I was always ambivalent towards abortion when I was younger. I know I would've been the type of guy that stuck around no matter what, so the bailout lever never meant much to me. As a father of three young children, my stance went from ambivalence to pro restriction. Not banning, but as with all things the left tries to be flip about, it was swinging too far towards disgusting. We had governors in blue states advocating for what was basically infanticide: abortion right up until delivery. They pushed it too far. The pendulum swung, once again, too far. Now we have both extremes in place in various states, with a roughly zero percent chance at rational compromise.
First trimester, I get it. Most people do. Beyond that was always a bridge too far imho.
I think most people are ok with first trimester. But this bringing kids to almost full term and birthing them to let them die on a metal table. I am so not going to support that.
Mothers having abortions in third trimester are not doing so because they want to. If they’ve gotten that far, they were planning to have the child. But then they receive horrible medical news - the baby isn’t viable, the baby will be stillborn, the mother won’t survive, etc. There are situations in which abortion does not sit right with me (a woman having her 3rd or 4th abortion because she doesn’t use protection) but I know that if a woman has an abortion in the third trimester it is because she needs to not because she wants to.
The women seeking third-trimester abortions in Kermit Gosnell's house of horrors were not having an abortion for medical reasons. Those were ELECTIVE abortions.
Ironically, the Mississippi law that abortion activists just HAD to challenge in court had provisions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormalities. It PROTECTED the third-trimester abortions you are concerned about, and it set a limit of 15 weeks for elective abortions--on par with European countries.
I'm very much in favor of early-term abortions, but the Left did this to themselves (and to the women they pretend to represent).
So you are pro-choice and I am pro-life. But here we agree. REASONABLE limits need to be placed on abortion. It's called compromise.
Would I ultimately love to see an end to all abortion? Yes, of course. But limiting it to the first trimester is something I think most rational people can agree on. Can't we respect women enough to expect that three months is enough time to make their "choice" concerning an elective abortion?
You would love to see an end to ALL abortions? This always puzzles me. Why would anyone choose to protect a non-person over an actual person? If a woman has been raped or is the victim of incest, or is carrying a horribly deformed fetus, and does not wish to carry this fetus to term for perfectly obvious reasons, why would a perfect stranger presume to insert him or herself (or whatever your pronoun may be) into such a personal decision?
It is perfectly possible to hold two seemingly opposing views on this.
I truly believe that abortion is an evil act. Always.
I also believe that forcing a woman to die with an ectopic pregnancy is evil. I believe that asking a woman to put her life in grave danger for a baby should be her choice. I also believe that asking a rape victim or a victim of incest to carry a child is evil.
I also believe that history teaches us that a desperate woman will find a way to terminate a pregnancy even at the risk of her own life. Think Lysol.
Given this, it is perfectly consistent to be "Pro-Life" and morally against abortion while simultaneously saying that allowing abortions for the first 3 months or in the case of a grave threat to the mothers life is perfectly reasonable.
A position, that I think falls in line with the general consensus of the US population.
Who gets to decide what is considered a severe fetal abnormality? These questions are often not as black and white as we might think. When a fetal abnormality is discovered late in the pregnancy, the doctors discuss the prognosis (and usually you get several doctors weighing in if you're lucky enough to be at a good hospital). Will your baby likely die in utero, live for a few days and suffer, live years but with a very poor quality of life, is there any chance they might be ok with enough therapy or surgery?
Sometimes these answers are clear and sometimes they are not. Ultimately, the parents get to decide if they want to risk it. Some parents choose to take their chances, but most abort SO THEY CAN TRY AGAIN. I say this with emphasis because it is often not part of the abortion conversation...how it will effect many women's decisions to try again when a pregnancy goes wrong or if they know that trying again will carry the same risk.
So, as usual the devil is in the details...who gets to decide what is considered severe enough to terminate? I think that decision must be left ultimately to the parents.
I have never experienced this personally, but I've heard some anecdotal evidence to the effect that doctors put enormous pressure on women to abort if tests indicate the fetus may be abnormal in any way, especially with Downs Syndrome. I've read accounts by women who say the doctors were all pushing them to abort, and in some cases the prognosis turned out to be wrong and the child was born perfectly normal, or was born with only very mild defects.
I have experienced this personally. Our oldest daughter was diagnosed with severe heart defects in the 5th month of my pregnancy with her. We were absolutely pressured to abort.
That was not an option for us. Even if I *knew* she would die at birth (she didn't; she lived four and an half months), I would have chosen to give birth to her rather than allowing her to be dismembered inside my womb. Our personal grief was not an adequate excuse for us to allow such a procedure to be performed on her WITHOUT anesthesia (all of her operations after she was born were done WITH anesthesia).
You raised a very good point that has occurred to me as well. The whole reason Roe vs. Wade was overturned was because the pro-choice side challenged the Mississippi law. Every time an abortion case goes before the Court, it's because some law restricting abortion is being challenged by abortion providers. If they had left it alone, the Miss. law would stand but other states would have been unaffected. But this kind of thing is totally lost on the Left.
Ginsberg took a calculated risk that her replacement would be chosen by Hillary Clinton. And there was every reason to think Hillary would win. When I woke up the morning after the election and discovered that Trump had won (I voted for Johnson, myself), I felt as if I'd woken up in some alternate universe.
The Democrats miscalculated badly. Ginsberg was far from the only one who made that miscalculation. The Media gave millions of dollars of free press to the one Republican candidate they believed was incapable of beating Hillary.
But Trump managed to hitch his wagon to the rage that had been slowly coming to a boil among blue-collar workers, and especially people who live in flyover country. And Hillary gave the last burst of heat to that rage with her "Deplorables" comment, which was merely a follow-up to Obama's comment about the same set of people clinging to guns and religion: it made the Democrats' disrespect for those people abundantly clear.
The Woke and the Elites believe that they are "on the right side of history." That they do not need to give any thought to the consequences of their aims or actions, because they will win by the power of their "righteousness."
The concept of unintended consequences is entirely lost on the Left.
and illegal sex slaves. many of them Asian. most not English speaking. sent by pimps.. most with no where to turn. or at least not knowing where to turn
Just as a matter of clarification, late term abortions account for significantly less than 1/2 of 1% of all abortions in the US. That has been consistent for decades despite extensions in access to abortions. So this is really the epitome of a strawman argument.
But then why are abortion activists so determined to fight abortion laws like Dobbs? It granted exceptions for medical emergency and severe fetal abnormality--the reasons that activists cite as being the only reason third-trimester abortions are need--and it put a 15-week limit on elective abortions, which is on par with European abortion laws. Why was that law SO unrealistic that abortion activists HAD to fight it?
If they had let well enough alone, Roe would still be standing.
I can't answer that. But I also don't think that any of these events happen inside an authentic discussion about access to a right to choose. The intent behind Dobbs was to provoke a trip to SCOTUS. That was the ONLY reason they wrote they law. And it worked. It was the starting gun in a race to the end of any abortion right. Shortly after Dobbs Texas then moved the line back further --to (I think) 6 weeks (with their special Wild West addition of a bounty); a time when most women don't even know they're pregnant. So Dobbs --as is clear--was a secondary salvo in an effort toward exactly what happened. It wasn't ever intended as a compromise offer to arrive at a moderate agreement. It was the push down the hill for the snowball that would eradicate women's rights to choose.
Thank you Amie, I certainly believe that percentage of abortions being late term.
What I don’t understand and perhaps you could enlighten me is why the “Pro-Choice” cause always puts such a hard stake in the ground for NO limits, all the way up to full birth. I think that most Americans agree that early term (something like 2nd trimester) abortion freedoms are a logical and moral choice and are much more of an issue between the pregnant female and her God / conscious than say any business of mine or society at large.
But as time goes on it sure looks like later term abortions are a gruesome issue that is stopping a viable life - and thereby starts becoming much more of a concern that a civilized society properly has (maybe similar to euthanasia type decisions).
So why demand ZERO limitations when the vast majority of people would side with them for the vast majority of the time since the late term abortions are the exception not the rule? That seems as extreme as the other side who would say NO to anything after conception (which I ignores the fact that nature itself very frequently aborts fertilized eggs and fetus’).
I don’t see what’s served by letting the 2 extremes each define that theirs is the only answer and demanding that everyone in between meet their call.
I’ve watched as responsible controls (like the Hyde Amendment) get systematically attacked.
The answer is politics. Both sides focus on divisive issues to get more votes for their team. Some in both parties don't actually want to solve these issues. Because if they did they would lose their wedge issues. How can we fix that problem to move the country forward?
Excellent point. Those that support abortions also always talk about abortions in case of rape. I believe those cases are also extremely rare. Is that correct? If so, then why do those the support these concepts always focus on the very small number of cases and act like those are the norm? The answer seems obvious. Because of politics. Easier to get people emotionally involved with certain kinds of abortions. The current focus on the indoctrination, identification and treatment of Trans children uses the same tactic.
It all depends how you define "late-term" abortion. Are we defining late-term as only the third trimester now? To me, late-term begins at least in the mid-second trimester. At least by four months. I believe, as likely do most reasonable people, that you should have to have a medical reason by that stage. Medical technology is now saving premature infants born in the late second trimester.
Actually it really doesn''t. 93% of US abortions take place in the FIRST trimester. Just 6% take place in the 2nd trimester. And only 1% are performed after 21 weeks-- almost always due to medical necessity. And of all terminated pregnancies, 40% are pharmaceutical, not surgical. And those can only be done very early in a pregnancy.
So all this quibbling about what happens later is ridiculous.
You don't even seem to care to make an effort to use the phrase "straw-man argument" correctly. A "straw-man argument" would be a misrepresentation of reality. Here you are confirming that the opposing argument refers to things that are happening - the opposite of a straw-man.
If late-term abortions are rare and unnecessary, the implication is that those demanding that they be legal should relent, not that those resisting them are out of line.
The fact that late term abortions are rare makes it impossible for those who need them to get them if they are made illegal. That is the problem. I believe in strict laws and protocols around late term abortion but not to a degree that it effectively blocks it altogether.
Across the board bans work to endanger women and strip them of autonomy over their bodies. The more vulnerable the woman, the more chance her rights will be violated and she will be criminalized under the new abortion bans.
I'd need more proof than that. Additionally, stricter laws could differentiate between the extreme minority who would elect to abort an almost full term baby cause they 'feel' like it (negligible statistics on those) and those who have to as a life and death emergency or other serious reasons.
I've worked in the pro-life movement and been involved with crisis pregnancy centers for decades. I've lived and worked in places like Camden and North Philly. There are women who use abortion as their only means of contraceptive. They have had 7, 8, 9 abortions. This is extremely common.
The late abortions are most often the result of some combination of denial, avoidance, irresponsibility (days turn to weeks turn to months) and - quite often -- a battle for the attention and affection of the baby daddy du jour. The woman is holding out hope that the baby will give her the upperhand in the battle to win over a man who is sleeping with multiple women. Once she accepts that the strategy has failed, the baby has no further use and is "discarded."
It's really so tragic, but now I understand why they are choosing not to use birth control--which is quite accessible and cheap. They are hoping to snag the affections of a guy who they perceive isn;'t quite committed to them. Even more reason for MEN to use birth control--including the pills they are developing. That would eliminate the "baby-as-leverage" which ends in late-term abortion. I had wondered why they allowed themselves to get pregnant in the first place--now I know. Wow.
If there is a maternal life at death situation at full term, the baby is taken by C-section, not abortion, as it is faster, and therefore more likely to save the life of the mother and the baby. As an anesthesiologist, I have participated in urgent C-Sections when the mother's life is at risk, usually due to pre-eclampsia/eclampsia. Abortion at term to save the life of the mother is not a thing.
I doubt any woman ends a late term pregnancy without there being psychological or cultural reasonss if its not life and death or other serious issues. No woman just 'feels' like it.
There should be carefully crafted rules to protect the rights of the mother, as well as strong restrictions around later term terminatios. Outright criminalization is an abomination.
Maybe true. Are these women just radical procrastinators? Can't make up their minds until that late in a pregnancy? Why would a woman go through almost a full term pregnancy and then decide to have an abortion. Doesn't make much sense to me.
Women want abortion that late because they're procrastinators or just plain lazy. I was an ob/gyn for many, many years, and this crap about saving a mother's life is a story for the damned movies, not real life.
We know about lethal anomalies very early in pregnancy, so this partial birth abortion nonsense is crap!
that God you are no longer a practicing obgyn. who would ever want to see an uncaring doctor like you that denigrates the very people how produced his livelihood
He's correct. I was one of those women. Just completely careless about everything. I would go so far as to say I identified as not pregnant when, in fact, I was pregnant. I pretended it would go away by itself until it didn't. Then some doctor fudged the numbers so I could get an abortion, followed by heavy bleeding for days afterward, which I also didn't deal with. Probably the best thing that could have happened to me would have been forcing me to face reality and responsibility by having that baby. Instead, I bought decades of protracted adolescence. Read it in my forthcoming memoir: My Dumb Postfeminist Life.
Number one- your English is poor, as is you intelligence. Why I bothered to answer your stupid, stupid, uninformed remark is beyond me. I guess you're one of the lazy people I referred to. You know the ones who think the state should take care of them, and bear no responsibility in their lives!
Number two- How do you know that I was an uncaring doctor? I had the largest solo practice in my hospital system for years because I cared.
Legal abortion remains available in those rare situations where the life of the mother is at risk. It always was available even before Roe. My dad was an OB-GYN in the 40s-70s and he performed abortions before Roe was decided.
That's not entirely certain. In states where they have outlawed abortion from the moment of fertilization, they have deliberately written on no exceptions for life of the mother.
My understanding was medical emergencies don’t count as abortions? I thought those fell under different rules but I would need to find a source to confirm.
Medical emergencies where the life of the mother is endangered means the life of the baby is also endangered. These deliveries are done by C-Section, as delivery can be done in matter of minutes (think less than 10) with a pediatrician present to resuscitate the baby. As an anesthesiologist, I have participated in many emergency C-sections. I take care of Mom, someone else takes care of baby. If the hospital is small/rural and doesn't have pediatrician on call for such things, a dedicated nurse and a respiratory therapist will take care of the baby. The point is medical emergencies in which the mother's life is at risk are dealt with at a hospital, not an abortion clinic.
That’s not true Hugh. Catholic doctrine is nuanced on abortion because causation can be complex, but the general principle is you cannot intentionally kill human life.
You can, however, save a mother’s life in a manner where the unintended consequence is death of the child (“double effect”). Such as removing a Fallopian tube to resolve an ectopic pregnancy. Many Catholic women have involved their diocesan experts when faced with a truly risky or doomed pregnancy.
An abortion in the third trimester cannot end any reasonable health crisis. Mothers with health issues routinely have an induced delivery and the baby usually survives and thrives. An abortion in the third trimester is also an induced delivery. They just kill the baby on the way out or shortly thereafter. How does that save the mother?
I think this is most likely true. However, the third trimester argument -- sometimes expressed as the "minute before" argument -- is mostly meant to demonstrate the illogic of the arbitrary line we draw when deciding if an unborn baby has a right to live.
For instance, some people believe that until a baby is born, it does not have a right to live. That the mother has total control over whether the baby lives or dies.
That argument fails because of the hypothetical third trimester/minute-before argument. It's a reductio ad absurdum to illustrate the belief is not morally coherent/logical.
The writer declares that her perception of people's thinking must surely be representative not only in the majority of cases, but in all cases, despite having nothing other than her own desire that it be true as evidence.
"Homeless people are just like you and me but unlucky."
"Welfare recipients aren't trying to abuse the system."
"Women never lie about rape."
"Everybody who disagrees with me is a racist!"
These people genuinely can't perceive their own self-centeredness. They think these are good arguments!
The tragedies you describe happen, but they're pretty rare. Most late-term abortions are not for medical reasons, and the doctors who perform them have attested to that. The girl or woman may not really want to, but she's probably being pressured by parents or others.
Which is why there shouldn’t be any absolute bans but legislation allowing for those medical emergencies that do occur. One of the things I was thinking about is a reasonable compromise might be that conservative states allow abortion during the 1st trimester, rape/incest, and or medical emergencies. Liberal states can allow for a longer period of time without much restrictions until a particular time later than 12 weeks, but after a certain time, it’s only allowable for medical emergencies involving life of mother, otherwise after a certain mother is legally responsible for carrying through her pregnancy and then she can decide what to do next.
I oppose absolute bans. There should always be exceptions for (verifiable) severe fetal abnormalities or serious threats to the mother's physical health or life. It's when a healthy infant with a healthy mother is aborted in late or mid-term pregnancy that offends the conscience of so many of us. The procedure itself is also more physically dangerous to the woman at that point than childbirth, which is why the whole "safety of women" argument goes out the window.
And yet...you do realize, don't you, that the reason Roe was overturned is because just such a law as you propose for liberal states was actually passed by a very conservative state (Mississippi), and the abortion activists couldn't leave well enough alone.
You are the one who is choosing feeling, irrational panic and fear where there is zero proof. So far on my side I have the precedent of illegal alcohol. My own mother traveled to Mexico to have an abortion when they were illegal in California (which by the way is one of the reasons I am pro choice). This means abortions can't be performed in the state. Bari is too smart to lazily drop that fear without any backing evidence. This is the biggest problem with 2022: mass hysteria.
She doesn't come out and say "people are free to cross state lines" but Gavin Newsom is offering to pay women to come to CA to have abortions, or else fund them. Abortion bans means abortions are ILLEGAL in the state. Everything I have heard from the most religious conservatives is this: they will punish doctors for performing illegal abortions, not mothers. The doctors would be considered the 'Murderers' in this case.
The mothers would, as a matter of law be guilty as well. At a minimum they’d be co-conspirators. Or they could be primary actors, like the driver of the get away vehicle. Either way, the law is the law. You don’t get to pick only the ones you like. Unless you are a liberal, of course. Than you are righteous
This would be the same as "dry" laws. You cannot be charged with a crime for going to a "wet" state/county and buying alcohol for your own consumption.
I think you are forgetting that we are citizens, not subjects. The state where you live cannot punish you for doing something in another state. Even murder has to be charged in the state where it occurred, not the state where the murderer lived at the time.
First of all BIG MOUTH, this is a public thread, not a private conversation. And if you don’t feel that way, your own question was out of line.
I happen to know what was said to be true because I’ve got plenty of doctor clients who have told me that while partial birth abortion isn’t typical, it is often done for two major reasons. One - the mother changed her mind for a multitude of reasons, or her health is compromised.
But you don’t want to hear that. You can just make up stories about how it’s all about deformed babies, even though almost all deformities are discovered way before viability,with todays technology.
Speaking of feelings….how do you feel about how Obama, as a state Senator, voted for a law that required doctors to put the product off”failed abortions” - live babies - on the shelf, deny them care or nutrition until they died? Great stuff, huh?
ah but they are in this day and age. facts have no weight when "opinion and feelings" rule. also using caps.. hey we get it. YOU have an OPINION. ( not a fact)
I follow a lot of conservative news and have heard both religious leaders and politicians like, for instance, Christi Noem whose abortion ban will be the most strict. If you can't buy booze in a dry state you can cross state lines -- you are not policed. Doctors and merchants are policed.
That is absolutely not true. Check your facts. You can't abort a full term baby. Babies may be delivered and then subsequently die on their own but that is not "aborting a full term baby".
There is no preferable choice - or non-traumatic choice - for parents who find out the child they have been preparing for for 7-9 months is not viable or is going to cost the mother her life. And it is absolutely not my place, or your place, or the government’s - to tell a mother and father what to do when they unexpectedly find themselves in that situation.
The Mississippi abortion law that the SCOTUS was ruling on had exceptions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormality. That was not enough for the abortion activists who decided it HAD to be challenged in court.
What do you expect from a group that has no qualms about sticking a pair scissors into the neck of a live baby and sucking out its brains with a vacuum?
