgment. In that case would you want the court to instead state, well a decision 50 years ago was made. So we wont change it. The US Congress needs to pass a law explicitly granting woman the right to vote. Such-as with say Minor v. Happersett, "Court held that, while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not confer a right to vote, and therefore state laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid" A good court in a Democratic government must be objective in interpretation of law . And the system is such that it is the US Congress's responsibility to pass law.
MrDresden 4y ago
- andrew_ 4y ago
  > via this all precious constitution of yours? This reveals that you didn't ask in good faith.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Not really. The United States Constitution can be mocked in good faith.
  - MrDresden 4y ago
  - thebradbain 4y ago
    I’m an American and I think the same thing: Why is it so important? It’s either so heavily interpreted that it means different things than what’s written (2nd Amendment), it’s needed complete adjustment to even pretend to meet its ideals (Slavery), the adjustment needed adjustments (Voting Rights Act), and every step of the way those adjustments get watered down, stripped, rendered meaningless… It’s a document written by people from a different time. Why be beholden to the past, when it’s not even recognizable in its current form to when it was first drafted?
colinmhayes 4y ago
> If most people agree that it should be a constitutional right, no one stops the legislature from adding the required amendment The issue is that we're forced into a two party system. If someone thinks "I want abortion rights, but the culture wars are more important to me" they vote republican. A large block of the republican base is single issue religious voters, so even if a majority of the republican voters want abortion rights they will never pass because the religious voters will primary anyone who supports abortion.
causi 4y ago
rt4mn 4y ago
> It merely decided that it is not currently protected by constitution, which to me seems completely correct. First off, It was a momentous decision. It did not "merely" decide anything. Second, a right does not need to be explicitly spelled out in the constitution to be a constitutionally protected right. The right to an abortion is a clear and rational outgrowth of the constitutional protections of privacy and bodily autonomy (IE, the right to not have the government mess with our shit for no good reason).
- zionic 4y ago
  Hearing the body-autonomy argument is pretty funny right now, given what the last 2 years have been like.
  - xpe 4y ago
    The "body-autonomy argument" is not the only principle in play. COVID is a communicable disease. Vaccinating one person reduces the risk to others. An abortion is not a communicable disease.
  - rt4mn 4y ago
    I'm not sure how to interpret your comment. Could you elaborate?
    - daenz 4y ago
      I think they're referring to the hypocrisy of compelling vaccination on someone if you support the idea of bodily autonomy.
      - rt4mn 4y ago
        Thats what I thought as well, but since neither myself nor the comment I was replying to mentioned it, I was / am confused how the hypocrisy in question was relevant. I'm probably overthinking a throwaway internet comment.
      - nobody9999 4y ago
analog31 4y ago
The amendment is at best quasi-democratic, since amendments that would have broad public support are almost prohibitively difficult to carry out, and requires the cooperation of states that are themselves quasi-democratic.
sophacles 4y ago
How is it completely correct? The 9th amendment acknowledges that rights not enumerated in the constitution exist. It's perfectly reasonable to say that bodily autonomy is in fact one of those rights, as the concept is required for other rights to even exist.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  The court decision goes over the process it uses to determine if something is an unenumerated right: "We have held that the “established method of substantive-due-process analysis” requires that an unenumerated right be “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’” before it can be recognized as a component of the “liberty” protected in the Due Process Clause. Glucksberg, 521 U. S., at 721; cf. Timbs, 586 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7)." There is a lengthy appendix to the ruling that goes through the list of prior state laws that criminalized abortion and shows that a right to abortion is not, in fact, "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition".
  - sophacles 4y ago
