16 ms·

South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

75 points by jakelazaroff 4y ago

user3939382 4y ago
- dalyons 4y ago
  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.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    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.
    - randomhodler84 4y ago
      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.
      - user3939382 4y ago
        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.
        randomhodler84 4y ago
        Narrator: they were.
        user3939382 4y ago
        The nature of having opinions is that you think you’re right, so welcome to the club.
    - dang 4y ago
      Religious flamewar is not allowed on Hacker News, so please don't propagate it. We ban accounts that keep doing this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- InCityDreams 4y ago
- softcactus 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Religious flamewar isn't allowed on HN. No more of this, please. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32200805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32200805.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  You should know that the Bible literally has instructions for when and how to perform an abortion: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A11-31&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A1...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pinkhorn 4y ago
    Whether this describes a method of inducing abortion is open to interpretation. 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 https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Bamidbar%205:28
- inversefft 4y ago
  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.
- badcppdev 4y ago
  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?
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  > My personal perspective is that God told us not to have sex before marriage... Then why are so many characters in the Bible having sex outside marriage, or engaging in polygamy?
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  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.
  - dang 4y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31997209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31997209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32036852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32036852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32125093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32125093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32124237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32124237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379
    - randomhodler84 4y ago
      I’m sorry dang. I’ve gone too far. I’ll take a break for a while.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  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.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >... 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.
- brodouevencode 4y ago
  @dang There's a lot of unnecessary toxicity in this particular comment thread.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    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.
    - brodouevencode 4y ago
      Good to know. Thanks.
jaskyle 4y ago
- lax4ever 4y ago
  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.
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    > 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.
- dontcare007 4y ago
  Depends almost wholly on how the state Constitution was written. As long as it doesn't fall afoul of the US Constitution. And it's hardly trying to be North Korea. Hysterics don't help, and actually hurt any rational discussion.
  - 4y ago
jasonjayr 4y ago
How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause? 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?
- efsavage 4y ago
  I think you're underestimating how ... flexible ... the Constitution is lately.
- mbreese 4y ago
  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.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  Interstate Commerce could be used to thwart this, but wouldn't First Amendment be a more compelling justification?
  - 32163704 4y ago
    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.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > 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.
kop316 4y ago
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.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Phrasing a proposed bill as if it has taken effect is a standard tactic to evoke extra emotion resulting in extra clicks. Edit: seems I was wrong because bill means proposed law, so the clarification would have been redundant
  - meepmorp 4y ago
    A bill is a proposed law, by definition. You're assuming bad faith where there isn't any.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Thanks for correcting me, seems I am mistaken. I was under the impression bills that have been passed were also referred to as bills.
    - radford-neal 4y ago
      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).
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        It seems meepmorp is correct, because in this context, bill already means “proposed law”, so “bill would outlaw” is redundant.
        4y ago
AlexandrB 4y ago
> 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.
- 32163704 4y ago
  >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.
  - softcactus 4y ago
    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.
    - gmadsen 4y ago
jasonshaev 4y ago
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."
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  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.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Depends on how packed the Supreme Court is, with the "Right" Justices, when the test case get to it.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  The strategy is one of intimidation.
  - jasonshaev 4y ago
    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.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  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)
TrackerFF 4y ago
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?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bedast 4y ago
  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.
  - SauciestGNU 4y ago
    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.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > 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.
alsetmusic 4y ago
Seems like an open and shut free speech case, to me. But they’ll find new ways to get around “inconvenient” things like this, no doubt.
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
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.
FredPret 4y ago
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > 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+.
  - tyleo 4y ago
    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.
nerdjon 4y ago
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.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
This is performative stupidity. Those websites are legal on first amendment grounds, interstate commerce grounds, etc.
wordsarelies 4y ago
Heh. The web archive about to get banned along with the gutenberg library.
togs 4y ago
Dark web it is
taylodl 4y ago
Aren't these the same people who are always complaining about free speech?
salawat 4y ago
Hello First Amendment challenge/overturn in the making. 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.