My very bright 21yo daughter, immediately upon learning of the SCOTUS decision said, "so a pro-abortionist actually overturned R v W by taking their objections to one state's law all of the way to the Supreme Court." Yes, I said. Then we celebrated.
The legislature should not discuss your medical choices. However, it should discuss laws and regulations which indicate how a society wants to function and interact, in accordance with its people's wishes. I believe most of our society is in favor of a woman's choice in regards to abortion—up to a point. When a fetus becomes of viable age, most believe abortion becomes murder. Society, through its legislators, must determine that age. Certainly, those that believe cells become a human at conception and those that believe in term abortion would not be happy. But they are in the minority on this issue.
so I hope that everyone here gets up on Monday AM and calls their duly elected state and/or federal officials and tells them to pass a LAW that codifies abortion at whatever amount of weeks you see fit.. that is the only way this will work.
These kinds of extreme examples are always trotted out to justify the killing of viable babies. The TRUTH is that NO ONE would have to be burdened or endangered in ANY of these cases. There are exceptions allowed in all these situations. It’s a medical issue, nothing more complicated than that
There are a dozen or more methods of contraception. USE them. The feminists have ZERO problem walking into the bedroom with equal rights as a man and leaving with 100% of the decisions, event though BOTH lives are affected. So live with the situation you often foist upon unwilling men.
if that were true we would not need laws about how to control our bodies.. we would not need government or the church interfering in our reproductive lives and everyone would be better off the government should be small and deal with things that actually concern citizens
Of course, the vast majority of abortions have nothing at all to do with situations like that or with healthcare at all. They're simply the disposal of unwanted human beings.
Healthcare. I get really angry when abortion is referred to as women’s healthcare, abortion is anything but healthcare in 99%+ of the situations, it’s just more liberal torturing the language games because the real words hit the ear so much harder.
Denying a woman healthcare sounds so much more evil than denying a woman an abortion, or better, allowing a woman to kill her baby.
As a pro abortion nut, you insist on only referencing partial birth abortion as medically required even though that’s not the case. Which is where your credibility goes out the window.
💯 but then I’m also curious as to how it was not discovered earlier. Today we have modern technology where you get scans at 6 12 weeks etc where every abnormality is detected where I believe an abortion should be offered/given and the decision should be the parents or mother if she is single and should be respected I don’t understand how we give that decision to men to make when they neither need birth control sanitary towels/tampons or abortions and then when we do shift slight control to the women it’s somehow always the wrong women we have elected to power we make such a fuss and noise about this the media gets involved social media dams people who might be pro and even the President weighs in on all the drama
Typically only a single ultrasound is performed in a normal pregnancy, which is at 20 weeks, and that is when abnormalities are discovered. Some providers will also order a dating ultrasound around 6-8 weeks just to confirm due dates but that is typically too early to discover most issues. Anything discovered on the 20 week ultrasound usually has follow-up testing, confirmatory ultrasound, and consults with a maternal fetal medicine specialist. You’re easily looking at 22-24 weeks by the time all is said and done.
There will always be situations where a problem is missed until very late. You have many poor women out there who never go in for any pre-natal care. The first medical care they receive is when they end up at the emergency room with some kind of problem or are in active labor.
Nice response to Bari's urging that this column be a place for a forum for good-faith argument, to make it easier for people of varying backgrounds and opinions to forge a greater understanding, not with an eye toward papering over our many differences or the profound moral and medical and political implications of yesterday’s ruling, but with the hope that that might make living together more possible."
As I said, you seem to violate the urging to engage in good faith discussion and argument here. Resorting to descriptions such as yours is anything but good faith.
You remind me of a friend when I was younger who thought literal expressions of "truth" (in his mind) were excused from rudeness and objection because, well, truth. He did not have many friends after awhile. And was never good at convincing anyone of his perspective.
Go back to the origin of this thread. No one suggested willy nilly late term abortions, but instead wrote about circumstances involving risk to mom or an unviable fetus as opposed to those that approximate "basically infanticide: abortion right up until delivery"
But, go ahead, speak your "truth", unpersuasive as it may be. No need to apologize to me.
I am arguing in good faith. I’m not sure what to do here. Should I lie about a gruesome procedure so you can feel better about advocating for it? Late term abortion is gruesome. Sorry.
Yes-- I thought this would be a place where logic, common sense, and facts would be exchanged --not simply rants. I know this is an emotional topic but I'd rather have civil discourse than wild assumptions and accusations.
So, nobody will answer my question and I am being accused of ranting. What wild accusations or assumptions am I making? How am I not displaying common sense or facts? Please tell me why late term abortion, a procedure that dismembers and brutally kills a near term baby, is preferable to having a terminal child. Nobody answers. I'm accused of being mean and ranting. Whatever. This procedure will be available in some states so no need to worry if you want one.
A baby born with terrible medical issues is unfair to the baby and unfair to the parents. Terminating a pregnancy before birth is the most humane thing to do.
Thirty years ago, one of my high school students with severe cerebral palsy asked me if I were pro-choice. I told him I was and I told him why. Then he told me that his mother had made the choice to terminate him when she had been told about his “terrible medical issues.” At the very last minute, she changed her mind. His last words in that conversation turned my beliefs inside out. This young man - who often shook so badly that he could not hold his seat or walk across a room without aid - this young man who always spoke with great difficulty, but distinctly, through sheer force of will - declared, “Mrs. P, l LOVE my life.”
Who was I to have thought otherwise? How selfless was his mother to have given the choice to him?
I still consider myself pro-choice, on a case-by-case basis. But this current Constitutional-right, on-demand, for personal convenience theory of abortion-as-birth control seems a bit too much like playing God.
I respect that view, but parents should have the right to make that decision. For every exceptional person like your friend, there are many, many others who suffer greatly, need full time institutional costly care, and forever change the lives of their family.
That’s the kind of comment that makes me crazy. Yes, there are people with severe disabilities who thrive and whose parents are wholly inspired by that choice. But it would have been equally satisfactory for him never to be born, and his parents would have had another, different, equally amazing child later—who they would have loved.
Billions of babies fail to be born every year because billions of fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus, spontaneous miscarriages take place, late miscarriages take place, etc. Changing your view on a principle because of one sentimental story is, in my own very skewed opinion, bizarre. It seems apt to be happy for their lovely outcome, but weird that you would extrapolate to suggest that would have been the right choice for every set of parents facing that choice and for every disabled baby born under such circumstances.
What if that child had been in a horrific accident at age 3 or 10 or 22? What if that was your spouse or you in that death defying accident? What if that child had served in a war perpetrated by our government in a foreign land and sent back with disabilities requiring aged/retired parents to care for for the remainder of their lives? What if there was a cure for that unborn baby's abnormalities during their lifetime? What if that unborn baby's diagnosis in the womb was actually wrong and they were the next Shakespeare or Ben Carson or Ghandi or Ben Franklin? None of us decides what will be; we merely do the best we can with what is given to us.
This was a seminal moment for me, but certainly not the only one.
I marched for abortion rights. But over the years, I've experienced many moments that molded my current beliefs. I would share them with you, but I don't want to make you any crazier. Sometimes people change as they grow older and experience life.
I'm not religious, but I agree much more with Judaism than Catholicsim's take on human life: "Jewish tradition cherishes the sanctity of life, including the potential of life which a pregnant woman carries with her...Judaism does not believe that personhood and human rights begin with conception, but with birth."
(p.s., 6 of our 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh and Barrett)
Yes, different religions have different views on when life begins, and we're also at the point where 30% of people are not affiliated with any religion and 10-15 are atheist or agnostic. This decision was the court using one religion--Christianity--to take away a right from women.
these are the types of comments that cause so much angst and are on their "face" ridiculous. hopefully you will never be "faced" with any situation where you must choose for yourself or a loved one to terminate a pregnancy at any point as it seems you really know zero about the procedure
I know a lot about the procedure as my daughter was not expected to live much past birth. I feel for parents getting bad news late in the pregnancy as I was one. I don't understand how butchering a baby in the womb (which is exactly what late term abortion does) and throwing thier dead carcass into a medical waste bin is preferrable to delivering a baby into a hospice situation and letting them die surrounded by love. Nobody can answer that for me. Just a lot of people upset about the truth of the barbarity of the "procedure" and put downs about how callus it is to ask for reasons from grieving parents. I was that parent and I am asking and I'm not ridiculous for doing so. Sorry if defending late term abortion causes you angst. Its part of being in a discussion.
My daughter lived btw, despite us being told she would not. She is now a happy and healthy 12 year old. Thank God we didn't have her ripped apart at 8 months. Even if she had died shortly after birth you will never convince me that would have been more "compassionate".
Thanks for sharing Jennifer and here's to continued great health. I shared on Bari's other post that my son had a stroke 24 hours after his birth. He had a traumatic c-section -- breach, etc. But my doc believed he probably had a blood vessel clamp down in the 2nd trimester. Had I had that amniocentesis -- which I refused at age 41--they would very much have suggested an abortion. My son is doing great now and although those 2 1/2 weeks in the NICU were frightening, I can not imagine life without him. Never ever considered it.
This statement gets to the heart of our polarized division on this. Motherhood, value and quality of life, morality, caring - these are all things that cannot be quantitatively measured and can only be articulated using adjectives. Many would argue (including myself) that these are the traits that form the foundation of what makes us human, and with that drive our accepted societal norms and laws. The pro-abortion activists want to keep this out of the debate, because for now most of us still have these very human traits, and their position loses its appeal for many when we go here. If late term abortion becomes broadly accepted both legally and culturally, and we are giving a specific group the power to decide what is human and what is not we are going to a very dangerous place, especially now that we have to add sentient AI into the mix.
I had the same transformation. Before I had children my position on abortion was that it was up to the woman and her doctor. After children it was inconceivable to abort a baby after the first trimester. It felt like murder to me. Then came my grandkids. I told my children there was no way they were going to abort MY grandchildren. If they couldn't care for them I would.
As an aside, both my children were vehemently anti-abortion even as young children. They got that on their own because for most of their growing up years the home position was it was between a woman and her doctor before 15 weeks.
We were against Roe v. Wade, though, from the start because it stopped the national debate on abortion and hardened both sides.
I predict the debate will go on within the states so that after a few years the states that allow abortion up to the time of delivery will begin to put some restrictions on it as their population comes to the conclusion that aborting a 9 month fetus is akin to murder. States that will not allow abortion may soften their positions as well and allow it up to 8 or 15 weeks as an example.
Now that abortion can be debated openly in state legislatures and in forums of all sorts people's minds can be broadened to other positions. That's healthy and protects rights and our democracy.
well that is so nice. but you will be likely be dead or very old before your grandchildren have children and allowing that freedom to have children that they know will be cared for by others takes the responsibility from them as adults. or even as teens. hopefully none of them will be drug addicts having children.. or alcoholics having children. etc.
No way to entirely predict the future but in my entire family there are no alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, liars or thieves. Could be because most of us believe deeply in God. My grown children have solid values. That helps. They are also raising their children and not warehousing them in day cares. That helps too. The children have both a father and a mother and the father is involved with them. Good role models. That helps too.
That's nice. you do know however that many people who are drug addicts etc also believe deeply in God. and even people who want the right to safe and legal pregnancy terminations also believe deeply in God and many of them have solid family values as well. even the ones who use day care may have a deep religious conviction. being religious does not exempt you
Once someone becomes a drug addict the addiction makes them a slave.
A belief in God, or a higher power/authority than man, sets a moral and ethical bar. Without this anything and all things are possible. We have seen where that leads. The most murderous regimes have been atheist.
I am sorry. you are incorrect about your last statement unless you are considering all other people that are not believers in your religion "heathens"...and many people are drug users and still believe in God and are not "slaves". your "moral and ethical " bar is yours alone
I suspect that the silent majority supports reasonable first trimester abortion but not “abortion as an empowering lifestyle” as pushed by Hollywood entertainers and their ilk.
Yes. The zeal, the pride, the arrogance of some women you see advocating abortion at any time on demand is really disconcerting. It shows a complete indifference for anything but their selfish demands.
The Florida legislature passed a 15 week limit on abortion this past session. It went by nearly unnoticed. No hysterics or demonstrations that I heard about.
The reasoning of 15 weeks is that babies start to feel pain between 15 and 20 weeks, women should know they are pregnant by 15 weeks, and shortly after 20 weeks they are now viable outside the womb.
and now we are "in line" with most of the middle east.. cant wait for women to be tossed of buildings. stoned until dead. buried alive. killed by relatives. hey how about burned at the stake. that seemed to work in some places..of course we wont do that. we are "civilized"
Good grief. Get a grip. Each state will debate and decide where they want to draw the line on abortion. Some states like Florida will draw it at 15 weeks. Others like NY and CA, OR and WA will allow abortion right up until the baby comes out of the birth canal at 9 months. This is Federalism as it should be.
This is the quandary for sure but not one that we people of goodwill aren’t impotent from shaping how we see fit. The screeching activists on both sides are the squeaky wheels no doubt but I genuinely believe that those who seek reasonable compromise are wanting to do the correct thing given that we do live in a pluralistic society and that there is neither universal or even close to universal agreement on the topic. We need to be the loud voices in seeking such compromise folks…
The same on all other issues: gun control, taxes, environment. There are no reasonable middle position or compromise. That’s why our politicians are unable to resolve any urgent issues, such as solvency of Social Security programs or crumbling infrastructure. They have no practical solutions requiring compromise. This country is in such a dangerous place. I am not optimistic.
Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution. However, guns are specifically mentioned, and therefore it is proper that the Supreme Court protect the right to bear arms.
By that logic the right of women to vote should be rescinded as well, since it is not stated specifically in the Constitution.
The original (Alito and Thomas version), that is. Maybe the 19th should be overturned - along with unstated Constitutional rights such as contraception, same sex marriage, and biracial marriage.
I'm not trying to be trite - but to me this is a 19th Century Court in a 21st Century country.
Richardson v. Ramirez case, Justice Rehnquist wrote: “Because the right to vote ‘is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government,’… voting is a ‘fundamental’ right. Returning some ‘rights’ to state governments is one solution, another one is to codify through Congress, which Obama could have done with his super majority, but preferred to use it as a political football. Dumb.
When I started working at a libertarian think tank I was vehemently pro-choice and utilitarian in my view of abortion. But one of my fellow libertarians presented the rational argument that while one may support individual liberty, what about the liberty of a viable unborn human being? Do I support the inalienable rights of a living creature, a creature that is alive, in the womb, and at 24 weeks possibly viable outside the womb? These are philosophical questions that should temper the extreme hatred and anger that those who are "pro-abortion to term" should consider--particularly if you fancy yourself a libertarian. Part of solving a problem is calming down enough to come up with real solutions. How often do you see people solve problems by screaming at each other by casting aspersions upon each other?
This sums up my feelings well. I've never had strong feelings about abortion one way or another in the past. I was fine with it being "safe, legal and rare" and understood it is sometimes a necessary choice.
But somehow, the Left has went from being "pro-choice" to "pro-abortion". Abortions are too be celebrated now and viewed as some type of achievement. To them, if you're not 100% on board with abortions up until the minute of birth, you're considered "pro-life". They've went too far, and this sickening display has put me off the issue and pushed me the other way. I suspect the same has happened for many moderates.
Exactly this. And now we have even the Pope calling pro life Catholics 'anti abortion activists'. Here come the t-shirts snd mugs with slogans like 'I heart abortion'
I couldn't agree more. I had two abortions in my 20's. I wish I understood the options better. I have two children today. I would have loved to have had more....maybe the two I gave up?
CC, I remember in the mid ‘70’s when I was in college, none of us knew what was entailed in an abortion. They just told us it was a clump of cells, and was like our period blood that they extracted. Women didn’t have all the facts back then.
And aren't your children a blessing? Lessons learned the hard way. Respect. My mother had four miscarriages between my brother and I. She was a warrior.
I used to be pro-choice. A friend brought me a recording of his wife's sonogram. They had had trouble conceiving and he was all excited that she was pregnant. I looked at the sonogram and it was an epiphany. I saw the fetus and the heart beating and I thought, "That is a human being." and in that instance became anti-abortion. I still believe there are some cases where abortion is warranted.
If a baby can survive outside the womb and it is aborted, in my opinion, that is murder. Some states allow abortion up to the day before birth. If the child is aborted, they leave it on the table until it dies. That living baby is now a US citizen and deserves the all the rights and privileges of a US citizen. Included in these rights is the right to be protected by law not to be murdered and if murdered the guilty should stand trial for murder.
Below is an essay I wrote when I was still pro-choice and I believe there is a lot of truth in it:
On abortion or the world according to Lonesome.
As with all complicated issues there are no simple answers.
Both sides of the issue are led and populated by fanatics. There is no middle ground for these people. I believe that they are drooling, glassy eyed, in your face whackoes.
I am pro-choice. I don't believe that a zygote, an embryo or a fetus that cannot survive outside of the womb needs to be protected by law. Soon, in the next 10 years, 20 tops, cloning will be perfected. I believe that attempted cloning will have as high as an 80% success rate. This will mean that every cell in my body is a potential human being, same as a zygote. We all know by using goofy logic the pro-lifers will dismiss this while hanging tenaciously to their present position that a fertilized egg is a human being and demands the same protection as a fully formed human.
This position of the pro-lifers leaves no middle ground at all. They completely dismiss the fact that as many as 40 to 60% of all pregnancies are aborted naturally. Sometimes the zygote never attaches itself to the wall of the uterus and is flushed out of the body and the woman never knows she is pregnant. If you follow the religious fundamentalist view that god controls everything, this makes god the world’s biggest abortionist.
On the other hand, Laci Peterson’s baby was just two weeks away from being born. The pro-choice movement and NOW will not admit Laci’s murder is a double murder because this somehow undermines their pro-choice position, a chink in their armor so to speak.
So the pro-choicers have no middle ground either.
Both sides will continue to purple in the face yell at each other until one side has complete victory over the other.
My personal view: I have no problem with the morning after pill nor do I have a problem with early term abortions. I do, however, have a problem with late term abortions and with partial birth abortions. To be honest I am ignorant on the subject of partial birth abortion. But from what I have heard the reasons for it are dubious at best.
I have some caveats on late term abortions and for that matter all abortions. If the abortion is to save the life or preserve the health of the mother, then I am all for it, the same goes for rape or incest.
All too often the extremists take over and rational discourse is never considered. I believe that this is where we are on the abortion issue. The fanatics have taken over. The insane are running the asylum.
No issue is completely dichotomous, but the interesting thing about the abortion debate is that it is much more dichotomous than other issues that we usually debate in public life.
Question: Have you, since changing your mind on abortion, changed your mind on other things? If so, would you say changing your mind about abortion was the deciding factor?
As I get older, I have changed my mind on many things. If you don't change, I don't think you grow intellectually. No, my changing on abortion did not influence me to change on other matters. The change on abortion surprised me. It happened in an instant. It was a road to Damascus moment and I am not religious.
In thinking through the implications of the overturning of RvW, I have had a change in view on the role of society in providing healthcare and extra financial support for women that have children and face economic hardship (I used to be very much against this). RvW, combined with that disaster of a war in Afghanistan, and how that opened my eyes to the financial waste of taxpayer $ and human devastation caused by our bi partisan military industrial complex, has moved me to a place where I believe should be putting the needs of our citizens and especially children first with benefits such as universal health care.
Seeing an ultrasound of a fetus really changes how you think about this. My oldest daughter bounced around so much they couldn’t image her easily to the point the technician asked my wife if she’d just had a coffee. That was how my daughter was after she was born as well. The hard reality is that abortion is homicide. I can support it like I support capital punishment and dropping bombs on our enemies - but the ‘my body - my choice’ line is just a flat out lie.
Pops, I love your way of phrasing things. "I can support abortion like I support capital punishment of dropping bombs on our enemies".
The analogy is perfect. All tragedies. Sometimes necessary tragedies. But if you lose sight of their fact that they are tragedies, you lose your humanity.