    So you want to force women to die and easily preventable death (e.g. ectopic pregnancy)? That's the only way "completely correct" works here - the trigger laws on the books that result in that outcome were in place before the court took this case. They chose to rule broadly rather than a ruling that still enshrined the right of someone to have a medical procedure that would preserve their life say in the case of a non-viable pregnancy that would end in the death of both the woman and the fetus. edit: i was wrong about the trigger laws having exceptions for life endangering pregnancies - its the new laws the same people are passing that remove the exceptions. I still stand by my statement, because the "completely correct" ruling allows those exceptions to be removed.
  - coffeefirst 4y ago
    The problem is of "deeply rooted in history and tradition" is a weasel phrase that means literally anything they want it to mean. Their claims about history and tradition so far have been historically inaccurate, or limited to only arch-conservative Christian traditions. None of this is to mention a deeper fundamental problem with only looking at history and tradition in such a literal way: for women or men who are not white straight Christians, they haven't actually had equal rights for all that long. Arguably, the right to marry is a pretty fundamental Natural Right and has only been recognized starting in 2004. These are master orators who no longer care about perceived legitimacy or stare decisis. They will continue to do whatever they want because they can, and make up the justification as they go along.
standardUser 4y ago
Protecting the rights of marginalized groups is the only thing that makes democracy a workable system. What you are supporting is called mob rule.
scythe 4y ago
It's true that most people agreed that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned. But a quick look at the polling will also show you that Roe v. Wade was more popular than abortion itself. I think there is a simple way to interpret that: a lot of people thought that Roe v. Wade meant that they didn't have to think about abortion. And they liked that, even if they didn't think it was the ideal way to resolve the issue. They simply cared more about other issues, like the PPACA subsidy gaps, environmental sustainability, gun rights, taxes, drugs, et cetera, ad nauseam. Even during the Barrett and Kavanaugh nominations, there were plenty of people, including the nominally pro-choice (e.g. a certain Senator from Maine), who argued that Roe v. Wade was not in danger, which was most likely wishful thinking. So your idea doesn't work, and in fact nothing works. The era when a voter or politician can (effectively) ignore abortion as a substantive political issue is over, and it isn't coming back.
portpecos 4y ago
> The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the legislature from protecting the right to abortion. Which means that New York, California, Massachusetts will retain abortion access. And Texas, Indiana, will remove abortion access. This sounds like States rights is actually working. But the media is distorting the overturning of Roe vs Wade with the sensational claim that “Abortion is banned in the US”. No, it’s not banned. This just means Texas and New York have differing policies with regards to abortion access. Yes, 46 million women living in conservative states will lose access to abortion, but not all of those women are liberal quite frankly. Moreover, those states are exactly that: conservative. And the Conservative Majority of that state isn’t required to accommodate the views of the Liberal minority of that state. Just like the Liberal Majority of California isn’t required to accommodate their Conservative Minorities. That’s the nature of how US Democratic institutions were built. Sounds fair to me and the Supreme Court made the correct decision by returning that authority back to the states.
mattnewton 4y ago
> The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the legislature from protecting the right to abortion. It merely decided that it is not currently protected by constitution, which to me seems completely correct. The Supreme Court includes multiple justices put there in no small part due to lobbying by conservative faith groups, and as part of their lobbying plan, several states have trigger laws on the books that immediately make abortion legal in many states. The Supreme Court’s decision is the immediate cause of these “trigger laws” going into effect. It’s a part of a larger concerted effort, so this is a distinction with little difference for anyone living in these states or who may find themselves sued in Texas for providing abortions to a Texan who crossed into their state.