75 points by jakelazaroff 4y ago

user3939382 4y ago

dalyons 4y ago
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.
- user3939382 4y ago
  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.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    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.
    - user3939382 4y ago
      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.
      - randomhodler84 4y ago
        Narrator: they were.
        user3939382 4y ago
        The nature of having opinions is that you think you’re right, so welcome to the club.
  - dang 4y ago
    Religious flamewar is not allowed on Hacker News, so please don't propagate it. We ban accounts that keep doing this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
InCityDreams 4y ago
softcactus 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Religious flamewar isn't allowed on HN. No more of this, please. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32200805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32200805.
andsoitis 4y ago
You should know that the Bible literally has instructions for when and how to perform an abortion: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A11-31&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A1...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pinkhorn 4y ago
  Whether this describes a method of inducing abortion is open to interpretation. 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 https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Bamidbar%205:28
inversefft 4y ago
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.
badcppdev 4y ago
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?
manuelabeledo 4y ago
> My personal perspective is that God told us not to have sex before marriage... Then why are so many characters in the Bible having sex outside marriage, or engaging in polygamy?
randomhodler84 4y ago
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.
- dang 4y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31997209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31997209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32036852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32036852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32125093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32125093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32124237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32124237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103379
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    I’m sorry dang. I’ve gone too far. I’ll take a break for a while.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
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.
jjulius 4y ago
>... 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.
brodouevencode 4y ago
@dang There's a lot of unnecessary toxicity in this particular comment thread.
- randomhodler84 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  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.
  - brodouevencode 4y ago
    Good to know. Thanks.

jaskyle 4y ago

lax4ever 4y ago
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.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  > 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.
dontcare007 4y ago
Depends almost wholly on how the state Constitution was written. As long as it doesn't fall afoul of the US Constitution. And it's hardly trying to be North Korea. Hysterics don't help, and actually hurt any rational discussion.
- 4y ago

jasonjayr 4y ago

How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause? 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?

efsavage 4y ago
I think you're underestimating how ... flexible ... the Constitution is lately.
mbreese 4y ago
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.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
Interstate Commerce could be used to thwart this, but wouldn't First Amendment be a more compelling justification?
- 32163704 4y ago
  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.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > 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.

kop316 4y ago

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.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Phrasing a proposed bill as if it has taken effect is a standard tactic to evoke extra emotion resulting in extra clicks. Edit: seems I was wrong because bill means proposed law, so the clarification would have been redundant
- meepmorp 4y ago
  A bill is a proposed law, by definition. You're assuming bad faith where there isn't any.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Thanks for correcting me, seems I am mistaken. I was under the impression bills that have been passed were also referred to as bills.
  - radford-neal 4y ago
    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).
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      It seems meepmorp is correct, because in this context, bill already means “proposed law”, so “bill would outlaw” is redundant.
      - 4y ago

AlexandrB 4y ago

> 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.

32163704 4y ago
>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.
- softcactus 4y ago
  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.
  - gmadsen 4y ago

jasonshaev 4y ago

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."

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
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.
bell-cot 4y ago
Depends on how packed the Supreme Court is, with the "Right" Justices, when the test case get to it.
andsoitis 4y ago
The strategy is one of intimidation.
- jasonshaev 4y ago
  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.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
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)

TrackerFF 4y ago

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?

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bedast 4y ago
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.
- SauciestGNU 4y ago
  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.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > 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.

alsetmusic 4y ago

Seems like an open and shut free speech case, to me. But they’ll find new ways to get around “inconvenient” things like this, no doubt.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago

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.

FredPret 4y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> 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+.
- tyleo 4y ago
  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.

nerdjon 4y ago

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.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

This is performative stupidity. Those websites are legal on first amendment grounds, interstate commerce grounds, etc.

wordsarelies 4y ago

Heh. The web archive about to get banned along with the gutenberg library.

togs 4y ago

Dark web it is

taylodl 4y ago

Aren't these the same people who are always complaining about free speech?

salawat 4y ago

Hello First Amendment challenge/overturn in the making. 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.