I had the same experience while carrying both my children. Their personalities were apparent by at least 20 weeks. My daughter was active, aware of sounds outside the womb and reacted to them. I could play with her by pressing on one area of my belly. She would reposition and then kick my hand. One time the dog (toy poodle) was lying on my stomach. She kicked him. He got up and had the funniest expression on his face as in "where did that come from?"
My son was the opposite. Laid back. Frequently didn't feel him for a couple of days. He has always been the same. Laid back, calm.
I would add that late term abortions that are medically necessary (latent serious medical issues for the mother or fetus; very young girls who may not even realize they’re pregnant until the third trimester, etc) must be left to the discretion of the doctor and patient.
Late term abortions on demand - that’s a different story and departure from “safe, legal and rare” (I didn’t realize until recently that the phrase is attributed to Bill Clinton).
In the Clinton years I was pro-choice and just fine with "safe, legal, and rare." (I thought it will Hillary actually that coined it.) As my views changed with age and parenthood, I was still fine with that phrase, just more focused on the "rare" part. Then the Democrats went from "safe, legal and rare" to "shout your abortion" and they lost me.
Most people know that abortion is a tragedy. It is sometimes a necessary tragedy, but treating it as something to be proud of... asserting that a 5 month fetus has the same moral import as a cancer tumor... being proud of having aborted your baby? These were the things that truly made me 100% pro-life. If that's what "pro-choice" means, count me out.
I agree. I approve of the Court's decision to overrule Roe but I also approve of the idea that the law must allow abortions in some cases. Before Roe that was the case.
I don't think all the Rs will go that long. Know they won't. Here in Ohio, they're talking about the "heartbeat" rule. About six weeks. Me? I'm okay with that but it's not up to me.
You are probably correct. But I’m looking at compromise here. Many European countries draw the line similarly. There has to be some middle ground here. Both extremes can’t win. They have to compromise.
I don't remember the LGBT activists seeking compromise and "a middle ground" with religious bakers and florists after Obergefell. I see no reason we should do so after Dobbs.
The progressives have been using the scorched Earth litigation technique quite successfully for decades. They can't win any battle without immediately trying to use it as a springboard for the next one.
I feel like we've been playing by Queensberry rules for far too long, and I'm tired of losing. As I mentioned above, my feelings on swinging for the SCOTUS fences on this issue may change as the adrenaline from having actually gotten a base for once in the culture war wears off. Right now, I'm afraid I'm with Justice Thomas though: go after the entire edifice of "substantive due process."
"Both extremes can’t win. They have to compromise."
50 different states = 50 (potentially) different set of (ever-changing) laws, all of which will be deemed "extreme" to some political tribe.
If Congress (+ Pres) pass their own version, then back to the SCOTUS to decide if congress has the constitutional authority to supersede the respective state law, whatever that may be? The 'old Commerce Clause BS?
It would take an amendment to the constitution to make it "the law of the land". I don't see that happening, but who knows ....
It's true, the left went too far. Democrats like to say 70% of Americans support abortion rights. But that wasn't enough. They had to push it to the point of infanticide.
Now that the laboratories of invention will be back up and running, I believe a rough consensus will form, one where no one gets all they want. Poor girls raped in Baton Rouge and 9-month-old fetuses getting dismembered in New York will have their narratives brought to the light of day. Somewhere in the collective American unconscious, a graceful consensus will emerge, where most of us feel we made principled compromise without compromising principles.
Bari touched on one of America's great, unique virtues: mobility. People ache to come here for our economic mobility. But just as important is Federalism, which allows social mobility. When states are powerful, one can move to a place that matches their values. It's when the heavy hand of federal law blankets the country that our social mobility becomes irrelevant. It's the main reason I'm a conservative.
I am afraid even Bari's readers may not reach a consensus. Most reasonable people will agree that abortion of a viable fetus is bad, and that one night of unprotected sex should not lead to a baby. But what about abnormal fetuses? Lots of pro-lifers will insist to saddle the parents with a problematic child. Lots of others (as is very common in Europe) think that an abortion should be permitted in such cases.
oferim, we DID reach a consensus here just a few weeks ago in the comments. There were about 20 of us. No screaming. No histrionics. Acknowledgement from the left all that abortion was a tragedy and from the right that it might sometimes be necessary. This gave me such encouragement, since it shows that, even separated greatly by party and ideology, there's a broad consensus on this issue.
I do think that consensus needs to be at the state level though. Real federalism was a casualty of the Civil War and cremated by the early 20th century Progressives. It's time to rediscover it. On this and other issues, everyone must be willing to let Georgia be Georgia and Massachusetts be Massachusetts.
"Lots of pro-lifers will insist to saddle the parents with a problematic child." A problematic child. NO ONE, especially "pro-lifers" INSIST on SADDLING PARENTS with ANYONE or ANYTHING. There is this cool option called adoption. Please quit with the absurd, disrespectful and effed up assertion that pro-lifters are forcing anything. It's just so insulting. Thank God it's not up to you to determine what a "problematic child" is.
We have had a consensus for decades; 90% of Americans do not support killing a baby in the 3rd trimester, 80% are against it in the 2nd, 70% agree on options in the 1st. Respectfully.
I think time and experience *can* lead to consensus, hard as it may be to believe right now. “Problematic” children will need to be defined. I may start out on one side of that issue and you on the other. But the idea that a compromise that both of us could live with can’t be reached is simply a failure of imagination. The next few years will see tumultuous debates over abortion. I’m confident that when cooler heads prevail, common sense (!) legislation will follow.
Depends in which country. Off the top of my head, look up Iceland. Last time I read (a couple of years ago), they were on the way to having no Down syndrome newborns.
I do not believe any democratic country is forcing parents to abort Down syndrome (or children with other abnormalities). But it looks like almost all parents in a country like Iceland choose to do so. Why do you think this is the case? What would you have done differently?
Interesting that you use the word 'mobility,' John.
My main concern in all of this is not so much the intractability of opinions on abortion - I do not think there will ever, ever be compromise. It is too fraught with moral weight versus perceived rights. It's a bridge too far.
My fear is in the enforcement - that is, how will Prohibition states enforce the ban? Will the 'mobility' of women be constricted as they attempt to cross state lines seeking an abortion they know is illegal at home? And if so, how? What kind of surveillance will be used? Checkpoints? How will mail (a federal jurisdiction) be searched looking for medical abortion pills? Will people helping these women be prosecuted? Will providers in other states be prosecuted?
I see now not the heavy hand of Federal law, but instead the heavy hand of state law.
The left may have gone too far in their zeal, but I'm afraid it will be easily matched by the zealotry on the right after this decision.
Great questions, great points. Add to these questions: the potential use of federal property to establish abortion mills in pro-life states. It may very well be a Pyrrhic victory. The laboratories of democracy will be abuzz with activity until some norms are established.
Thank you. You should watch Tucker's interview with Kimberly Ells. She has written a book and done extensive research on the goals and programs from the Left to disconnect parents from their children.
Schu and WeDecide, around 96% of abortions are done before the 15 weeks, 42.9% before the 7th week, 36.4 before the 10th week, and 2.9% before the 16th week. Comments like; infanticide and metal tables are pure bullshit that comes out of the mouth of hateful, ignorant people!
"DEFECTIVE"???? You mean, like a widget or something in my lawnmower???
Also, check your defective spelling - it's "Down's" syndrome, not "Dawn".
My former brother-in-law AND former sister-in-law were Down's syndrome kids and the love and joy that they provided to their family and community was immeasurable. And no, my mother-in-law was not some rich soccer mom in suburbia - she was a young widow with 5 kids who moved to a community she could afford and became a teacher to support her family - a woman of strength, dignity, and CHARACTER.
I have no doubt your mother-in-law was (is?) an amazing woman but what happens to the Down syndrome kids as adults when their parents are no longer around to take care of them? I'm hopeful there is some type of group home or care facility but knowing how healthcare in the U.S. works I doubt this would be available to anyone without the means to pay for it.
OMG! Of course there are places for adults with Down's and have been since Down's existed and parents (generally older when giving birth to their child with Down's). I have a friend who cares for adults with special needs in her own home.
I’ll assume that the wording of your response is perhaps not as articulate as you desired. And in Bari’s excellent article’s spirit keep everything polite.
The problem with the concept of a “desirable” or “non defective” baby is the slippery slope it creates. For example, we currently live in a society where anything at or below the mean is “undesirable”. Height. Intelligence. Facial symmetry. If you don’t believe me just check any article on grade inflation, or one on the diagnosis of learning disabilities in children. The range of what is deemed “a disability” has been growing exponentially over time.
Of course, that’s not the only “undesirable trait” someone might choose to abort. The number one cause of abortion across the world over the past 50 years, because of China’s one child policy, was incorrect sex, in a society that prized boys and rejected girls.
Little did the Chinese realize that they did not have to abort, just have their daughters decide they were sons instead.
I wrote a paper on this once. Back before you could determine the sex of a child (the politically correct will hate this) many times, in China when a girl was born, the family would do what the ancient Greeks would do when they had child that wasn't perfect. They would put the baby out for the wolves to eat. A common joke among the Chinese back then, when they would encounter a little girl, they would say, "I see you survived the wolves."
I told you the PC wouldn't like this. Reality isn't their strong suit.
My SIL's parents had four biological children and adopted 8 more...mostly from Korea. One was given up (literally) because she was born to some royal (whatever that means in S. Korea) family and she had a birthmark on her face. That beautiful young woman (from the midwest) is thriving in NYC as a costume designer for stage performances and winning awards. Another brother has a club foot and another sister has severe intellectual challenges. This is the most giving, beautiful family. No one is disposable....there is always someone ready to love them and care for them.
Yes, the current fixation on being at or above average is what terrifies me about the pro-abortion crowd. My son is on the autism spectrum and has a number of learning challenges that put him below average in a couple of categories, but he is otherwise an amazing creative kid with a fascinating perspective on the world, who brings joy to so many. If autism ever becomes testable in the womb, I fear the eugenic policy that will arise and “medical” advice to scared parents that will be given.
That is why Roe has been a slippery slope for so long. God bless you and your son. Let's find the source of autism and get rid of it. We are a world with brilliant minds, we can figure this out.
That’s a pretty gross description of children. I can tell you first hand that many of these people you deem “defective” are the sweetest, happiest and most innocent among all of us in society.
Poor choice of words, but I agree with the sentiment. In Canada, all pregnancies are screened non-invasively for Down, and if the screening test is positive, the woman is offered amniocentesis to confirm. Very few women decline amniocentesis.
We now have a way to detect genetic abnormalities - and a third chromosome is an abnormality - before the end of the first trimester. This is why we see so few Down kids these days.
Down's Syndrome could be described as "defective" in that it is not the normal development of a human being in the womb, but I believe it is just a variation of the human genome. Who are we to decide that someone with Down's Syndrome is not worthy of living? What if there was a genetic test for Autism? Would it be acceptable to terminate those pregnancies? What if there was a genetic test for homosexuality?
I do see. Kids with Downs are usually very loving and affectionate and are usually smart enough to hold down a job. I would want more people with Downs in my community than be like SF with a bunch of junkies.
I am pro abortion, but Roe v. Wade was one of the worse decisions rendered by Supreme Court in last 60 years. Instead of letting Congress do its work and legislate this issue, Supreme Court took active role of legislating by judicial activism of unelected judges that are there to interpret laws, not make them.
If this was done trough Congress, it would probably lasted several years longer, but the result would be the same and we would have legal abortion, as it happened in European countries. And this topic would be settled and regulated on state level.
Due to overreach of Supreme Court with Roe v. Wade, we ended up with such a polarizing discussion that has lasted for over 50 years now. And will continue to tear up US society for many more years to come.
There is nothing worse than activist judges, their zeal to legislate from the bench is one of the most anti-democratic things imaginable that tears fabric of our justice system. I you want to make laws and legislate, then take of judge's robe put the suit on and run for congress, don't do judistical activism.
To keep the thing short, this was great decision by Supreme Court, correction of Roe v. Wade was long overdue, sadly damage that this decision caused will follow US for decades to come.
Excellent, excellent comment. I might add that judicial activism and lack of legislative leadership (or statesmanship) have tended to go hand in hand. It seems to me that too many in the legislature have historically been all too happy to let unelected judges do their work for them via judicial fiat. Like you mention, many of the judges were all too happy to oblige. Meanwhile the legislature could wring their hands, act like a collective Pontius Pilate (if Pilate had been a petulant child), and head off to the next fundraising banquet.
The decision yesterday was a return to Constitutional norms and a return of power to the ballot box. I applaud it.
I’m afraid the problem is much larger than “legislators” embracing and promoting activist judges. They are only one element of the incestuous players that inhabit the Washington “swamp”. It’s the bureaucratic blob they have empowered to actually run the country that get to interpret, enforce or not enforce laws. DHS has allowed record numbers of illegals to cross our borders. Our intelligence agencies concoct hoaxes to undermine a duly elected president. The EPA has decreed that the very gas (CO2) that each of us emits with every breath is a pollutant. The JustUs department refuses to arrest anarchists that burn down our cities and threaten Supreme Court justices they dot like.
Our only hope is that the current Supreme Court will have the courage and fortitude to reign the rogue bureaucrats in before they strangle the life out of our freedom and pursuit of happiness.
Pelosi knows the danger Allito, Thomas, Barret and Kavanaugh pose to her agenda. Schumer warned them of the “whirlwind” that would be unleashed upon them and Pelosi has embraced it by refusing to enact legislation to enhance protection of them and their families. There has already been one assassination attempt. I doubt she’ll mind if there are a few more.
> DHS has allowed record numbers of illegals to cross our borders.
Link? I think it’s the same number of people crossing the border as when Trump was president.
> Our intelligence agencies concoct hoaxes to undermine a duly elected president.
link? Did you even read the muller report? The Steele dossier was basically a sham, but that wasn’t created or distributed by the intelligence agencies. But the muller report showed that Russian interference was real.
> The EPA has decreed that the very gas (CO2) that each of us emits with every breath is a pollutant.
Climate change is real and destructive. It is a crisis. Do you deny that?
Illegal immigration is much much higher YoY so far in 2022 then 2021 and 2021 over 2020.
However, it also was insanely higher in 2019 than 2018 under Trump.
What people lose sight of is not so much the illegal immigration. The USA lightly can impact that based on “incentives” (leniency, etc) but it is not a huge impact. The way more impactful measure is the state of the governments/economies of the countries the people are leaving from. What is lost is how those individuals are treated once they immigrate to the USA illegally. Under Trump many more were deported, now a much higher percentage are allowed to stay if detained. So looking at sheer numbers of immigration can confuse the issue and get away from the point. (I also don’t support Trump immigration measures, just pointing out the difference in treatment).
Our intelligence agencies contact “hoaxes” all the time. 1. Depends what you call a “hoax”. In this context (although expanded upon through Mueller and was steered away from “hoax” territory), I think even opening up the Mueller investigation, and utilizing the Steele Dossier as a premise to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page is well within the realm of “hoax”. Outside of this context, Iran Contra, shipping pallets of cash to Iran under the auspices that they’ve “moderated, Gulf of Tonkin incident, Banana Wars (older), Havana Syndrome (very recent and basically admitted to being a hoax), etc. Usually these were all acted on in tandem with the administration but still “hoaxes” or at least purposeful misinformation of ulterior goals.
2. Whether it is the intent or not to harm the president is seemingly impossible to separate and unless you have a mind reading device or the plotters are absolute dipshits who are stupid enough to put that concrete intent in writing, will never be known. My personal opinion is that you should not assume intent, so I’d fall more on your side that you shouldn’t make this jump unless absolutely necessary. However, when you have intelligence officials saying something like the Steele Dossier looks legitimate (even just in interviews and not officially) and then have hundreds of intelligence officials signing letters saying Hunters laptop is a fraud (completely erroneously and without any information, just using their title as some source of special knowledge), it is hard to not at least wonder.
Climate change is 100% real. How serious it is, what the timeline is, what we do about it, and how our society should be restructured to deal with it is 100% up for debate. When people like AOC can straight faced cite reports that suggest humanity and civilizations are going to be irreparably damaged in the next 10 years (now like 6 years) by climate change. And Gore can make documentaries suggesting Miami should already be well underwater citing these same sources years before, it’s not a testament to the problem being not real. It is a testament to those sources skewing the data as much as they can to get secondary sources (AOC and Gore) to draw incorrect conclusions and steer public policy around that incorrect conclusion.
What is questioned with the EPA is are they so biased that even their correct data (as presented) draws people to incorrect conclusions. And is the bias intended and purposeful to get people to those conclusions.
Once again, I don’t like to assume intent. But their history has been questionable enough where they are certainly not my source for environmental data. I just frankly think their are many better sources that I trust much more (I.e. Michael Shellenberger) and will utilize before I go to the EPA.
It's almost like the legislators (on both sides) decided they'd benefit more by keeping the issue alive and burning than find an acceptable compromise.
Yesterday the Supreme Court reaffirmed it’s legitimacy and in doing so perhaps saved our democracy. Roe v. Wade made a mockery of our constitution. A majority of Unelected, blacked robed politicians masquerading as justices usurped the authority of actual legislators who were elected by the people. It isn’t the only time an activist court did so and in every instance, they diminished our constitution and inched the nation closer to authoritarianism. In the grand scheme of things, yesterdays ruling is just one step in restoring power to We the people.
Well put, Raziel. Shame on my rabbis, and on other liberal clergy around the country, for sending out pious diatribes to their congregations, excoriating the Court for this “awful” and “destructive” decision. Laws should be made in the legislature and adjudicated in the courts, not the other way around.
The same clergy, I might add, who were silent about threats on the lives of conservative Justices.
Oh I fully agree, and there are plenty of clergy who preached in favor of Republican candidates, too, even crossing the line into pure politics which they are supposed to avoid. This is why churches should be taxed--they are political entities and have been for a long time.
I look at it from having worked as a corporate tax professional for 30 years. Taking away tax exempt status would be good for our country. Too much largess is associated with tax exempt status and it would be good to level the playing field. Not for profits have a mission to serve and they should break even at it over the modest term. They should spend their money on those they serve. It would force more $support$ into the community and that can only be good.
as a minster from the old school - ergo -when the Bible was our reference point for justice issues and there were plenty to use- today's clergy are SJW especially those who graduate from "liberal" seminaries as I did but that was long ago. I was horrified that my Presbyterian church and every other mainline church in Portland, had BLM signs posted on their outside bulletin boards and when I wrote my pastor and suggested she could find something better in the old testament prophets, I got no answer and the sign remained for two years. I on the other hand did not.
I was definitely pro choice at the beginning of Roe having known a few women who had to go to Puerto Rico or the "back alley" but when a parishioner of mine returned from a women's march in D<C< sometime in the early 90's and told with enthusiasm and pride about the woman wearing a t-shirt that read "I have had 11 abortions" I began to worry about what was coming.
Have to agree. We would all be a lot better off had we just had the political fight. Until you get a national consensus on what should and what should not be allowed and that consensus makes it into law we were always going to have these back and forth fights resulting in instability.
This is a battle that needs to occur. Arguments need to be made. Compromises made. Laws passed.
Completely agree. Roe WAS the decision that made "supreme court justices" a turnout lever for Senate races for years. It no longer enough to campaign as a Senator about where you stand on issues facing your state, but rather, will you abdicate your legislative power to the court, or make decisions for your electoral constituency.
Maybe this will allow Senators to actually legislate rather than obstruct going forward.
Can we please have mandatory constitutional law classes in high school? So many people have no clue what really went down yesterday from a legal perspective. Are you US native born, Raziel? If not, I am seriously impressed with your understanding of the Constitution (well, I'm impressed either way.)
I agree with the majority of the commenters. Let the legislatures make the laws, the judges interpret the laws made. IMO, more things should be done at the state level anyway.
Jt, my thoughts exactly. The swamp is too far - physically and philosophically - from the world inhabited by most Americans. Three weeks ago I moved to a State more in line with my values and so it should be.