FpUser 4y ago

>"If most people agree that it should be a constitutional right, no one stops the legislature from adding the required amendment. " Meanwhile bunch of states will make abortions illegal. I think Texas already has with some technicalities but correct me if I am wrong.

standardUser 4y ago
40 million women in about 20 states just lost all legal access to abortions. Additional states will follow soon, but there is no "meanwhile" for a lot of the country. It's already done.
- hihihihi1234 4y ago
  I don't think all 40 million women have lost "all" legal access. Eg Florida and Virginia are banning abortion after 15 weeks - which is actually less restrictive than in most of western Europe. Eg France bans abortion after 14 weeks; Norway bans it after 12 weeks.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    For now. Desantis is already saying he will increase restrictions. Do you have any reason to believe this man, running for President in 2024, won’t race to claim he is the king of protecting fetuses? He’s not going to be able to stand on a stage next to anyone who claims they will restrict abortion in any and all cases, and he knows that. Pence was out yesterday calling for a blanket nationwide abortion ban. That’s were the GOP as a party will be in 2 years, and Florida will need to be there before then to shore up Desantis’ political position. Florida will not be a state where abortions happen soon enough.
    - hihihihi1234 4y ago
      Yeah, fair point. Time will tell I guess.

mirceal 4y ago

Cute take but I'm going to ask the question: why did something that was in place for 50 years needs to be revisited? Is it maybe needed for the nutjobs that do want to ban abortion to do their thing? Also, you need to ask yourself: is this about abortion? Or is it really about literally keeping the people poor, stupid and uneducated? Think about it: if you're not poor this is not an issue. If you have 5 kids instead of 1, good luck getting them the proper education. But it's cool...we can use all that almost free labor to drive our corporate empires forward.

wilsonnb3 4y ago
> why did something that was in place for 50 years needs to be revisited? Because it was poorly reasoned judicial activism and always has been. The amount of time that a decision stands should have no bearing on how good of a decision it is. One of the dissents in Casey v Planned Parenthood in 92 also wanted to overturn Roe, for the same reasons that the current court did. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought that Roe v Wade was poorly reasoned.
- notch656a 4y ago
  But what is baffling is why they picked Roe V Wade to overturn rather than cut it at the root, such as Wickard v Filburn which would have undone a massive swath of the kind of unconstitutional expansion of the federal government. They could have applied their logic uniformly but bizarrely singled out an abortion case.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Because it was roe v wade in question. Not the other case. I don’t believe the Supreme Court can issue judgment on any law they choose. It has to be relating to the court case in question
    - notch656a 4y ago
      They get to pick which case they take cert on. There is absolutely gonna be _something_ out there that would allow them to work at the root of Wickard v Filburn. Framing it as "they have to work with this one case they got" is disingenuous. They intentionally chose to go for the contradictory choice of singling out abortion while not attacking the root -- which suggests to me think this is more about judicial activism than upholding the constitution.

andsoitis 4y ago

It is worth considering the larger shape of things. Do you imagine, if the Republicans control all three branches of government, that they would not create a federal law that bans abortions everywhere? All signals point to that, and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade is there to remove friction to get there.

tenpies 4y ago
- thebradbain 4y ago
  > I do, mostly because just a few years ago when they controlled the executive and legislative, they showed they had no interesting in "banning abortions everywhere". Because that would’ve been an obvious and flagrant violation of Roe and a waste of time. > This Handmaid's Tale scenario continues to be Leftist fan fiction to rally the troops. I mean, overturning a long-held right is the first big step on that path. It wouldn’t have such staying power if there was no concrete evidence, such as this ruling, to back up those fears. > The same cannot be said for some of the scenarios the Right warns about - as we're witnessing right now. Like what? Use your words
andrew_ 4y ago
It's just as feasible that Democrats control all three, and it's happened before. The Democratic party had complete control over both Houses and the presidency from 1933 to 1947, 1949–1953, and 1961–1969; 26 years of full control of the legislative and executive branches thanks to the New Deal Coalition. By 1939, FDR had formed a more liberal court through his appointments, and that lasted a while through this Democratic control of the branches into the 1950s. As the pendulum swings, so does policy. It would be more difficult IMHO if there were more than two parties.
coryfklein 4y ago
> if the Republicans control all three branches of government, that they would not create a federal law that bans abortions everywhere? If the voting public of the US shifts to where it adopts a view you disagree with then of course the democratic institution would continue to reflect the public. But we have good reason to believe this will never happen. Polling shows that most individuals support a woman's right to abortion. And even if the Republican party gained control of all 3 branches, they aren't a monolithic and unified block when it comes to policy. "States rights" is a HUGE motivation for most Republicans, and a federal policy banning abortion would be a big stumbling block for getting the votes to pass such legislation even with a Republican majority.

darth_avocado 4y ago

63% of Americans support Roe v Wade and 80% support abortions in some cases. People agree on that. Adding it to the constitution hasn’t happened because politics.