To reassure the writer: To my amateur eye, at least, this ruling does nothing more than correct the error of a previous Court. Roe was an attempt to legislate from the bench, and That Is Not Constitutional. IMHO it was a well-intentioned ruling that hoped to finally settle the abortion question at the national level, but we know which road is paved with good intentions. This ruling acknowledges that proper jurisdiction in this matter lies with the states. It does NOT have the first thing to do with gay marriage, contraceptives, or anything else. People who have their own agenda, none of which involves your welfare, are predictably setting out to scare hell out of you. Unfortunately for them, nobody trusts the Lamestream press now and are turning to places like Substack for some truth and common sense.
I shared at one time your feeling that the federal government was your friend and the states could be at times backwater regimes. No more. Last night the Weaponized FBI raided a retired couple's home, throwing flashbangs inside, near their terrified dogs, on the pretense that this couple was involved in Jan 6. Turns out the picture they used was a blurry picture of another man. The states are our greatest defense against the New Stasi, and we'd better damned well get control before Stalin rises from the grave.
Not a day goes by that I don't silently thank the Founding Fathers. I visit Jefferson's house near my home at least once a year, making certain to walk down the Great Man's mountain past his grave. I'm not a believer, but I DO quietly say, "Thank you, sir. Thank you so very much." as I pass. (addendum: By the way, his house and property was bought and restored from near collapse by a Jew.)
| It does NOT have the first thing to do with gay marriage, contraceptives, or anything else. |
That is easy to say, but Justice Thomas EXPLICITLY called out same sex intimacy, marriage and contraception as rulings he thought were a mistake. To say these are safe is just words at this point.
If you are against abortion, I can respect your position. If you are against abortion AND contraception then you're just a moralistic scold.
Here's what a quick google of Thomas' comments revealed: "... Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the court ought to revisit all of the substantive due process precedents, including Griswold and Obergefell (which protected the rights to legal contraception and gay marriage, respectively).
I'll research some more, but my reading of the above suggests that Thomas' thrust was revisiting all the "substantive due process precedents," which BY THE WAY included Griswold and Obergefell - not singling them out because they were about a specific thing. Naughty, naughty. Don't try to obfuscate by selectively leaving out pertinent details.
Thomas suggests that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment has been made to do too much work ever since the evisceration of the privileges and immunities clause in the rightly reviled Slaughterhouse and Cruikshank cases.
His concurrence in the 2nd Amendment case of McDonald v Chicago says "a more straightforward path to this conclusion, one that is more faithful to the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history (is that) the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause."
Thomas considers the phrase "substantive due process" to be an oxymoron, and thus it leads to better doctrinal outcomes to revitalize the Privileges or Immunities Clause and rescue it from its dormancy at the hands of a rights-hostile Supreme Court of the late 1800s.
(The editing function is not the greatest here ... I'm going to paste and summarize extensive segments from Justice Thomas's Dobbs concurrence ... not all of the beginning quotation marks, and inner quotation marks, may work properly. Sorry about that. I hope I am faithful in my description of this important concurrence ... that unfortunately has gotten short shrift from ideologically interested people who only want to paint a cartoonish caricature.)
In Dobbs, the Thomas concurrence repeats and extends his observations in McDonald, saying about Griswold: "Griswold v. Connecticut purported not to rely on the Due Process Clause, but rather reasoned 'that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights”— including rights enumerated in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth,
and Ninth Amendments — 'have penumbras, formed by emanations,'
that create 'zones of privacy ....' Since Griswold, the Court, perhaps recognizing the facial absurdity of Griswold’s penumbral argument, has characterized the decision as one rooted in substantive due process. See, e.g., Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 663 (2015); Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 720 (1997)."
For these reasons, "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous ....'” and instead "consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment .... To answer that question, we would need to decide important antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not
enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify those rights .... That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively
demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach."
Thomas identifies in the Dobbs concurrence a number of problems with the idea of substantive due process:
It "exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority. Because the Due Process Clause speaks only to process, the Court has long struggled to define what substantive rights it protects. In practice, the Court’s approach for identifying those fundamental rights unquestionably involves policymaking rather than neutral legal analysis. The Court divines new
rights in line with its own, extraconstitutional value preferences and nullifies state laws that do not align with the judicially created guarantees." Moreover, for Justice Thomas, the abortion jurisprudence is an example of the unmoored nature of substantive due process as "the nature of the purported liberty supporting the abortion right has shifted yet again. Respondents and the United States propose no fewer than three different interests that supposedly spring from the
Due Process Clause. They include 'bodily integrity,' 'personal autonomy in matters of family, medical care, and faith,' and 'women’s equal citizenship.' That
50 years have passed since Roe and abortion advocates still cannot coherently articulate the right (or rights) at stake proves the obvious: The right to abortion is ultimately a policy goal in desperate search of a constitutional justification."
"Second, substantive due process distorts other areas of constitutional law. For example, once this Court identifies a 'fundamental' right for one class of individuals, it invokes the Equal Protection Clause to demand exacting scrutiny of
statutes that deny the right to others. Statutory classifications implicating certain 'nonfundamental' rights, meanwhile, receive only cursory review .... Similarly, this Court deems unconstitutionally 'vague' or 'overbroad' those laws that impinge on its preferred rights, while letting slide those laws that implicate supposedly lesser values .... In fact, our vagueness doctrine served as the basis for the first draft
of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, and it since has been deployed ... to nullify even mild regulations of the abortion industry .... Therefore, regardless of the doctrinal context, the Court often 'demand[s] extra justifications for encroachments' on 'preferred rights' while 'relax[ing] purportedly higher standards of review for less preferred rights ....' Substantive due process is the core inspiration for many of the Court’s constitutionally unmoored policy judgments."
Justice Thomas also suggests that Dred Scott is a species of "substantive due process." I would have not said that ... the motives of those who invented that doctrine were quite different from those of the Taney court. But Thomas is not wrong to caution about how judicial power unmoored from text has not always been used for good. He concludes:
"Because the Court properly applies our substantive due process precedents to reject the fabrication of a constitutional right to abortion, and because this case does not present the opportunity to reject substantive due process entirely, I join the Court’s opinion. But, in future cases, we should 'follow the text of the Constitution, which sets forth certain substantive rights that cannot be taken away, and adds, beyond that, a right to due process when life, liberty,
or property is to be taken away ....' Substantive due process conflicts with that textual command and has harmed our country in many ways. Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity."
It seems to me that Justice Thomas is correct is wanting to pull up from their roots all those terrible Waite Court and Fuller Court cases on the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th amendment. The reporting on his concurrence does a disservice, and borders on outright falsehood.
Wow. Quite an analysis! Thanks! The more I read about Justice Thomas, the more I think that, as some say, he just might be the greatest living American.
I wrote a direct reply to Bari’s article trying to place abortion in the broader context of healthcare regulation. It may be worth the read.
One thing that may well motivate Thomas is how part of the opposition to the 14th amendment was that granting citizenship to black people meant that they would have arms for their own defense - overturning the specific ways in which the Waite and Fuller courts made the 14th amendment into a near nullity is a noble work, and in the course will make 14th amendment jurisprudence more coherent. Far from being some “uncle,” as the Left _ignorantly_ calls him, I think the importance of armed self-defense resonates across the generations to a native of Pin Point, Georgia.
The 14th amendment’s privileges and immunities clause was the vehicle meant to ensure equal citizenship for freed slaves by having at least the first eight amendments of the bill of rights enforceable against the states - no selective incorporation, no fancy footwork with what’s “fundamental” or not. The rest of the court is not ready for that, so Thomas writes his concurrences, appealing to the court of history.
I don't have a hardline position for or against abortion; I do, however, support the rights of citizens, through their elected officials, to decide that issue for themselves rather than having nine unelected geezers decide it for the whole nation. It is not the Court's job to make law, and to my eye this ruling simply corrected the previous court's error in doing so. It does NOT outlaw abortion; it simply says that is for the states to decide. My God - judicial humility. What will they think of next?
I haven't seen Justice Thomas' comments on the above. Can you point them out? I'd like to see SPECIFICALLY what they say.
Always appreciate the balance Bari shows. However, I found the person quoted about federalism to be quite hilarious. It’s not that they would be shocked the states have power and different laws.
They would be borderline devastated that so many issues have been pushed to the national level. Not a founding father, but De Tocqueville thought federalism and local control/freedom to be the strongest aspect of the American governmental structure.
More than anything else about Roe, I hope the decision brings that back. People start paying attention to local elections again, pay attention to state elections again. People move and migrate to where the local laws agree with their views. People understand that is their responsibility as citizens of this country. They start calling for more to be localized.
I’ve heard people attack this view as “polarizing”. Red vs Blue states. Getting redder and bluer. And that very well may be true. But what no one realizes, if the federal government keeps its powers limited. And a democrat doesn’t enforce their laws on a red state and a Republican on blue states, there is no “polarization” in a meaningful sense. The national elections will loose a great part of their significance and every election won’t be a war about what may happen to them in their state. They can be content that even if they loose national elections, their life won’t change as drastically and they can remain content where they are.
That is the power of federalism dreamed of at the outset. How do you array a diverse “melting pot” of people with every view ever thought up under one banner?? You let them govern themselves in their own localities and you don’t force them to conform under one ideology they don’t believe in.
Of course this has its limits. But I think that should always remain a guiding star to shoot towards.
Thank you for reminding me about how federalism should work. It does sound appealing. The problem is, I find myself in a state (NJ) that disgusts me but I can’t just pick up and leave and live in Montana.
Fully understand the “can’t just get up and move” argument in the sense that it can be insanely difficult. I have not gotten up and moved from Chicago for just these reasons.
However, I do not think the difficulty of this refutes the underlying premise. I.e., I just had an Uber driver this weekend who with 7 children at the age of 45 moved from Mexico to the US with no family in the US and no community or connections to speak of. Further, they initially moved to Florida, lived there for 4 years, then moved to Chicago.
Both of these moved I have to imagine were insanely financially straining, and also probably managed to turn their life on their head.
(Only speaking for myself here because I do not know your situation) If someone can make those decisions and manage to make those moves, I have to imagine the possibility of the change is available to almost everyone. The problem is, not many people are willing to flip their own life on its head to make that change.
Once again, I fully understand the sentiment and agree with it, it is currently effecting my life. But, I do not think the difficulty of the choice should be understood as being capable or incapable.
But, for me anyway as I've posted elsewhere, change takes place faster and better the smaller the group, right? State, city, locality. It's also where people can try things without panic that if it doesn't work, the *entire country* will go down the tubes.
Politics like most everything else these days. It'll take some experimentation to see what fits best in what circumstances. The circumstances for the whole country? Does *anyone* believe they can even put a *finger* on a problem that big? IMO (In My Opinion).
Was just reading how Chief Justice Taney thought he was solving the slavery problem. Did a lot *more* to start the Civil War. Unintended consequences are a female dog.
I am nearly 100% pro-life Raziel, as you and I have talked about before. Honestly, until yesterday, I would have said I was OK with Congressional regulation though, essentially a European style solution. However now that Roe has actually been repealed, I find myself less certain about that.
Conservatives have been on the losing side of SCOTUS for decades, and now that we've actually seen a major goal accomplished through the Court, I kind of understand what possessed liberals to push for more and more and more for so many decades. There's gratitude, but also a rush of adrenaline that comes when your realize you've won. Immediately, your mind turns to, "What else could we win? What other issues could this Court set right?" I'm trying to resist that urge today, but quite honestly, pushing for SCOTUS to grant 14th Amendment protections for all in-utero babies is very tempting. What they did yesterday was actually a compromise, the maximal position was to grant fetal personhood.
I am honestly trying to take Nellie's advice and not rub it in. Considering the number of progressive SCOTUS gloat-fests I've witnessed in my 50 years on this Earth. As much as Court ordered fetal personhood sounds good, it's not he answer either, and I know that. Fundamentally, the more issues that the Court returns to the political process the better. For two groups of people who see the world so differently but must share a country, it's either federalism or warfare. And I prefer "live and let live". Fortunately today, babies get to do that too.
I agree. If there is a "red wave" come November, the conservatives MUST resist overreaching. I watched in horror when the Rebiblicans squandered the 1994 electoral landslide due to hubris and overreach, destroying their chance to fundamentally put the nation back on the rails. If you Righties win - and recent reports suggest that the Left is already working a plan to "win" in the same way they did in 2020, so don't count on it - don't screw the pooch yet again. You Republicans are really good at losing.
That's interesting, Jim, becuase I'm not worried about overreach from the GOP, I'm concerned that the establishment, blue-blood, donor-class who actually runs the show will work hard to keep the party from going far enough.
We have a major political party that believes:
1) America is irredeemably racist from the founding, and therefore justice should be race dependent.
2) "Man" and "woman" are simply ontological categories untethered to anything in the real world.
3) Abortion must be permissible right up to the birth canal.
4) Young children should be encouraged to choose their gender at an early age and as they get older, to alter their bodies (preferably with state financing) to reflect that choice.
5) Enforcing the country's border is racist and must stop.
6) If you speak against any of this, you are guilty of hate speech and must be silenced at all costs.
7) Government and corporate power and censorship are not a concern as long as they are used to hurt the other side.
I am far more concerned that the Republicans will fail to take this threat seriously, that once elected, they will go back to the only thing they know: pushing tax cuts. Because to the donor class, that's the real problem in America.
Countering those things is not overreach; it's just common sense. Overreach consists - my favorite - of Congress' inserting itself into the Terry Schiavo case. Attacking gun owners with laws that do absolutely nothing to reduce gun crime but hamstring the overwhelmingly law-abiding legal gun owner. (That would be me.) Using government power to "get" your enemies. (That would be the current and past Democrat administrations.) The abominable PATRIOT Act, which attacks your freedoms in ways you can't even imagine. Creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA (Republican administration). Using government power to curtail rail shipments of fertilizer, diesel fuel, and coal in hopes of ramming through some version of the Green New Deal. (I just had THAT confirmed by my neighbor, a railroad engineer who Actually Drives The Train. There are railroad cars covered with tarps sitting on side tracks, filled with fertilizer, with permits to pull the cars being withheld.) Using the FBI, the NSA, the IRS to persecute - not prosecute, persecute - people who disagree with you politically. EPA using government power to promote an egregious Leftist agenda. That sort of overreach. Also known in some cases as "corruption." (edited for clarity)
I understand the basis for why it was a bad legal argument, but was this decision also not judicial overreach? They could have simply ruled on the Mississippi case supporting the 15-week termination without also negating Roe and Casey. That to me felt like activism.
Well if you believe as a matter of law as the court did and many of us do that Roe was unconstitutional because of it’s legal reasoning then the correct thing is to undo that incorrect decision (like Brown did to Plessy for example). Now is the opportunity through our closest elected leaders to pass common sense laws on the issue that are both legal and find sufficient compromise.
Thanks Kathy, I have a much longer response here where I lay out my overall take on this and how we can get there and frankly why we should. This simply isn’t an issue where one side can win completely, we really must find middle ground.
Activism is reaching an outcome unsupported by the text and tradition of the US and its Constitution.
If there’s no constitutional right to an abortion, as they argued, then the issue must be turned over to state legislatures.
To do otherwise - to come up with yet another standard as Roberts tried to do with “reasonable time to get an abortion” - is continuing the original error of legislating from the bench.
In order to reach your conclusion they would need to find that there’s a constitutional right to abortion, in which case they would have sided with Jackson.
Then this would have been revisited again and again in the coming years. Roe v Wade was unconstitutional and needed to be overturned. This is the first Court with the courage to do that.
The follow-up question, then, is why Roe wasn't overturned much earlier, without supposed activism? Now even if it is activism, it is not an overreach. There is no other way to correct previous judicial decisions. It had to be judicial, as Congress couldn't even consider making laws that would be different than stated by that precedent.
I don't think the majority of the Supreme Court wanted to be faced with having to review every states' abortion laws, the Court wanted to be rid of the issue. Moreover, the Court (like most legal observers) understood the Roe Court simply amended the Constitution to its liking, rather than interpret it.
The activism was on the part of the abortion activists who decided the Mississippi law--despite its exceptions for medical emergency and severe fetal abnormality--was too enough for them. The SCOTUS cannot make a ruling out of thin air. The Left pushed this right onto their plate.
Roe was a bad ruling. Even Ginsberg thought it was a bad ruling.
Maybe Obama should have kept his promise to codify Roe at the beginning of his term, when he had a supermajority.
What about the activism that led pro-abortion activist to challenge the Mississippi law in court? It had exceptions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormalities--in other words, it *protected* the third-trimester abortions that people claim are necessary. And it limited elective abortions to 15 weeks, which is on par with Europe.
That wasn't good enough for abortion activists.
If they hadn't fought that very reasonable law in court, Roe would still be in place.
I'm in the anti-Roe, pro choice camp. The SCOTUS decision was inevitable, and it pointed out a failure of the legislative branch, which should have passed a clean bill legalizing abortion with terms more reasonable than allowing the equivalent of, imho, infanticide.
The problem with the pro choice movement, similar to the second amendment issues, is that both movements are in the hands of fanatics. I believe the majority of the citizens support a right to choose, but with something similar to the European laws. I also believe that most people support the second amendment, short of bazookas, while respecting an owners rights. I, personally don't support red flag laws as they are ripe for abuse by activist states.
Anyway, Congress is the common problem as they are owned by lobbyists who represent the fanatics, and the elected officials are incapable of pursuing reasonable legislation.
Interestingly, the polling data confirms this. The majority of Americans support abortion rights, but with significant restrictions - which seems like the right place to try to land a legislative compromise.
That’s probably about right. Though even then, you can drill down to specific communities and find differences. Among urban black women, for example, abortion is so commonplace as to be a lifestyle choice rather than a rare necessity.
I think it's instructive that even in the most pro-choice states, the figure if not higher than 70%. Younger generations also aren't pro-choice under all circumstances. For instance, it's really unpopular among younger people to permit abortion in the case of fetal abnormalities, which states have been quietly attempting to ban for the past decade.
A law like Denmark’s which is abortion is allowed in first trimester only and after that only to save the life of the mother would be the best compromise and most reasonable Americans would support. The extremists who run both parties will never compromise and this issue will continue to be weaponized.
That law, if sponsored by the GOP would be opposed by 100% of the DNC. And vice versa. Congress is about power, not legislation for the people.
Elected officials know this much: If they solved problems that we face, they would be useless. So they don't have any incentive to solve anything. Just to say the other side doesn't wanna.
It’s actually not quite that simple, as Congress does not have the authority to pass laws about whatever it pleases. By and large, criminal statutes are put in place at the state level. When states agree about what constitutes a crime then this isn’t a problem--detained murderers are freely transferred to the jurisdiction in which they committed murder to face judgment.
Differential laws about abortion brings us into uncharted territory, as we now have some states which consider it tantamount to murder, one of the gravest felonies, while others consider it to be a routine medical procedure.
Yes, I probably should have clarified that Congress *can* pass any law it pleases, but not all laws are Constitutional and enforceable. In other words, any such law would be immediately challenged.
I do agree that from a purely constitutional perspective that a Federal Law is quite likely problematic. I do have a feeling though that IF (and it’s an enormous IF our Federal elected officials passed some reasonable middle ground solution on the issue where each side saw something that was far better than today the court might be inclined to to pass on reviewing. In the meantime common ground seekers should work with our legislators in our own states to push middle ground compromises instead of the extremes that have happened on both sides in some states.
The typical Congressional workaround for issues like this is to punish states by turning them away from the federal teat (i.e. no tax dollars) when they pass laws that don’t meet Washington’s standards. However, this is one issue where the ideological zealots probably will not be deterred by such tactics.
What you say is true. One of the real tragedies here is that SCOTUS will be blamed for the failures of Congress and that will lead to distrust in the one branch that can serve to keep our society intact by upholding the Constitution. Those who keep asking SCOTUS to make law simply do not understand the Constitution and the theory behind it. They are in fact shirking their own responsibilities of their participation in this REPUBLIC by trying to short-cut the process and bully into place their own desired laws.
That’s rule by MOB.
If this trend continues we won’t just be seeing people moving to states of their choice based on abortion availability, we will be seeing people leaving the country to go somewhere where the law of the land is better appreciated and abided!
You nailed it. Clarence Thomas (I haven't seen his specific quotes) has talked about other bad SCOTUS decisions he would like to go after, and I believe they're not because he opposes the specific position (gay marriage), but because they're the products of activist judges carrying the water for a hopelessly screwed up congress. Nancy, and Harry Reid took congress in a very divisive direction ever since they took control of both house back in 2006, and there is no longer any room for compromise. Until that's fixed, SCOTUS is going to be tempted to 'pass laws' to address problems in the country.
Justice Thomas remarks appear very indiscreet and provocative rather than esoteric remarks on state laws and the constitution. What cases are heard by the Supreme Court should not be proactively announced by any justice. His timing to make this announcement on social issues that are divisive and could impact an election seems to continue the sad trend of justices making and taking political stances. (Justice Ginsberg comment that her husband would have moved to New Zealand if Trump is president) These comments by the justices are eroding the respect once held for the wisdom of this court.
I believe him—he’s a Constitutionalist. I support limited abortion, gay marriage, and gun ownership, but I believe in following the laws as they were intended by the framers. When you read history, you realize how important that is—but we may be past that anyway. The Democrats who are threatening to burn down the country aren’t really interested in laws and debate—they seem to be motivated beyond a particular ‘issue’ —they are always looking for the next reason to spread hatred, looting and burning.
Yes, very true. Advocates of abortion have been too lazy to develop a comprehensive approach, build the necessary consensus and submit / pass a workable legislative solution. But why should they ? They had it all with Roe and waisted 50 years. I think a majority of Americans support a reasonable framework to deal with this issue. Let’s hope elected officials can muster fortitude to accomplish the task.
“We know that it’s chic these days to write off virtues like civility and decency and humility and grace. We believe those things are the only way forward. That the only alternative to violence is persuasion and argument.
We hope that in some small way Common Sense is able to facilitate that exchange, to provide a forum for good-faith argument, to make it easier for people of varying backgrounds and opinions to forge a greater understanding, not with an eye toward papering over our many differences or the profound moral and medical and political implications of yesterday’s ruling, but with the hope that that might make living together more possible.”
I had to get off of social media yesterday because it worse than I had imagined it would be in the wake of this decision. The above quote is a reminder that panicked vitriol will continue to get us nowhere.
I have FB and Twitter accounts. Never used FB. But have used Twitter a little, just to look at a few tweets. Not even that any more. Instagram and all them I never got involved with.
The only social media I use these days is Substacks. *Too* much on them, I s'pose. Ah well...
I'm tempted to think Kavanaugh, et. al. leaked the verdict on purpose in order to blunt yesterday's reaction. Given how hostile it was - can you imagine if it came out of left field without a two-month runway?
I think that everyone knew this would be a bombshell if it came without warning - and that the conservative factions (maybe not the justices themselves) knew that this victory could be pyrrhic if it was sprung on a society on edge. The fact that some of the crazies on both sides had 2 months to prepare - and the media, as well, 2 months to spin, blunts the impact of yesterday's announcement by an incredible amount.
It doesn't change the facts on the ground - but it may have prevented a Rodney King situation.
Agree. It allowed Republicans to start formulating their messaging in advance.
That said, I don't think the energy was very much displaced after all. I think a lot of tuned out people from cable news didn't much hear about or importance the leak. I think the actual decision did. There was always some listless hope on behalf of liberals that the leak was really just a trial ballon draft opinion - "they really wouldn't shoot the hostage would they??" kind of magical thinking. The actual ruling itself removes all the theoreticals about the leak, and now it's for real, and so far about 13 states now have legislated full bans on the books. It's not theoretical anymore, IMO.
The repeal of Roe did not come out of nowhere. State legislatures have been winning the fight over access to abortion for the greater part of a decade. Winning the war was inevitable and the consequence of poor political maneuvering by the pro-choice movement.
I'm thinking it was also done by a repeal supporting Justice and/or their aides. But I think it was done to get votes in line. Promise a dangling fruit to the base that brought them there, to rescind it would take some judicial ju-jitsu to explain why their votes changed *after the leak* on behalf of the signees of the draft at the time - and watch Republican politicking over Supreme Court appointments collapse in the next election, if they couldn't get it done with 6-3 then never. Let alone let some of the left make butts of themselves (predictable) like the idiot who turned himself in on a plot to assassinate Kavanaugh to create a bunker mentality among the signees to proceed forward... Frankly, I think we need to look at Ginni's emails again ; P
With the number of abortions performed each year, it is clear it has become a method of birth control instead of just an emergency remedy for rape and incest.
I would like the screaming, violent women to take a deep breath and remember that pregnancy is not a tumor that just mysteriously forms in their uteri. They had sex with some guy. They need to use one of the many options available to prevent conception. How difficult is that? Not doing so makes them appear indifferent to the consequences, and if killing a little baby is necessary, no big deal. I find that unacceptable, even cruel.
Feminism was supposed to make women strong and independent, and yes, that meant no more waiting til marriage for sex. Fine. Have all the sex you want. But bear the responsibility of prevention.
I also think it is time the abortion process came out of the closet. Along with the “Jenny gets her period” movie we got in 5th grade, let’s have a “Jenny considers an abortion” movie. Let’s see what’s involved—-pills that cause serious cramps, bleeding, and passing a lump you flush down the toilet, or worse, an operation in which tiny limbs are sucked out. Maybe young women would be motivated to get and take that BC pill religiously if they knew what they were risking.
This country was founded on the idea of states as independent laboratories. We got away from that by allowing too much power in DC. I am happy to see that change a bit. State like CA, NY, IL will become abortion profit centers. Some will allow 9mo abortions. If that’s what their citizens want, so be it. But other states’ citizens find abortion has become all too common and easy.
There are tests now that detect pregnancy at 2 or 3 weeks. Women who have unprotected sex should take these tests regularly. If positive, use the pills as soon as possible. Women have miscarriages pretty often early in pregnancy, so I could rationalize aborting these early pregnancies as a miscarriage. But letting them go til you need that horrific surgical abortion—-which I wouldn’t do on puppies—- is just unacceptable.
When will we get back to valuing life? I look at those death cultish, screaming women with their bloody baby dolls and signs that say, “Fetus=good snack” and recoil in disgust. They sure don’t help their cause.
I donated my babysitting earnings to NARAL back in the day. Today, I make every single point you made above in arguing for the reasonable limits on abortion that most first world nations have.
The pro choice crowd acts as though we are still living in the sixties, when it was more difficult to get contraception, abortion was mostly illegal and women often didn’t know they were pregnant until four months or so.
Today, condoms are available everywhere—even in high school guidance counselors’ offices—Plan B pills are at every drug store, pregnancy tests reveal pregnancy within days of a missed period, and birth defects can be detected by bloodwork much earlier than the riskier amnios of my day. Most importantly, the age of viability of the fetus is around 24 weeks if not before.
On the this issue, as in many others, my former, lifelong side has gone off the rails. The concept of personal responsibility is anathema to them.
Your comment perfectly articulates my outrage over the pro-choice movement's framing and tactics. The lack of attention to the "root causes" of why so many women, especially Black women, are seeking abortions is delegitimizing. Most women seeking abortion were not raped and don't need it for a medical reason. They are women who weren't using birth control and this needs to be thoroughly researched, understood, and remedied. Also, 1/4 of women who have had an abortion have previously had one?! This is according to PEW. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/
(I support abortion for any reason, btw, because I think single motherhood is a terrible scourge on society).
I do too. I support a return to marriage and monogamy. The family with a father who has a job. Society would be a whole lot better if we returned to these “old-fashioned” values.
I came of age in the late 70's, early 80's. The right to abortion was taken for granted in the circles in which I ran. The whole sexual revolution was a given. As a woman I thought this was all good and right and I didn't question it. It was only as I moved into my 20's that the cracks began to show in my own life. I won't bore you with the details but over the years (decades actually) I changed my mind about abortion. Philosophically I reasoned that it wasn't ok for a larger more powerful person to take the life of a small powerless person. (With the advent of high tech ultra-sound it was no longer possible to deny the humanity of the fetus in the womb.) On a practical level, I know both from my own life and from reading various studies (I am too lazy to provide links but they are out there) that the sexual revolution has made both men and women less happy- and unlimited abortion is the backstop to the sexual revolution. Casual sex without attachment has infantilized men and objectified women's sexuality more than ever. Our dignity, both men's and women's, has been sacrificed on the altar of sexual permissiveness. None of us are better for it. I do not want to criminalize abortion. I was fortunate to never have one but here's something ironic for you- the friends I knew who had abortions all had the same sentiment, "I felt I had no choice." I find it strange that "pro-choice" people often target pregnancy centers for their criticism. Is not the desire to raise a child from an unplanned pregnancy a "choice?" I am almost 60. I want to help create a culture for life. I want human beings to embrace their dignity. I want abortion to be unthinkable. I want men and women to flourish and I want every newly conceived life to be embraced with wonder and awe. Human beings are selfish- none more than me so I know this is a tall order but it is one I am willing to work for. Peace to all regardless of where you fall on this issue.
Fortunate for me has been my decision to keep minimal social media accounts and to frequent them only once a day. The exception is participation in thoughtful comment sections on thoughtful blogs. This being one such of a few.
Admittedly, I did bristle at the first line referring to “constitutional right to abortion.” I have always thought that was a wrong characterization. It is not the SC’s role to make law and there is nothing in the constitution that I can find that creates a right to abortion, so there is nothing in the constitution for SCOTUS to affirm.
I think we will do well to thoroughly read both Justice Alito’s and Justice Thomas’s explanations. I do sincerely trust that they have not justified the decision merely on personal religious or ideological grounds but on grounds relating directly to what are the role and responsibility of the Supreme Court in deciding ANY case.
What's this nonsense about a Texas woman driving to New Mexico for an abortion "being extradited" back to Texas. Stop with the frivolous hysteria that only throws fuel on the fire. Anyone wanting an abortion will be able to do do.......just like anyone of color wanting to vote (as in Georgia) will be free to do so. By the way, Gavin Newsom has announced that California will provide free abortions to out-of-state women. I wonder if birthing men will also be allowed free abortions in California?
That part made me roll my eyes too. There’s also the whole concept of venue and jurisdiction. If you murder someone in New Mexico, they don’t charge you with murder in Texas. I agree that this was a hysterical comment based off a disregard for elementary understanding of legal procedures.
That part made me squint too. I decided to give Bari the benefit of the doubt that she was just posing questions others will have. I think it is clear she disagrees with the Court and being gay and married to another woman she likely worries what will come of other decisions the Court has made.
Bari, as do we all, has the right to her opinions, but she will at some point have to concede that “abortion” is not a Constitutional Right, or else I (et alia) will have to be convinced somehow that said right is actually in there.
Mind, I have not said anywhere in this discussion what my own position is and the reason I have not is because I do not believe that SCOTUS up to yesterday was deciding whether or not abortion is good or bad, or legal. It is ONLY deciding whether or not ROE was ever appropriate.
I agree. That was beneath Bari’s intellect to make such a hyperbolic statement. That and that abortion was a constitutional right. I couldn’t read further after tripping across those two wholly false assertions.
It was a bit disappointing, though I’m sure she probably wrote this in haste. The rest of the article was an eloquent plea for civility; something I generally agree with. However, In the current political climate, reasoning and conversing with the jacobin-like mob types is kind of like trying to convince a lion to eat lettuce.
I believe most of us really appreciate Bari and the amazing work she's doing. So many comment regularly. The repeal of Roe is very volatile and several leaders are inciting violence based on their ignorance of the laws for which they took an oath to uphold. Perhaps, like medical doctors, politicians' oaths should include the promise "to do no harm."
The summer of 2020 destroyed so many lives: people died, lost their homes, businesses and so much was the result of ignorance. We've learned it doesn't take much for many people to make an excuse for doing harm. The wrong words can cause a very wrong reaction.
Exactly. Anyone who "rats out" an abortion-seeking woman will be in violation of HIPAA - which IS a federal law. I would trust the DOJ to come out with full force against any schmuck who would violate HIPAA in order to turn in an "abortion-seeking womxn."
I think she is referring to the attempts by Missouri and Texas to pass laws allowing residents of those states to sue abortion providers in other states if they perform an abortion on a woman from Texas or Missouri.
It doesn't really need to be, you can recognize the humanity of a fetus while still supporting abortion rights.
A decent analogy is blood or organ donation. If I am a perfect match for donation for someone close to me and for some reason am the only possible donor, it would still be wrong for the law to compel me to give blood or a kidney. Even if it means the certain death of that other person, no law should force one citizen to provide the contents of their body to another.
Medical consent must be free if it is to have any meaning at all.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the argument you're presenting. An organ transplant is not the same thing as a developing human being.
I've also heard this comparison: if you were hooked to life support with someone else, would you be allowed to unhook yourself?
The question, to me, seems kind of silly. In what possible situation would you be somehow hooked on life support to another person and through what circumstances would that have occurred? A developing human being inside a pregnant woman, however, is the most natural and common thing in the world.
A pregnancy will result in a person being born. If you are pro-choice, then at what stage of development does it become acceptable to terminate the life of the child?
This argument seems to leave us at the same point as any other - is there no limit? If medical consent requires allowing a woman to do what she wants with anything inside her then aren’t we back to allowing abortion up until birth to take the argument to its logical conclusion?
And this is what should be debated at the state level. Yesterday's decision for me wasn't so much about the act of abortion itself but which political authority has the authority to regulate it. Is it the courts or the people? It should be the people.
Exactly. Striking down RvW doesn’t really have anything to do with the morality of abortion, per se. it has to do with whether it is a constitutional right and how the government should regulate it. Given our federalist system, I think RvW was the right decision.
From a moral perspective, thank God this evil has at least had restrictions put on it.
I disagree. The social media vitriol that I’ve seen leads me elsewhere. It tells me that many woman first and foremost, view this decision as an attack on them personally, their womanhood. Secondarily, they consider the unborn. That attack engenders moral outrage and emotion, the likes of which sought to pass an Equal Rights Amendment, but could not. It burns like a flame. It’s a place I can’t even go with many of the woman in my life because it hurts too much. They don’t even care about what the constitution says. They want their dignity.
Abortion is not illegal in 13 states (though it may soon be in Missouri, at least for now). The Supreme Court decided it is not an enumerated right of the Federal government to decide such matters (the Supreme Court) under the Constitution, meaning the states shall decide. If a state decides abortion is illegal, then it will be illegal within the borders of that state. If a state decides it is legal up to or during delivery at 9 months, then it will be legal.
The Roe decision was wrong and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said so much. The case is based upon “substantive due process” which is a foggy interpretation of the 4th and 14th Amendment that sweeps up rights and obligations that are not in the Constitution and protects or creates these from state or federal law. The problem with “substantive due process” is just that, it is substantive and can serve both right and left. It goes both ways.
Abortion is a decision that must be made by each state under a Federal system. The same is true for gay marriage and other rights to “privacy.” It may take time and may lead to twists and turns, but in the end society supports and grows to accept the codification of such changes. You, Bari Weiss, are not an emotionalist. You may support abortion anytime or anyplace, but you also must support a government of laws and a Constitution that is not written to solve all contingencies at the Federal level.
The states get to decide all that is not an enumerated power in the Constitution, unless you want to do away with state and local government. But think first before you jump all the way. There are bigger issues here. One Federal government - all powerful - carries risks of authoritarianism. Take your pick: Have uniform abortion in all 50 states and risk centralized, authoritarian power, or let the states decide. Trust “we the people”, they and their state legislatures will eventually arrive at legislative solutions that are best. 9 people sitting on a court in Washington too often get it wrong, struggling for decades to unwind what they have done (see slavery and Jim Crow). Better to read the Constitution and the Declaration in the clear language with which they were written.
Does the federal government have the power to mandate that states permit abortion? My educated guess would be NO under the much under appreciated 10th amendment.
The Federal government cannot compel the states to legalize anything unless it involves a denial of procedural due process (application of the Bill of Rights to the states via the 14th Amendment) which can require a state to take affirmative action or repeal an existing law. But, as we all know, the Federal government often uses Federal funding to impose rules on the states in order to qualify for funding - a kind of bribery. The concentration of wealth in the central government through the Federal income tax amendment, undisciplined Federal borrowing, and the creation of a 4th branch of government, the administrative agencies, opens many financial and regulatory means to enlarge the Federal government and subjugate the states, greatly undermining state power and forcing them to comply.
As for those who sometimes cite “states rights” and secession as vital rights, secession was decided once and for all - states can join the union, they cannot leave it unless expressly authorized by Federal law. As for states rights - the argument the states can abridge the Constitution and the full application of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights was resolved by the 12th 13th, and 14th Amendment - which sanctioned Lincoln’s illegal action in the Emancipation Proclamation. As for “Jim Crow”, that required the application of the 14th Amendment to eradicate this despicable practice and could have been fully addressed by the judicial branch had it read the Constitution along with the Declaration and Bill of Rights. Instead, the Supreme Court adopted Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 until Brown v. Bd. of Education was decided in 1954. There is no doubt state laws were denying one class of citizens equitable and fair treatment under Jim Crow laws, and procedurally were violating the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
You've got the right of it on how we got here, Sir (I assume).
I've been reading some papers You wrote to the citizens of NY back when the question of ratify the Constitution came up. Slow going, as a lotta it seems to apply even today. Learning a lot. And Alexander Hamilton has been noted in saying the Central Gubmint would never get *TOO* strong. Too bad he couldn't foresee Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and the pretender Biden.
With our political leaders hurling invective with such ease I don’t know that they’ll be able to come together with reasonable, common sense federal legislation on the issue of abortion. Hatred is the order of the day, and hatred sells. I pray they’ll drop the hyperbole and get to work on on federal laws that both sides can live with, but I fear that these attention seeking overgrown children will intentionally spike legislation with absurdities to prevent a compromise and keep the issue unsettled for political purposes.
You're right. Keeping the people angry is the goal. It's up to the states to legislate abortion laws which means these goofballs have to work; something that is antithetical to most of them. Our fading president weakly implores for peaceful protests knowing full well that it was intimidation and violence that helped get him elected.
Biden also refused to condemn the blatant, illegal physical intimidation of Justices in their homes, even the guy threatening openly to assassinate Kavanaugh.
Ya know for me bottom line - this decision is now back in the hands of the people. As most decisions should be with the exception of protecting our borders and ensuring our military is well funded to fight off enemies foreign and domestic. That is the purpose of the federal government. Its too bad the decisions in the hands of the people led to the destruction of small business and the destruction of the psyche of many children across America the last two years. Because the decisions of the people sometimes suck for some people. But thats how it rolls in a Republic - states rights govern and those of the elected officials in those states. And that right there my friends is why I #walkedaway from the Democratic party and will NEVER go back to those cretins. Because they want the decisions in the hands of a few crazy federal bureaucrats. NO THANK YOU.
Agree. No matter what one thinks and feels about yesterday’s decision, it was a great day for those who believe in the beauty of a Representative Republic. It will encourage all of us to focus locally, which can only be a good thing. I’m hoping the power corrupted asshats in DC stay out of this, but I know I’ll be disappointed.
I agree it OUGHT to bring about what you say. Sadly, I am not so sure that it will because it really has been a very long time since we have seen real representative democracy in action, a lot of people have no idea of what it means to be a republic, let alone understand their responsibilities as members of it.
A niece and very sweet, young, new graduate from a very big university in her social media post about yesterday’s decision is solid evidence that at least her generation has no understanding or respect for how our government is meant to work. I fear the coming violence by the mob.
I think you’re right. The question of abortion’s morality aside, it seems to me that this is something that should be decided by individual states instead of the federal government, considering our federalist system.