andrew_ 4y ago
It's getting the states to ratify the amendment that's difficult. General population poll numbers don't equate to state ratification support.
gnicholas 4y ago
In polling I've seen, roughly 2/3 are pro-Roe, but roughly 2/3 also misunderstand what it would mean to overturn Roe. They believe that abortion would be illegal everywhere, not that the legality would devolve to the states. So while it's true that 2/3 of Americans say they want Roe kept in place, it's also true that many of them don't know what that actually means.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  >They believe that abortion would be illegal everywhere. While that will not be true, access to abortion will be very limited everywhere. With 26 states limiting it seriously and no constitutional protections on getting abortions in a different state, you could see a vast majority of population not have access to abortions. Even if everyone starts traveling for abortions, a huge amount of the population won’t be able to travel. And the ones who travel will stress the medical facilities to the extent that people living in states that have legal abortion access, will still have it’s populations access to abortions severely limited. It doesn’t matter if 2/3 Americans don’t know what it actually means. What matters is 2/3 Americans want access to abortions, and that access will be severely limited regardless of whether it’s legal in your state.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    > access to abortion will be very limited everywhere This is surely not true. Forty percent of the US population lives in states with laws protecting access to abortion. The AP is reporting that 20 states have heavy restrictions/bans, and the remainder are to-be-determined. [1] I've seen the 26 state reference floating around on social media and wonder which states are included, beyond what news outlets are reporting. I'm open to the possibility that the AP has this wrong — the reason I'd like to know the source of the 26 figure is to compare it to the mostly-trusted sources that are giving lower numbers. To be clear, I'm not weighing in on whether today's decision is good or bad. I just wanted to clear up some of the statistics that people hear a lot, since they are sometimes based on misunderstandings of the law (which are reasonable since the case was decided a long time ago, and until recently most people thought it would not be overturned anytime soon, if ever). 1: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-supreme-court-decision-854f60302f21c2c35129e58cf8d8a7b0 https://apnews.com/article/abortion-supreme-court-decision-8...

ausbah 4y ago

most people do think that abortion should be law in some form, but since the US doesn't have a democratic basis in 5/6 of the federal government - "leaving jit to the legislature" is just as bad as letting SCOTUS decide the law. that doesn't even touch upon how constitutional amendments aren't even on the table with how hard they are to pass and no matter what, you're dealing with laws regarding the bodily autonomy of 50% of the populace. if that can't be considered a fundamental right, what really can?

notch656a 4y ago

What's perplexing is why they don't apply this to the rest of the federal powers. Overturn Wickard v Filburn and cut it at the root. The federal government has no legitimacy to regulate intrastate trade, most gun laws, most of the civil rights act, the controlled substance act, etc. The fact that they picked abortion but not the root of anti-constitutional federal expansionism is truly baffling.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
They decide what's in front of them. If you've got a good challenge case for Wickard v Filburn, they might hear it. But this case wasn't a case that could overturn Wickard v Filburn.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
andrew_ 4y ago
Agree it was a weird hill to choose. I can see more expansionism being picked at over the next few years.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
I hope to god that regulation of interstate trade gets shot down, so California and New York can tax goods from red states into oblivion. That would be a poetic response to this egregious use of "state's rights."
- scythe 4y ago
  That's not what Wickard v. Filburn was about. Wickard held that regulation of individual behavior could be legislated under the Interstate Commerce Clause insofar as that individual behavior had a "rational basis" effect on the interstate market for a commodity. This effectively allowed Congress to regulate most aspects of our lives under the auspices of the power to regulate interstate commerce.
- ryan93 4y ago

TameAntelope 4y ago

The problem with this legal OCD is that in the meantime, people suffer. This isn't a codebase refactor, this is people's lives. Pulling this ruling before you have "what the people want" in place is like deleting a feature you plan on rebuilding later before you actually rebuild it. Nobody in their right mind thinks that's a good idea in any other context, so why would it make sense here?