It’s almost like the founders of this country already saw this sort of thing coming lol
This is the one issue that is extremely difficult to find common ground. In my old age I have come to understand both sides of the argument. Particularly after I educated myself on Roe, which I suspect 90% of the people do not bother to do. I am optimistic that logic and reason can light the way.
My view: it should be legal to murder unborn babies in the first 15 weeks. Let’s just cut the semantics and call it what it is. Stop trying to make ourselves feel better by using words like “healthcare”. Then we can have a reasoned and logical discussion. Abortions have a lot of societal benefits and not everyone wants or is ready to have a baby. I’d vote to allow abortions and also to provide free services for all women. That said , given there is a second life involved , I do understand why some people, societies, or jurisdictions might view things differently not want to allow it. I don’t think that killing an unborn baby can be an unalienable right.
So, yes I am pro choice, but I will not sacrifice logic and reason. The Roe decision was flawed and the court made the right call which is why the dissent is completely void of any fact or legal argument (par for the course for the Left). That said , I hope all 50 states or even the Federal government pass laws allowing abortion.
For this greatest nation to survive, we need to get back to unemotional and unpolitical discourse. The Left has no ability to apply logic and reason, only to force their will.
In my view 15 weeks is too long. A woman has missed 4 periods in that time, and there are many other symptoms that alert her to the fact that something is going on in her body. The baby at 15 weeks in fully formed and recognizable. Surely she should be expected to act sooner than 15 wks. I would say 8 weeks.
It was locked in my head my whole adult life, I never questioned it. Then I googled what a 12 week fetus looks like and I changed my mind about everything at 35yrs. I agree with NCmaureen about this one.
great. so I will count on you to call first thing Monday to your elected officials and encourage them to codify a law that abortion is safe and legal up to 15 weeks
a "woman". how about a girl. how about a 13 year old?? and you are assuming that 15 weeks equals 4 missed periods. just not true for everyone. some people may even be on birth control and have a pregnancy. not foolproof you know
As a libertarian leaning Canadian male, my opinion on US abortion is probably not very relevant.
I’m personally a “you do you and I’ll do me” sort of person. I suspect I fall in a majority view that after the first trimester, I feel abortion should be restricted to rare health issues, but up to that point it should be a woman’s personal decision what she does.
I do think the decision is likely the proper one legally. The Democrats had numerous opportunities in the last 50 years to attempt to craft a national law to ensure some measure of abortion rights, yet I can’t help but feel they didn’t because the specter of Roe v Wade being overturned helped keep a percentage of their base highly engaged and contributing.
I do agree that the pandemic highlighted the importance of states’ rights, in a way I wish we had in Canada, to provide a counterweight to an omniscient federal leviathan bent on taking away individual choices in the name of the greater good.
And perhaps this issue is part of the price to pay to maintain that counterweight. If you don’t like your state’s abortion law, and that’s an important issue to you, move to one you do like.
The American federal government was set up to do certain limited functions, leaving other necessary functions to the states, which were already sovereign units.
In the past 150 years, the federal government has exercised some powers over the states, most notably when states treated groups like African Americans badly. Mostly, federal oversight came when an amendment to the federal constitution could be cited as justification.
A federal law regarding abortion would have the same lack of jurisdiction as the Roe / Casey ruling. Lacking a new amendment, the federal government has little say. It remains a state matter.
The federal government only has the power granted to it by the Constitution. I would bet that a national law mandating states to permit abortions in the first trimester would be unconstitutional. There is no appetite for our legislators to have such a debate either.
I think that depends on the state. I hear that roughly half will effectively ban abortion within the next few weeks. Some others will legalize abortion and even provide material assistance for out of state mothers to abort. There may indeed be some state legislatures that have other things on their minds, but those are probably states that already enacted laws that would take effect when Roe got overturned.
so I will assume your phone will be being used to call your state reps Monday AM to make sure they know your ( and most peoples) stance on this issue and let them get back to less inflammatory but more important issues like our economy
"And cultural ones: How did we wind up with a feminist movement that is policing our ability to say the word woman, but has been unable to safeguard second-wave feminism’s most important victory?" Outstanding column Bari, as usual. Unfortunately the trans movement has preempted the feminist movement, and ultimately will erase many of its gains. The recent proposed changes to Title IX, for example, will in the long term destroy women's sports. Other things are being lost for women and girls, like the simple right to modesty and privacy in dressing rooms and showers.
Roe being overturned should shake up the boneheaded "Feminism is for everyone! Trans women are women!" crowd. Now more than ever, sex based rights need to be defined and protected via the democratic process. (Duh.) Citizens just need to get over their fear of democracy (and their indoctrination concerning The Other- I'm unsure which is worse these days) and get off their butts and use it. A new era beckons. Will America step up and embrace it?
The case before the court, Dobbs v. Jackson, would have put the US in a point of consistency with 90% of Western Europe. It is hard for me to see that as Draconian when so much admiration has been heaped on our European brothers and sisters. One has to wonder whether we couldn’t have navigated this fraught issue without the demands that abortion be legal up until delivery.
For this reason, I was so dismayed when Senator Schumer promised that right immediately upon the leak of the draft opinion. Surely that is not a position supported by anything close to a majority of Americans. That is why our nation is pulling its eyes out. We have no ability to compromise, no ability to recognize that we will never agree on all issues. And, yet, we march forward with these strident positions: open border, wall the border, gender is self-determined and a choice for minors, it never ends.
Thank goodness for Merrick Garland encouraging nonviolence yesterday. What I heard from our POTUS was simply dividing the country at the time of raw disappointment to so many, calling this simply a decision of Trump justices, and further gouging our divisions and turning what should be our most sacred branch into a political tool.
We must stop partisan behavior in ourselves or men like Trump become attractive as wrecking balls. The most difficult political position to occupy is dead-center. If we are not willing to impose that discipline on ourselves, and choose strict right or left options, we will abort this democracy.
timing is everything is it not? have no fear this was also timed.. the leak.. the leftist comments.. the division.. the lack of real explanation of how this works. the lack on both sides to encourage a middle of the road law that will work for 99% of the USA..even the notion that a federal law would solve all of this tomorrow.. no. all planned I fear
I was always ambivalent towards abortion when I was younger. I know I would've been the type of guy that stuck around no matter what, so the bailout lever never meant much to me. As a father of three young children, my stance went from ambivalence to pro restriction. Not banning, but as with all things the left tries to be flip about, it was swinging too far towards disgusting. We had governors in blue states advocating for what was basically infanticide: abortion right up until delivery. They pushed it too far. The pendulum swung, once again, too far. Now we have both extremes in place in various states, with a roughly zero percent chance at rational compromise.
First trimester, I get it. Most people do. Beyond that was always a bridge too far imho.
I think most people are ok with first trimester. But this bringing kids to almost full term and birthing them to let them die on a metal table. I am so not going to support that.
Mothers having abortions in third trimester are not doing so because they want to. If they’ve gotten that far, they were planning to have the child. But then they receive horrible medical news - the baby isn’t viable, the baby will be stillborn, the mother won’t survive, etc. There are situations in which abortion does not sit right with me (a woman having her 3rd or 4th abortion because she doesn’t use protection) but I know that if a woman has an abortion in the third trimester it is because she needs to not because she wants to.
The women seeking third-trimester abortions in Kermit Gosnell's house of horrors were not having an abortion for medical reasons. Those were ELECTIVE abortions.
Ironically, the Mississippi law that abortion activists just HAD to challenge in court had provisions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormalities. It PROTECTED the third-trimester abortions you are concerned about, and it set a limit of 15 weeks for elective abortions--on par with European countries.
I'm very much in favor of early-term abortions, but the Left did this to themselves (and to the women they pretend to represent).
So you are pro-choice and I am pro-life. But here we agree. REASONABLE limits need to be placed on abortion. It's called compromise.
Would I ultimately love to see an end to all abortion? Yes, of course. But limiting it to the first trimester is something I think most rational people can agree on. Can't we respect women enough to expect that three months is enough time to make their "choice" concerning an elective abortion?
You would love to see an end to ALL abortions? This always puzzles me. Why would anyone choose to protect a non-person over an actual person? If a woman has been raped or is the victim of incest, or is carrying a horribly deformed fetus, and does not wish to carry this fetus to term for perfectly obvious reasons, why would a perfect stranger presume to insert him or herself (or whatever your pronoun may be) into such a personal decision?
agreed.
nope you are pro choice if you agree to abortion at all
I disagree....
It is perfectly possible to hold two seemingly opposing views on this.
I truly believe that abortion is an evil act. Always.
I also believe that forcing a woman to die with an ectopic pregnancy is evil. I believe that asking a woman to put her life in grave danger for a baby should be her choice. I also believe that asking a rape victim or a victim of incest to carry a child is evil.
I also believe that history teaches us that a desperate woman will find a way to terminate a pregnancy even at the risk of her own life. Think Lysol.
Given this, it is perfectly consistent to be "Pro-Life" and morally against abortion while simultaneously saying that allowing abortions for the first 3 months or in the case of a grave threat to the mothers life is perfectly reasonable.
A position, that I think falls in line with the general consensus of the US population.
says who?
I’m passionately pro-life.
Who gets to decide what is considered a severe fetal abnormality? These questions are often not as black and white as we might think. When a fetal abnormality is discovered late in the pregnancy, the doctors discuss the prognosis (and usually you get several doctors weighing in if you're lucky enough to be at a good hospital). Will your baby likely die in utero, live for a few days and suffer, live years but with a very poor quality of life, is there any chance they might be ok with enough therapy or surgery?
Sometimes these answers are clear and sometimes they are not. Ultimately, the parents get to decide if they want to risk it. Some parents choose to take their chances, but most abort SO THEY CAN TRY AGAIN. I say this with emphasis because it is often not part of the abortion conversation...how it will effect many women's decisions to try again when a pregnancy goes wrong or if they know that trying again will carry the same risk.
So, as usual the devil is in the details...who gets to decide what is considered severe enough to terminate? I think that decision must be left ultimately to the parents.
I have never experienced this personally, but I've heard some anecdotal evidence to the effect that doctors put enormous pressure on women to abort if tests indicate the fetus may be abnormal in any way, especially with Downs Syndrome. I've read accounts by women who say the doctors were all pushing them to abort, and in some cases the prognosis turned out to be wrong and the child was born perfectly normal, or was born with only very mild defects.
I have experienced this personally. Our oldest daughter was diagnosed with severe heart defects in the 5th month of my pregnancy with her. We were absolutely pressured to abort.
That was not an option for us. Even if I *knew* she would die at birth (she didn't; she lived four and an half months), I would have chosen to give birth to her rather than allowing her to be dismembered inside my womb. Our personal grief was not an adequate excuse for us to allow such a procedure to be performed on her WITHOUT anesthesia (all of her operations after she was born were done WITH anesthesia).
Who gets to decide? How about the person carrying it in her womb?
That was my point. If you read what I wrote….
You raised a very good point that has occurred to me as well. The whole reason Roe vs. Wade was overturned was because the pro-choice side challenged the Mississippi law. Every time an abortion case goes before the Court, it's because some law restricting abortion is being challenged by abortion providers. If they had left it alone, the Miss. law would stand but other states would have been unaffected. But this kind of thing is totally lost on the Left.
Then again, if Ginsburg had retired...
A lot is lost on the Left.
Ginsberg took a calculated risk that her replacement would be chosen by Hillary Clinton. And there was every reason to think Hillary would win. When I woke up the morning after the election and discovered that Trump had won (I voted for Johnson, myself), I felt as if I'd woken up in some alternate universe.
The Democrats miscalculated badly. Ginsberg was far from the only one who made that miscalculation. The Media gave millions of dollars of free press to the one Republican candidate they believed was incapable of beating Hillary.
But Trump managed to hitch his wagon to the rage that had been slowly coming to a boil among blue-collar workers, and especially people who live in flyover country. And Hillary gave the last burst of heat to that rage with her "Deplorables" comment, which was merely a follow-up to Obama's comment about the same set of people clinging to guns and religion: it made the Democrats' disrespect for those people abundantly clear.
The Woke and the Elites believe that they are "on the right side of history." That they do not need to give any thought to the consequences of their aims or actions, because they will win by the power of their "righteousness."
The concept of unintended consequences is entirely lost on the Left.
*pretend* being the keyword here in last sentence...
Indeed. And yet people are still deceived, despite decades of pretend "help."
did you ever see what women were using Gosnell and how they got there? try looking it up
Black women. Some were sent there by sympathetic social workers because they knew he would do illegal third-term abortions.
and illegal sex slaves. many of them Asian. most not English speaking. sent by pimps.. most with no where to turn. or at least not knowing where to turn
For sure, you are wrong about that. Yes, women absolutely have elective abortions that late in the pregnancy because they "want" to.
Just as a matter of clarification, late term abortions account for significantly less than 1/2 of 1% of all abortions in the US. That has been consistent for decades despite extensions in access to abortions. So this is really the epitome of a strawman argument.
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm
But then why are abortion activists so determined to fight abortion laws like Dobbs? It granted exceptions for medical emergency and severe fetal abnormality--the reasons that activists cite as being the only reason third-trimester abortions are need--and it put a 15-week limit on elective abortions, which is on par with European abortion laws. Why was that law SO unrealistic that abortion activists HAD to fight it?
If they had let well enough alone, Roe would still be standing.
I can't answer that. But I also don't think that any of these events happen inside an authentic discussion about access to a right to choose. The intent behind Dobbs was to provoke a trip to SCOTUS. That was the ONLY reason they wrote they law. And it worked. It was the starting gun in a race to the end of any abortion right. Shortly after Dobbs Texas then moved the line back further --to (I think) 6 weeks (with their special Wild West addition of a bounty); a time when most women don't even know they're pregnant. So Dobbs --as is clear--was a secondary salvo in an effort toward exactly what happened. It wasn't ever intended as a compromise offer to arrive at a moderate agreement. It was the push down the hill for the snowball that would eradicate women's rights to choose.
Thank you Amie, I certainly believe that percentage of abortions being late term.
What I don’t understand and perhaps you could enlighten me is why the “Pro-Choice” cause always puts such a hard stake in the ground for NO limits, all the way up to full birth. I think that most Americans agree that early term (something like 2nd trimester) abortion freedoms are a logical and moral choice and are much more of an issue between the pregnant female and her God / conscious than say any business of mine or society at large.
But as time goes on it sure looks like later term abortions are a gruesome issue that is stopping a viable life - and thereby starts becoming much more of a concern that a civilized society properly has (maybe similar to euthanasia type decisions).
So why demand ZERO limitations when the vast majority of people would side with them for the vast majority of the time since the late term abortions are the exception not the rule? That seems as extreme as the other side who would say NO to anything after conception (which I ignores the fact that nature itself very frequently aborts fertilized eggs and fetus’).
I don’t see what’s served by letting the 2 extremes each define that theirs is the only answer and demanding that everyone in between meet their call.
I’ve watched as responsible controls (like the Hyde Amendment) get systematically attacked.
The answer is politics. Both sides focus on divisive issues to get more votes for their team. Some in both parties don't actually want to solve these issues. Because if they did they would lose their wedge issues. How can we fix that problem to move the country forward?
Excellent point. Those that support abortions also always talk about abortions in case of rape. I believe those cases are also extremely rare. Is that correct? If so, then why do those the support these concepts always focus on the very small number of cases and act like those are the norm? The answer seems obvious. Because of politics. Easier to get people emotionally involved with certain kinds of abortions. The current focus on the indoctrination, identification and treatment of Trans children uses the same tactic.
It all depends how you define "late-term" abortion. Are we defining late-term as only the third trimester now? To me, late-term begins at least in the mid-second trimester. At least by four months. I believe, as likely do most reasonable people, that you should have to have a medical reason by that stage. Medical technology is now saving premature infants born in the late second trimester.
Actually it really doesn''t. 93% of US abortions take place in the FIRST trimester. Just 6% take place in the 2nd trimester. And only 1% are performed after 21 weeks-- almost always due to medical necessity. And of all terminated pregnancies, 40% are pharmaceutical, not surgical. And those can only be done very early in a pregnancy.
So all this quibbling about what happens later is ridiculous.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/
You don't even seem to care to make an effort to use the phrase "straw-man argument" correctly. A "straw-man argument" would be a misrepresentation of reality. Here you are confirming that the opposing argument refers to things that are happening - the opposite of a straw-man.
If late-term abortions are rare and unnecessary, the implication is that those demanding that they be legal should relent, not that those resisting them are out of line.
The fact that late term abortions are rare makes it impossible for those who need them to get them if they are made illegal. That is the problem. I believe in strict laws and protocols around late term abortion but not to a degree that it effectively blocks it altogether.
Across the board bans work to endanger women and strip them of autonomy over their bodies. The more vulnerable the woman, the more chance her rights will be violated and she will be criminalized under the new abortion bans.
Thank you so much for clarifying.
I'd need more proof than that. Additionally, stricter laws could differentiate between the extreme minority who would elect to abort an almost full term baby cause they 'feel' like it (negligible statistics on those) and those who have to as a life and death emergency or other serious reasons.
I've worked in the pro-life movement and been involved with crisis pregnancy centers for decades. I've lived and worked in places like Camden and North Philly. There are women who use abortion as their only means of contraceptive. They have had 7, 8, 9 abortions. This is extremely common.
The late abortions are most often the result of some combination of denial, avoidance, irresponsibility (days turn to weeks turn to months) and - quite often -- a battle for the attention and affection of the baby daddy du jour. The woman is holding out hope that the baby will give her the upperhand in the battle to win over a man who is sleeping with multiple women. Once she accepts that the strategy has failed, the baby has no further use and is "discarded."
That's the ugly reality.
It's really so tragic, but now I understand why they are choosing not to use birth control--which is quite accessible and cheap. They are hoping to snag the affections of a guy who they perceive isn;'t quite committed to them. Even more reason for MEN to use birth control--including the pills they are developing. That would eliminate the "baby-as-leverage" which ends in late-term abortion. I had wondered why they allowed themselves to get pregnant in the first place--now I know. Wow.
If there is a maternal life at death situation at full term, the baby is taken by C-section, not abortion, as it is faster, and therefore more likely to save the life of the mother and the baby. As an anesthesiologist, I have participated in urgent C-Sections when the mother's life is at risk, usually due to pre-eclampsia/eclampsia. Abortion at term to save the life of the mother is not a thing.
Do you have any “proof” that people who “feel like it” are a negligible portion of partial birth aborters.
I doubt any woman ends a late term pregnancy without there being psychological or cultural reasonss if its not life and death or other serious issues. No woman just 'feels' like it.
There should be carefully crafted rules to protect the rights of the mother, as well as strong restrictions around later term terminatios. Outright criminalization is an abomination.
Maybe true. Are these women just radical procrastinators? Can't make up their minds until that late in a pregnancy? Why would a woman go through almost a full term pregnancy and then decide to have an abortion. Doesn't make much sense to me.
name one
Women want abortion that late because they're procrastinators or just plain lazy. I was an ob/gyn for many, many years, and this crap about saving a mother's life is a story for the damned movies, not real life.
We know about lethal anomalies very early in pregnancy, so this partial birth abortion nonsense is crap!
Thanks Doc, for setting the record straight.
that God you are no longer a practicing obgyn. who would ever want to see an uncaring doctor like you that denigrates the very people how produced his livelihood
He's correct. I was one of those women. Just completely careless about everything. I would go so far as to say I identified as not pregnant when, in fact, I was pregnant. I pretended it would go away by itself until it didn't. Then some doctor fudged the numbers so I could get an abortion, followed by heavy bleeding for days afterward, which I also didn't deal with. Probably the best thing that could have happened to me would have been forcing me to face reality and responsibility by having that baby. Instead, I bought decades of protracted adolescence. Read it in my forthcoming memoir: My Dumb Postfeminist Life.
Number one- your English is poor, as is you intelligence. Why I bothered to answer your stupid, stupid, uninformed remark is beyond me. I guess you're one of the lazy people I referred to. You know the ones who think the state should take care of them, and bear no responsibility in their lives!
Number two- How do you know that I was an uncaring doctor? I had the largest solo practice in my hospital system for years because I cared.
I feel sorry for you, as do others on this comment thread. As in many things, size does not matter.
Legal abortion remains available in those rare situations where the life of the mother is at risk. It always was available even before Roe. My dad was an OB-GYN in the 40s-70s and he performed abortions before Roe was decided.
That's not entirely certain. In states where they have outlawed abortion from the moment of fertilization, they have deliberately written on no exceptions for life of the mother.
I'm curious. Which states do not have an exception for the life of the mother?
My understanding was medical emergencies don’t count as abortions? I thought those fell under different rules but I would need to find a source to confirm.
Medical emergencies where the life of the mother is endangered means the life of the baby is also endangered. These deliveries are done by C-Section, as delivery can be done in matter of minutes (think less than 10) with a pediatrician present to resuscitate the baby. As an anesthesiologist, I have participated in many emergency C-sections. I take care of Mom, someone else takes care of baby. If the hospital is small/rural and doesn't have pediatrician on call for such things, a dedicated nurse and a respiratory therapist will take care of the baby. The point is medical emergencies in which the mother's life is at risk are dealt with at a hospital, not an abortion clinic.
Elisabeth...as far as i know, even the Catholic church agrees with Med emergencies type of abortion.
My point of concern deals with respect for Life.
That may be the case now; it was not always the case.
That’s not true Hugh. Catholic doctrine is nuanced on abortion because causation can be complex, but the general principle is you cannot intentionally kill human life.
You can, however, save a mother’s life in a manner where the unintended consequence is death of the child (“double effect”). Such as removing a Fallopian tube to resolve an ectopic pregnancy. Many Catholic women have involved their diocesan experts when faced with a truly risky or doomed pregnancy.
It would depend on the state.
An abortion in the third trimester cannot end any reasonable health crisis. Mothers with health issues routinely have an induced delivery and the baby usually survives and thrives. An abortion in the third trimester is also an induced delivery. They just kill the baby on the way out or shortly thereafter. How does that save the mother?
I think this is most likely true. However, the third trimester argument -- sometimes expressed as the "minute before" argument -- is mostly meant to demonstrate the illogic of the arbitrary line we draw when deciding if an unborn baby has a right to live.
For instance, some people believe that until a baby is born, it does not have a right to live. That the mother has total control over whether the baby lives or dies.
That argument fails because of the hypothetical third trimester/minute-before argument. It's a reductio ad absurdum to illustrate the belief is not morally coherent/logical.
Jordan...you make the position prominent before the people.
The "illogic" should Forbid...simple. thanks.
having a C-section is a lot safer.
This post epitomizes left-wing politics.
The writer declares that her perception of people's thinking must surely be representative not only in the majority of cases, but in all cases, despite having nothing other than her own desire that it be true as evidence.
"Homeless people are just like you and me but unlucky."
"Welfare recipients aren't trying to abuse the system."
"Women never lie about rape."
"Everybody who disagrees with me is a racist!"
These people genuinely can't perceive their own self-centeredness. They think these are good arguments!
Spot on! They act like a bunch of high school freshman mean girls. And they think that wishing will make it so!
The tragedies you describe happen, but they're pretty rare. Most late-term abortions are not for medical reasons, and the doctors who perform them have attested to that. The girl or woman may not really want to, but she's probably being pressured by parents or others.
Which is why there shouldn’t be any absolute bans but legislation allowing for those medical emergencies that do occur. One of the things I was thinking about is a reasonable compromise might be that conservative states allow abortion during the 1st trimester, rape/incest, and or medical emergencies. Liberal states can allow for a longer period of time without much restrictions until a particular time later than 12 weeks, but after a certain time, it’s only allowable for medical emergencies involving life of mother, otherwise after a certain mother is legally responsible for carrying through her pregnancy and then she can decide what to do next.
I oppose absolute bans. There should always be exceptions for (verifiable) severe fetal abnormalities or serious threats to the mother's physical health or life. It's when a healthy infant with a healthy mother is aborted in late or mid-term pregnancy that offends the conscience of so many of us. The procedure itself is also more physically dangerous to the woman at that point than childbirth, which is why the whole "safety of women" argument goes out the window.
And yet...you do realize, don't you, that the reason Roe was overturned is because just such a law as you propose for liberal states was actually passed by a very conservative state (Mississippi), and the abortion activists couldn't leave well enough alone.
Laws would need to include provisos for late term abortion within certain situations, not just because denial carried this far.
How do you KNOW?
Feelings are not facts.
You are the one who is choosing feeling, irrational panic and fear where there is zero proof. So far on my side I have the precedent of illegal alcohol. My own mother traveled to Mexico to have an abortion when they were illegal in California (which by the way is one of the reasons I am pro choice). This means abortions can't be performed in the state. Bari is too smart to lazily drop that fear without any backing evidence. This is the biggest problem with 2022: mass hysteria.
You can read Noem's statement. https://news.sd.gov/newsitem.aspx?id=30323
She doesn't come out and say "people are free to cross state lines" but Gavin Newsom is offering to pay women to come to CA to have abortions, or else fund them. Abortion bans means abortions are ILLEGAL in the state. Everything I have heard from the most religious conservatives is this: they will punish doctors for performing illegal abortions, not mothers. The doctors would be considered the 'Murderers' in this case.
The mothers would, as a matter of law be guilty as well. At a minimum they’d be co-conspirators. Or they could be primary actors, like the driver of the get away vehicle. Either way, the law is the law. You don’t get to pick only the ones you like. Unless you are a liberal, of course. Than you are righteous
This would be the same as "dry" laws. You cannot be charged with a crime for going to a "wet" state/county and buying alcohol for your own consumption.
I think you are forgetting that we are citizens, not subjects. The state where you live cannot punish you for doing something in another state. Even murder has to be charged in the state where it occurred, not the state where the murderer lived at the time.
Sasha...do you think that abortion is/should be legal is the case of an illness/death of the mother or child?
The actual question asked, how do you KNOW?
That question was asked of another person, not you.
You just had to jump in with a non-sequitur.
First of all BIG MOUTH, this is a public thread, not a private conversation. And if you don’t feel that way, your own question was out of line.
I happen to know what was said to be true because I’ve got plenty of doctor clients who have told me that while partial birth abortion isn’t typical, it is often done for two major reasons. One - the mother changed her mind for a multitude of reasons, or her health is compromised.
But you don’t want to hear that. You can just make up stories about how it’s all about deformed babies, even though almost all deformities are discovered way before viability,with todays technology.
Speaking of feelings….how do you feel about how Obama, as a state Senator, voted for a law that required doctors to put the product off”failed abortions” - live babies - on the shelf, deny them care or nutrition until they died? Great stuff, huh?
please post this "law"
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/obama-and-born-alive-act-yuval-levin/
Now what do you say? You’re guy wanted to kill born alive babies from failed abortions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUkbuhXzbvI
ah but they are in this day and age. facts have no weight when "opinion and feelings" rule. also using caps.. hey we get it. YOU have an OPINION. ( not a fact)
That's a good point.
You make that general statement, but I don’t know that it’s true. I think it’s likely correct some time but how much.?
I follow a lot of conservative news and have heard both religious leaders and politicians like, for instance, Christi Noem whose abortion ban will be the most strict. If you can't buy booze in a dry state you can cross state lines -- you are not policed. Doctors and merchants are policed.
That is absolutely not true. Check your facts. You can't abort a full term baby. Babies may be delivered and then subsequently die on their own but that is not "aborting a full term baby".
I'm sorry but if you are insistent that 40 weeks abortion was celebrated you really need to cite your source. Only then will I believe this 'fact'.
Part of the problem was people like Chuck Schumer insisting there be NO restrictions at all.
So stabbing them in the face just prior to being born is preferrable?
There is no preferable choice - or non-traumatic choice - for parents who find out the child they have been preparing for for 7-9 months is not viable or is going to cost the mother her life. And it is absolutely not my place, or your place, or the government’s - to tell a mother and father what to do when they unexpectedly find themselves in that situation.
The Mississippi abortion law that the SCOTUS was ruling on had exceptions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormality. That was not enough for the abortion activists who decided it HAD to be challenged in court.
What do you expect from a group that has no qualms about sticking a pair scissors into the neck of a live baby and sucking out its brains with a vacuum?
oh please. stop with the hyperbole and hysterics
My very bright 21yo daughter, immediately upon learning of the SCOTUS decision said, "so a pro-abortionist actually overturned R v W by taking their objections to one state's law all of the way to the Supreme Court." Yes, I said. Then we celebrated.
That's basically what it came down to. The SCOTUS has to have a case to rule on, and the activists delivered one right into their lap.
Another example of how activists on the Left create havoc but claim it’s foisted upon them.
And those situations can be discussed in legislatures (where legislators might actually have to legislate) and the ballot box.
why should the legislature discuss my medical choices?
The legislature should not discuss your medical choices. However, it should discuss laws and regulations which indicate how a society wants to function and interact, in accordance with its people's wishes. I believe most of our society is in favor of a woman's choice in regards to abortion—up to a point. When a fetus becomes of viable age, most believe abortion becomes murder. Society, through its legislators, must determine that age. Certainly, those that believe cells become a human at conception and those that believe in term abortion would not be happy. But they are in the minority on this issue.
I agree, if both sides are willing to actually compromise and accept provisions both sides don’t like to get reasonable law.
so I hope that everyone here gets up on Monday AM and calls their duly elected state and/or federal officials and tells them to pass a LAW that codifies abortion at whatever amount of weeks you see fit.. that is the only way this will work.
These kinds of extreme examples are always trotted out to justify the killing of viable babies. The TRUTH is that NO ONE would have to be burdened or endangered in ANY of these cases. There are exceptions allowed in all these situations. It’s a medical issue, nothing more complicated than that
There are a dozen or more methods of contraception. USE them. The feminists have ZERO problem walking into the bedroom with equal rights as a man and leaving with 100% of the decisions, event though BOTH lives are affected. So live with the situation you often foist upon unwilling men.
if that were true we would not need laws about how to control our bodies.. we would not need government or the church interfering in our reproductive lives and everyone would be better off the government should be small and deal with things that actually concern citizens
Of course, the vast majority of abortions have nothing at all to do with situations like that or with healthcare at all. They're simply the disposal of unwanted human beings.
Healthcare. I get really angry when abortion is referred to as women’s healthcare, abortion is anything but healthcare in 99%+ of the situations, it’s just more liberal torturing the language games because the real words hit the ear so much harder.
Denying a woman healthcare sounds so much more evil than denying a woman an abortion, or better, allowing a woman to kill her baby.
As a pro abortion nut, you insist on only referencing partial birth abortion as medically required even though that’s not the case. Which is where your credibility goes out the window.
💯 but then I’m also curious as to how it was not discovered earlier. Today we have modern technology where you get scans at 6 12 weeks etc where every abnormality is detected where I believe an abortion should be offered/given and the decision should be the parents or mother if she is single and should be respected I don’t understand how we give that decision to men to make when they neither need birth control sanitary towels/tampons or abortions and then when we do shift slight control to the women it’s somehow always the wrong women we have elected to power we make such a fuss and noise about this the media gets involved social media dams people who might be pro and even the President weighs in on all the drama
Typically only a single ultrasound is performed in a normal pregnancy, which is at 20 weeks, and that is when abnormalities are discovered. Some providers will also order a dating ultrasound around 6-8 weeks just to confirm due dates but that is typically too early to discover most issues. Anything discovered on the 20 week ultrasound usually has follow-up testing, confirmatory ultrasound, and consults with a maternal fetal medicine specialist. You’re easily looking at 22-24 weeks by the time all is said and done.
There will always be situations where a problem is missed until very late. You have many poor women out there who never go in for any pre-natal care. The first medical care they receive is when they end up at the emergency room with some kind of problem or are in active labor.
wrong
Nice response to Bari's urging that this column be a place for a forum for good-faith argument, to make it easier for people of varying backgrounds and opinions to forge a greater understanding, not with an eye toward papering over our many differences or the profound moral and medical and political implications of yesterday’s ruling, but with the hope that that might make living together more possible."
But that’s what the procedure is. We can’t discuss late term abortion without being disturbing because it is. Sorry.
As I said, you seem to violate the urging to engage in good faith discussion and argument here. Resorting to descriptions such as yours is anything but good faith.
You remind me of a friend when I was younger who thought literal expressions of "truth" (in his mind) were excused from rudeness and objection because, well, truth. He did not have many friends after awhile. And was never good at convincing anyone of his perspective.
Go back to the origin of this thread. No one suggested willy nilly late term abortions, but instead wrote about circumstances involving risk to mom or an unviable fetus as opposed to those that approximate "basically infanticide: abortion right up until delivery"
But, go ahead, speak your "truth", unpersuasive as it may be. No need to apologize to me.
I am arguing in good faith. I’m not sure what to do here. Should I lie about a gruesome procedure so you can feel better about advocating for it? Late term abortion is gruesome. Sorry.
Yes-- I thought this would be a place where logic, common sense, and facts would be exchanged --not simply rants. I know this is an emotional topic but I'd rather have civil discourse than wild assumptions and accusations.
So, nobody will answer my question and I am being accused of ranting. What wild accusations or assumptions am I making? How am I not displaying common sense or facts? Please tell me why late term abortion, a procedure that dismembers and brutally kills a near term baby, is preferable to having a terminal child. Nobody answers. I'm accused of being mean and ranting. Whatever. This procedure will be available in some states so no need to worry if you want one.
https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-sheet/abortions-later-in-pregnancy/
Only 1% of abortions after 21 weeks are performed, mostly due to the health of the mother.
Please given an example of a description of partial-birth abortion that you would not consider to be hyperbole.
Come again? WHAT wild accusations are you referring to?
A baby born with terrible medical issues is unfair to the baby and unfair to the parents. Terminating a pregnancy before birth is the most humane thing to do.
Thirty years ago, one of my high school students with severe cerebral palsy asked me if I were pro-choice. I told him I was and I told him why. Then he told me that his mother had made the choice to terminate him when she had been told about his “terrible medical issues.” At the very last minute, she changed her mind. His last words in that conversation turned my beliefs inside out. This young man - who often shook so badly that he could not hold his seat or walk across a room without aid - this young man who always spoke with great difficulty, but distinctly, through sheer force of will - declared, “Mrs. P, l LOVE my life.”
Who was I to have thought otherwise? How selfless was his mother to have given the choice to him?
I still consider myself pro-choice, on a case-by-case basis. But this current Constitutional-right, on-demand, for personal convenience theory of abortion-as-birth control seems a bit too much like playing God.
I respect that view, but parents should have the right to make that decision. For every exceptional person like your friend, there are many, many others who suffer greatly, need full time institutional costly care, and forever change the lives of their family.
That’s the kind of comment that makes me crazy. Yes, there are people with severe disabilities who thrive and whose parents are wholly inspired by that choice. But it would have been equally satisfactory for him never to be born, and his parents would have had another, different, equally amazing child later—who they would have loved.
Billions of babies fail to be born every year because billions of fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus, spontaneous miscarriages take place, late miscarriages take place, etc. Changing your view on a principle because of one sentimental story is, in my own very skewed opinion, bizarre. It seems apt to be happy for their lovely outcome, but weird that you would extrapolate to suggest that would have been the right choice for every set of parents facing that choice and for every disabled baby born under such circumstances.
What if that child had been in a horrific accident at age 3 or 10 or 22? What if that was your spouse or you in that death defying accident? What if that child had served in a war perpetrated by our government in a foreign land and sent back with disabilities requiring aged/retired parents to care for for the remainder of their lives? What if there was a cure for that unborn baby's abnormalities during their lifetime? What if that unborn baby's diagnosis in the womb was actually wrong and they were the next Shakespeare or Ben Carson or Ghandi or Ben Franklin? None of us decides what will be; we merely do the best we can with what is given to us.
This was a seminal moment for me, but certainly not the only one.
I marched for abortion rights. But over the years, I've experienced many moments that molded my current beliefs. I would share them with you, but I don't want to make you any crazier. Sometimes people change as they grow older and experience life.
If that drives you crazy, I sincerely worry for you.
anecdotal evidence does not data make
I think abortion should be extremely rare, difficult to obtain and though I’d like it banned altogether, limited to the first 10 weeks.
Arguments for abortion based on the worthiness of the human whose life is in question are dangerously seductive.
Though we disagree in part I appreciate your willingness to consider the life at risk.
I think we wholeheartedly agree.
So you’re equating imperfect health with unworthy life?
That’s an argument with a long history of terrible results.
You are conflating "terrible medical issues" with "imperfect health".
I'm not religious, but I agree much more with Judaism than Catholicsim's take on human life: "Jewish tradition cherishes the sanctity of life, including the potential of life which a pregnant woman carries with her...Judaism does not believe that personhood and human rights begin with conception, but with birth."
(p.s., 6 of our 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh and Barrett)
Yes, different religions have different views on when life begins, and we're also at the point where 30% of people are not affiliated with any religion and 10-15 are atheist or agnostic. This decision was the court using one religion--Christianity--to take away a right from women.
You're a eugenicist.
these are the types of comments that cause so much angst and are on their "face" ridiculous. hopefully you will never be "faced" with any situation where you must choose for yourself or a loved one to terminate a pregnancy at any point as it seems you really know zero about the procedure
I know a lot about the procedure as my daughter was not expected to live much past birth. I feel for parents getting bad news late in the pregnancy as I was one. I don't understand how butchering a baby in the womb (which is exactly what late term abortion does) and throwing thier dead carcass into a medical waste bin is preferrable to delivering a baby into a hospice situation and letting them die surrounded by love. Nobody can answer that for me. Just a lot of people upset about the truth of the barbarity of the "procedure" and put downs about how callus it is to ask for reasons from grieving parents. I was that parent and I am asking and I'm not ridiculous for doing so. Sorry if defending late term abortion causes you angst. Its part of being in a discussion.
My daughter lived btw, despite us being told she would not. She is now a happy and healthy 12 year old. Thank God we didn't have her ripped apart at 8 months. Even if she had died shortly after birth you will never convince me that would have been more "compassionate".
Thanks for sharing Jennifer and here's to continued great health. I shared on Bari's other post that my son had a stroke 24 hours after his birth. He had a traumatic c-section -- breach, etc. But my doc believed he probably had a blood vessel clamp down in the 2nd trimester. Had I had that amniocentesis -- which I refused at age 41--they would very much have suggested an abortion. My son is doing great now and although those 2 1/2 weeks in the NICU were frightening, I can not imagine life without him. Never ever considered it.
Thanks for sharing; life is soooo worth the battles we face in addition to the plague of politics.
Thank you for sharing and you have been blessed in many ways!
Thank you for sharing this and congratulations on a healthy daughter!
you use of adjectives defeats your line of resoning
This statement gets to the heart of our polarized division on this. Motherhood, value and quality of life, morality, caring - these are all things that cannot be quantitatively measured and can only be articulated using adjectives. Many would argue (including myself) that these are the traits that form the foundation of what makes us human, and with that drive our accepted societal norms and laws. The pro-abortion activists want to keep this out of the debate, because for now most of us still have these very human traits, and their position loses its appeal for many when we go here. If late term abortion becomes broadly accepted both legally and culturally, and we are giving a specific group the power to decide what is human and what is not we are going to a very dangerous place, especially now that we have to add sentient AI into the mix.
Partial birth abortion is Nazi level barbarism.
Exactly. And if its true that they are doing it for the baby parts and stem cells - well I just can't even...
I had the same transformation. Before I had children my position on abortion was that it was up to the woman and her doctor. After children it was inconceivable to abort a baby after the first trimester. It felt like murder to me. Then came my grandkids. I told my children there was no way they were going to abort MY grandchildren. If they couldn't care for them I would.
As an aside, both my children were vehemently anti-abortion even as young children. They got that on their own because for most of their growing up years the home position was it was between a woman and her doctor before 15 weeks.