bushbaba 4y ago
You’re assuming the rest of the country shares your views. A large portion of America views abortion as murder. I do NOT share that viewpoint. But we are a republic. And the Supreme Court doesn’t issue law, that’s Congress’s responsibility. What this represents is not a code refactor but a Change to a comment in the code base on what a function does.
- TameAntelope 4y ago
  The point is if you believe this to not be up to the Supreme Court to decide, then you don't believe it's up to the Supreme Court to undo until the people have decided. The Supreme Court didn't issue a law here, they changed their interpretation of a decision they had made 50 years prior, for no reason at all except that the composition of the court had changed. That's like hiring a new guy and his first action is to remove an entire technology that was propping up your infrastructure, because it wasn't being stored in the "correct" VCS.
  - hossbeast 4y ago
    That is actually a great analogy
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Say a supreme court 50 years ago interpreted the constitution that woman did not have a right to vote. Then today the court ruled, the constitution doesn't actually state anything of the sort and overturns that past judgment. In that case would you want the court to instead state, well a decision 50 years ago was made. So we wont change it. The US Congress needs to pass a law explicitly granting woman the right to vote. Such-as with say Minor v. Happersett, "Court held that, while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not confer a right to vote, and therefore state laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid" A good court in a Democratic government must be objective in interpretation of law . And the system is such that it is the US Congress's responsibility to pass law.

MrDresden 4y ago

andrew_ 4y ago
> via this all precious constitution of yours? This reveals that you didn't ask in good faith.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Not really. The United States Constitution can be mocked in good faith.
- MrDresden 4y ago
- thebradbain 4y ago
  I’m an American and I think the same thing: Why is it so important? It’s either so heavily interpreted that it means different things than what’s written (2nd Amendment), it’s needed complete adjustment to even pretend to meet its ideals (Slavery), the adjustment needed adjustments (Voting Rights Act), and every step of the way those adjustments get watered down, stripped, rendered meaningless… It’s a document written by people from a different time. Why be beholden to the past, when it’s not even recognizable in its current form to when it was first drafted?

colinmhayes 4y ago

> If most people agree that it should be a constitutional right, no one stops the legislature from adding the required amendment The issue is that we're forced into a two party system. If someone thinks "I want abortion rights, but the culture wars are more important to me" they vote republican. A large block of the republican base is single issue religious voters, so even if a majority of the republican voters want abortion rights they will never pass because the religious voters will primary anyone who supports abortion.

causi 4y ago

rt4mn 4y ago

> It merely decided that it is not currently protected by constitution, which to me seems completely correct. First off, It was a momentous decision. It did not "merely" decide anything. Second, a right does not need to be explicitly spelled out in the constitution to be a constitutionally protected right. The right to an abortion is a clear and rational outgrowth of the constitutional protections of privacy and bodily autonomy (IE, the right to not have the government mess with our shit for no good reason).

zionic 4y ago
Hearing the body-autonomy argument is pretty funny right now, given what the last 2 years have been like.
- xpe 4y ago
  The "body-autonomy argument" is not the only principle in play. COVID is a communicable disease. Vaccinating one person reduces the risk to others. An abortion is not a communicable disease.
- rt4mn 4y ago
  I'm not sure how to interpret your comment. Could you elaborate?
  - daenz 4y ago
    I think they're referring to the hypocrisy of compelling vaccination on someone if you support the idea of bodily autonomy.
    - rt4mn 4y ago
      Thats what I thought as well, but since neither myself nor the comment I was replying to mentioned it, I was / am confused how the hypocrisy in question was relevant. I'm probably overthinking a throwaway internet comment.
    - nobody9999 4y ago

analog31 4y ago

The amendment is at best quasi-democratic, since amendments that would have broad public support are almost prohibitively difficult to carry out, and requires the cooperation of states that are themselves quasi-democratic.

sophacles 4y ago

How is it completely correct? The 9th amendment acknowledges that rights not enumerated in the constitution exist. It's perfectly reasonable to say that bodily autonomy is in fact one of those rights, as the concept is required for other rights to even exist.

rufus_foreman 4y ago
The court decision goes over the process it uses to determine if something is an unenumerated right: "We have held that the “established method of substantive-due-process analysis” requires that an unenumerated right be “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’” before it can be recognized as a component of the “liberty” protected in the Due Process Clause. Glucksberg, 521 U. S., at 721; cf. Timbs, 586 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7)." There is a lengthy appendix to the ruling that goes through the list of prior state laws that criminalized abortion and shows that a right to abortion is not, in fact, "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition".
- sophacles 4y ago
  So you want to force women to die and easily preventable death (e.g. ectopic pregnancy)? That's the only way "completely correct" works here - the trigger laws on the books that result in that outcome were in place before the court took this case. They chose to rule broadly rather than a ruling that still enshrined the right of someone to have a medical procedure that would preserve their life say in the case of a non-viable pregnancy that would end in the death of both the woman and the fetus. edit: i was wrong about the trigger laws having exceptions for life endangering pregnancies - its the new laws the same people are passing that remove the exceptions. I still stand by my statement, because the "completely correct" ruling allows those exceptions to be removed.
- coffeefirst 4y ago
  The problem is of "deeply rooted in history and tradition" is a weasel phrase that means literally anything they want it to mean. Their claims about history and tradition so far have been historically inaccurate, or limited to only arch-conservative Christian traditions. None of this is to mention a deeper fundamental problem with only looking at history and tradition in such a literal way: for women or men who are not white straight Christians, they haven't actually had equal rights for all that long. Arguably, the right to marry is a pretty fundamental Natural Right and has only been recognized starting in 2004. These are master orators who no longer care about perceived legitimacy or stare decisis. They will continue to do whatever they want because they can, and make up the justification as they go along.

standardUser 4y ago

Protecting the rights of marginalized groups is the only thing that makes democracy a workable system. What you are supporting is called mob rule.

scythe 4y ago

It's true that most people agreed that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned. But a quick look at the polling will also show you that Roe v. Wade was more popular than abortion itself. I think there is a simple way to interpret that: a lot of people thought that Roe v. Wade meant that they didn't have to think about abortion. And they liked that, even if they didn't think it was the ideal way to resolve the issue. They simply cared more about other issues, like the PPACA subsidy gaps, environmental sustainability, gun rights, taxes, drugs, et cetera, ad nauseam. Even during the Barrett and Kavanaugh nominations, there were plenty of people, including the nominally pro-choice (e.g. a certain Senator from Maine), who argued that Roe v. Wade was not in danger, which was most likely wishful thinking. So your idea doesn't work, and in fact nothing works. The era when a voter or politician can (effectively) ignore abortion as a substantive political issue is over, and it isn't coming back.

portpecos 4y ago

> The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the legislature from protecting the right to abortion. Which means that New York, California, Massachusetts will retain abortion access. And Texas, Indiana, will remove abortion access. This sounds like States rights is actually working. But the media is distorting the overturning of Roe vs Wade with the sensational claim that “Abortion is banned in the US”. No, it’s not banned. This just means Texas and New York have differing policies with regards to abortion access. Yes, 46 million women living in conservative states will lose access to abortion, but not all of those women are liberal quite frankly. Moreover, those states are exactly that: conservative. And the Conservative Majority of that state isn’t required to accommodate the views of the Liberal minority of that state. Just like the Liberal Majority of California isn’t required to accommodate their Conservative Minorities. That’s the nature of how US Democratic institutions were built. Sounds fair to me and the Supreme Court made the correct decision by returning that authority back to the states.

mattnewton 4y ago

> The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the legislature from protecting the right to abortion. It merely decided that it is not currently protected by constitution, which to me seems completely correct. The Supreme Court includes multiple justices put there in no small part due to lobbying by conservative faith groups, and as part of their lobbying plan, several states have trigger laws on the books that immediately make abortion legal in many states. The Supreme Court’s decision is the immediate cause of these “trigger laws” going into effect. It’s a part of a larger concerted effort, so this is a distinction with little difference for anyone living in these states or who may find themselves sued in Texas for providing abortions to a Texan who crossed into their state.