We were against Roe v. Wade, though, from the start because it stopped the national debate on abortion and hardened both sides.
I predict the debate will go on within the states so that after a few years the states that allow abortion up to the time of delivery will begin to put some restrictions on it as their population comes to the conclusion that aborting a 9 month fetus is akin to murder. States that will not allow abortion may soften their positions as well and allow it up to 8 or 15 weeks as an example.
Now that abortion can be debated openly in state legislatures and in forums of all sorts people's minds can be broadened to other positions. That's healthy and protects rights and our democracy.
Well said
well that is so nice. but you will be likely be dead or very old before your grandchildren have children and allowing that freedom to have children that they know will be cared for by others takes the responsibility from them as adults. or even as teens. hopefully none of them will be drug addicts having children.. or alcoholics having children. etc.
No way to entirely predict the future but in my entire family there are no alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, liars or thieves. Could be because most of us believe deeply in God. My grown children have solid values. That helps. They are also raising their children and not warehousing them in day cares. That helps too. The children have both a father and a mother and the father is involved with them. Good role models. That helps too.
That's nice. you do know however that many people who are drug addicts etc also believe deeply in God. and even people who want the right to safe and legal pregnancy terminations also believe deeply in God and many of them have solid family values as well. even the ones who use day care may have a deep religious conviction. being religious does not exempt you
Once someone becomes a drug addict the addiction makes them a slave.
A belief in God, or a higher power/authority than man, sets a moral and ethical bar. Without this anything and all things are possible. We have seen where that leads. The most murderous regimes have been atheist.
I am sorry. you are incorrect about your last statement unless you are considering all other people that are not believers in your religion "heathens"...and many people are drug users and still believe in God and are not "slaves". your "moral and ethical " bar is yours alone
I think the majority of states are going to do that.
I also think the vitriol coming from the pro-choice side is very telling about what sort of movement they support.
I would hope so, but how? One side wants all, the other side wants nothing. Who represents the majority in the middle anymore?
I suspect that the silent majority supports reasonable first trimester abortion but not “abortion as an empowering lifestyle” as pushed by Hollywood entertainers and their ilk.
Yes. The zeal, the pride, the arrogance of some women you see advocating abortion at any time on demand is really disconcerting. It shows a complete indifference for anything but their selfish demands.
This is exactly how I feel :( it goes against women being nurturing and caring beings.
Selfishness--the 8th deadly sin.
Those women do not have kids.
The Florida legislature passed a 15 week limit on abortion this past session. It went by nearly unnoticed. No hysterics or demonstrations that I heard about.
That seems a reasonable time to me.
The reasoning of 15 weeks is that babies start to feel pain between 15 and 20 weeks, women should know they are pregnant by 15 weeks, and shortly after 20 weeks they are now viable outside the womb.
This is in line with most of Europe.
There has to be a debate with all voices having input.
and now we are "in line" with most of the middle east.. cant wait for women to be tossed of buildings. stoned until dead. buried alive. killed by relatives. hey how about burned at the stake. that seemed to work in some places..of course we wont do that. we are "civilized"
Good grief. Get a grip. Each state will debate and decide where they want to draw the line on abortion. Some states like Florida will draw it at 15 weeks. Others like NY and CA, OR and WA will allow abortion right up until the baby comes out of the birth canal at 9 months. This is Federalism as it should be.
This is the quandary for sure but not one that we people of goodwill aren’t impotent from shaping how we see fit. The screeching activists on both sides are the squeaky wheels no doubt but I genuinely believe that those who seek reasonable compromise are wanting to do the correct thing given that we do live in a pluralistic society and that there is neither universal or even close to universal agreement on the topic. We need to be the loud voices in seeking such compromise folks…
Be loud for moderation! I think the rallying cry needs some work.
Haha yeah it’s a work in progress brother but the concept is still sound.
The same on all other issues: gun control, taxes, environment. There are no reasonable middle position or compromise. That’s why our politicians are unable to resolve any urgent issues, such as solvency of Social Security programs or crumbling infrastructure. They have no practical solutions requiring compromise. This country is in such a dangerous place. I am not optimistic.
Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution. However, guns are specifically mentioned, and therefore it is proper that the Supreme Court protect the right to bear arms.
Not to mention that self defense is a natural human right that exists independently of the US Constitution.
Yes!
Yes!
By that logic the right of women to vote should be rescinded as well, since it is not stated specifically in the Constitution.
The original (Alito and Thomas version), that is. Maybe the 19th should be overturned - along with unstated Constitutional rights such as contraception, same sex marriage, and biracial marriage.
I'm not trying to be trite - but to me this is a 19th Century Court in a 21st Century country.
Richardson v. Ramirez case, Justice Rehnquist wrote: “Because the right to vote ‘is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government,’… voting is a ‘fundamental’ right. Returning some ‘rights’ to state governments is one solution, another one is to codify through Congress, which Obama could have done with his super majority, but preferred to use it as a political football. Dumb.
The 19th Amendment was legally passed and inserted into the Constitution. It is Constitutional law.
They are not pro-choice anymore. They are pro-abortion. They celebrate and even encourage what should be a very personal and rare decision.
if it is personal why do we allow the government to intervene. why do we allow you and me to intervene ?
When I started working at a libertarian think tank I was vehemently pro-choice and utilitarian in my view of abortion. But one of my fellow libertarians presented the rational argument that while one may support individual liberty, what about the liberty of a viable unborn human being? Do I support the inalienable rights of a living creature, a creature that is alive, in the womb, and at 24 weeks possibly viable outside the womb? These are philosophical questions that should temper the extreme hatred and anger that those who are "pro-abortion to term" should consider--particularly if you fancy yourself a libertarian. Part of solving a problem is calming down enough to come up with real solutions. How often do you see people solve problems by screaming at each other by casting aspersions upon each other?
Just like we do about slavery.
Agree totally. Our Congress gave up on compromise quite a while ago.
This sums up my feelings well. I've never had strong feelings about abortion one way or another in the past. I was fine with it being "safe, legal and rare" and understood it is sometimes a necessary choice.
But somehow, the Left has went from being "pro-choice" to "pro-abortion". Abortions are too be celebrated now and viewed as some type of achievement. To them, if you're not 100% on board with abortions up until the minute of birth, you're considered "pro-life". They've went too far, and this sickening display has put me off the issue and pushed me the other way. I suspect the same has happened for many moderates.
Exactly this. And now we have even the Pope calling pro life Catholics 'anti abortion activists'. Here come the t-shirts snd mugs with slogans like 'I heart abortion'
I couldn't agree more. I had two abortions in my 20's. I wish I understood the options better. I have two children today. I would have loved to have had more....maybe the two I gave up?
CC, I remember in the mid ‘70’s when I was in college, none of us knew what was entailed in an abortion. They just told us it was a clump of cells, and was like our period blood that they extracted. Women didn’t have all the facts back then.
That’s correct. An abortion was treated like a cold - take some medicine and you’ll be okay in the morning. No discussion. No contemplation.
And aren't your children a blessing? Lessons learned the hard way. Respect. My mother had four miscarriages between my brother and I. She was a warrior.
I used to be pro-choice. A friend brought me a recording of his wife's sonogram. They had had trouble conceiving and he was all excited that she was pregnant. I looked at the sonogram and it was an epiphany. I saw the fetus and the heart beating and I thought, "That is a human being." and in that instance became anti-abortion. I still believe there are some cases where abortion is warranted.
If a baby can survive outside the womb and it is aborted, in my opinion, that is murder. Some states allow abortion up to the day before birth. If the child is aborted, they leave it on the table until it dies. That living baby is now a US citizen and deserves the all the rights and privileges of a US citizen. Included in these rights is the right to be protected by law not to be murdered and if murdered the guilty should stand trial for murder.
Below is an essay I wrote when I was still pro-choice and I believe there is a lot of truth in it:
On abortion or the world according to Lonesome.
As with all complicated issues there are no simple answers.
Both sides of the issue are led and populated by fanatics. There is no middle ground for these people. I believe that they are drooling, glassy eyed, in your face whackoes.
I am pro-choice. I don't believe that a zygote, an embryo or a fetus that cannot survive outside of the womb needs to be protected by law. Soon, in the next 10 years, 20 tops, cloning will be perfected. I believe that attempted cloning will have as high as an 80% success rate. This will mean that every cell in my body is a potential human being, same as a zygote. We all know by using goofy logic the pro-lifers will dismiss this while hanging tenaciously to their present position that a fertilized egg is a human being and demands the same protection as a fully formed human.
This position of the pro-lifers leaves no middle ground at all. They completely dismiss the fact that as many as 40 to 60% of all pregnancies are aborted naturally. Sometimes the zygote never attaches itself to the wall of the uterus and is flushed out of the body and the woman never knows she is pregnant. If you follow the religious fundamentalist view that god controls everything, this makes god the world’s biggest abortionist.
On the other hand, Laci Peterson’s baby was just two weeks away from being born. The pro-choice movement and NOW will not admit Laci’s murder is a double murder because this somehow undermines their pro-choice position, a chink in their armor so to speak.
So the pro-choicers have no middle ground either.
Both sides will continue to purple in the face yell at each other until one side has complete victory over the other.
My personal view: I have no problem with the morning after pill nor do I have a problem with early term abortions. I do, however, have a problem with late term abortions and with partial birth abortions. To be honest I am ignorant on the subject of partial birth abortion. But from what I have heard the reasons for it are dubious at best.
I have some caveats on late term abortions and for that matter all abortions. If the abortion is to save the life or preserve the health of the mother, then I am all for it, the same goes for rape or incest.
All too often the extremists take over and rational discourse is never considered. I believe that this is where we are on the abortion issue. The fanatics have taken over. The insane are running the asylum.
No issue is completely dichotomous, but the interesting thing about the abortion debate is that it is much more dichotomous than other issues that we usually debate in public life.
Question: Have you, since changing your mind on abortion, changed your mind on other things? If so, would you say changing your mind about abortion was the deciding factor?
As I get older, I have changed my mind on many things. If you don't change, I don't think you grow intellectually. No, my changing on abortion did not influence me to change on other matters. The change on abortion surprised me. It happened in an instant. It was a road to Damascus moment and I am not religious.
In thinking through the implications of the overturning of RvW, I have had a change in view on the role of society in providing healthcare and extra financial support for women that have children and face economic hardship (I used to be very much against this). RvW, combined with that disaster of a war in Afghanistan, and how that opened my eyes to the financial waste of taxpayer $ and human devastation caused by our bi partisan military industrial complex, has moved me to a place where I believe should be putting the needs of our citizens and especially children first with benefits such as universal health care.
Seeing an ultrasound of a fetus really changes how you think about this. My oldest daughter bounced around so much they couldn’t image her easily to the point the technician asked my wife if she’d just had a coffee. That was how my daughter was after she was born as well. The hard reality is that abortion is homicide. I can support it like I support capital punishment and dropping bombs on our enemies - but the ‘my body - my choice’ line is just a flat out lie.
Pops, I love your way of phrasing things. "I can support abortion like I support capital punishment of dropping bombs on our enemies".
The analogy is perfect. All tragedies. Sometimes necessary tragedies. But if you lose sight of their fact that they are tragedies, you lose your humanity.
I had the same experience while carrying both my children. Their personalities were apparent by at least 20 weeks. My daughter was active, aware of sounds outside the womb and reacted to them. I could play with her by pressing on one area of my belly. She would reposition and then kick my hand. One time the dog (toy poodle) was lying on my stomach. She kicked him. He got up and had the funniest expression on his face as in "where did that come from?"
My son was the opposite. Laid back. Frequently didn't feel him for a couple of days. He has always been the same. Laid back, calm.
I would add that late term abortions that are medically necessary (latent serious medical issues for the mother or fetus; very young girls who may not even realize they’re pregnant until the third trimester, etc) must be left to the discretion of the doctor and patient.
Late term abortions on demand - that’s a different story and departure from “safe, legal and rare” (I didn’t realize until recently that the phrase is attributed to Bill Clinton).
In the Clinton years I was pro-choice and just fine with "safe, legal, and rare." (I thought it will Hillary actually that coined it.) As my views changed with age and parenthood, I was still fine with that phrase, just more focused on the "rare" part. Then the Democrats went from "safe, legal and rare" to "shout your abortion" and they lost me.
Most people know that abortion is a tragedy. It is sometimes a necessary tragedy, but treating it as something to be proud of... asserting that a 5 month fetus has the same moral import as a cancer tumor... being proud of having aborted your baby? These were the things that truly made me 100% pro-life. If that's what "pro-choice" means, count me out.
I agree. I approve of the Court's decision to overrule Roe but I also approve of the idea that the law must allow abortions in some cases. Before Roe that was the case.
Yes, the pendulum is crazy. First trimester, full stop. Unless the health of the mother is at risk.
I don't think all the Rs will go that long. Know they won't. Here in Ohio, they're talking about the "heartbeat" rule. About six weeks. Me? I'm okay with that but it's not up to me.
You are probably correct. But I’m looking at compromise here. Many European countries draw the line similarly. There has to be some middle ground here. Both extremes can’t win. They have to compromise.
Just now getting back here. TY for reply. I agree about the middle ground. Dunno if many states will or not.
I don't remember the LGBT activists seeking compromise and "a middle ground" with religious bakers and florists after Obergefell. I see no reason we should do so after Dobbs.
This is probably one-a the few areas we disagree, Sir Brian.
"I see no reason we should do so after Dobbs."
For practical reasons, if no other. It's almost certain to be a losing strategy, long term.
The progressives have been using the scorched Earth litigation technique quite successfully for decades. They can't win any battle without immediately trying to use it as a springboard for the next one.
I feel like we've been playing by Queensberry rules for far too long, and I'm tired of losing. As I mentioned above, my feelings on swinging for the SCOTUS fences on this issue may change as the adrenaline from having actually gotten a base for once in the culture war wears off. Right now, I'm afraid I'm with Justice Thomas though: go after the entire edifice of "substantive due process."
"Both extremes can’t win. They have to compromise."
50 different states = 50 (potentially) different set of (ever-changing) laws, all of which will be deemed "extreme" to some political tribe.
If Congress (+ Pres) pass their own version, then back to the SCOTUS to decide if congress has the constitutional authority to supersede the respective state law, whatever that may be? The 'old Commerce Clause BS?
It would take an amendment to the constitution to make it "the law of the land". I don't see that happening, but who knows ....
It's true, the left went too far. Democrats like to say 70% of Americans support abortion rights. But that wasn't enough. They had to push it to the point of infanticide.
Now that the laboratories of invention will be back up and running, I believe a rough consensus will form, one where no one gets all they want. Poor girls raped in Baton Rouge and 9-month-old fetuses getting dismembered in New York will have their narratives brought to the light of day. Somewhere in the collective American unconscious, a graceful consensus will emerge, where most of us feel we made principled compromise without compromising principles.
Bari touched on one of America's great, unique virtues: mobility. People ache to come here for our economic mobility. But just as important is Federalism, which allows social mobility. When states are powerful, one can move to a place that matches their values. It's when the heavy hand of federal law blankets the country that our social mobility becomes irrelevant. It's the main reason I'm a conservative.
I am afraid even Bari's readers may not reach a consensus. Most reasonable people will agree that abortion of a viable fetus is bad, and that one night of unprotected sex should not lead to a baby. But what about abnormal fetuses? Lots of pro-lifers will insist to saddle the parents with a problematic child. Lots of others (as is very common in Europe) think that an abortion should be permitted in such cases.
oferim, we DID reach a consensus here just a few weeks ago in the comments. There were about 20 of us. No screaming. No histrionics. Acknowledgement from the left all that abortion was a tragedy and from the right that it might sometimes be necessary. This gave me such encouragement, since it shows that, even separated greatly by party and ideology, there's a broad consensus on this issue.
I do think that consensus needs to be at the state level though. Real federalism was a casualty of the Civil War and cremated by the early 20th century Progressives. It's time to rediscover it. On this and other issues, everyone must be willing to let Georgia be Georgia and Massachusetts be Massachusetts.
"Lots of pro-lifers will insist to saddle the parents with a problematic child." A problematic child. NO ONE, especially "pro-lifers" INSIST on SADDLING PARENTS with ANYONE or ANYTHING. There is this cool option called adoption. Please quit with the absurd, disrespectful and effed up assertion that pro-lifters are forcing anything. It's just so insulting. Thank God it's not up to you to determine what a "problematic child" is.
We have had a consensus for decades; 90% of Americans do not support killing a baby in the 3rd trimester, 80% are against it in the 2nd, 70% agree on options in the 1st. Respectfully.
I think time and experience *can* lead to consensus, hard as it may be to believe right now. “Problematic” children will need to be defined. I may start out on one side of that issue and you on the other. But the idea that a compromise that both of us could live with can’t be reached is simply a failure of imagination. The next few years will see tumultuous debates over abortion. I’m confident that when cooler heads prevail, common sense (!) legislation will follow.
From your lips to God's ear. I am sick and tired of the craziness that replaces what used to be debate.
And yet you've engaged in it again and again and again!
Depends in which country. Off the top of my head, look up Iceland. Last time I read (a couple of years ago), they were on the way to having no Down syndrome newborns.
Is systematically aborting all babies with Down syndrome a sign of moral progress?
Right?
I do not believe any democratic country is forcing parents to abort Down syndrome (or children with other abnormalities). But it looks like almost all parents in a country like Iceland choose to do so. Why do you think this is the case? What would you have done differently?
Interesting that you use the word 'mobility,' John.
My main concern in all of this is not so much the intractability of opinions on abortion - I do not think there will ever, ever be compromise. It is too fraught with moral weight versus perceived rights. It's a bridge too far.
My fear is in the enforcement - that is, how will Prohibition states enforce the ban? Will the 'mobility' of women be constricted as they attempt to cross state lines seeking an abortion they know is illegal at home? And if so, how? What kind of surveillance will be used? Checkpoints? How will mail (a federal jurisdiction) be searched looking for medical abortion pills? Will people helping these women be prosecuted? Will providers in other states be prosecuted?
I see now not the heavy hand of Federal law, but instead the heavy hand of state law.
The left may have gone too far in their zeal, but I'm afraid it will be easily matched by the zealotry on the right after this decision.
Sincerely.
Great questions, great points. Add to these questions: the potential use of federal property to establish abortion mills in pro-life states. It may very well be a Pyrrhic victory. The laboratories of democracy will be abuzz with activity until some norms are established.
Lynn- I walked by the WTC that evening on the way home, when it was lit up in rainbow colors in “celebration”. Not sure about the Empire.
I was so furious I had to control myself.
Reading through the comments, I see (and share) violent agreement on almost all points:
First trimester
Viability
Mother’s life
Rape/incest (although as far as I’ve gotten, silent on that…and…show me the police report)
But after all the brouhaha of the last few weeks, what’s the first rebuttal I see? ‘Most abortions happen in the first trimester’.
I think if we’d just stuck with that, and reasonable discussion on the four points above, things would be a lot quieter.
It's more than that. The Left wants unrestricted rules for any activities it decides it wants. Today abortion, tomorrow sex with young children, etc.
I hear you, but it’s hard to figure out what’s worse: wanting to kill babies or have sex with them.
And once you’ve gone down either path, wait for the crowd to claim the new victim class or how you’re going to violate someone’s rights.
Yes…it may take a village to raise a child, but be prepared for the backlash if you actually do anything but heap praise.
I’m usually measured in my internet postings, but you pushed the right button.
Thank you. You should watch Tucker's interview with Kimberly Ells. She has written a book and done extensive research on the goals and programs from the Left to disconnect parents from their children.
Schu and WeDecide, around 96% of abortions are done before the 15 weeks, 42.9% before the 7th week, 36.4 before the 10th week, and 2.9% before the 16th week. Comments like; infanticide and metal tables are pure bullshit that comes out of the mouth of hateful, ignorant people!
All that may be true, but one abortion in the third trimester, when the baby would be viable, is murder. One.
Naomi, your thoughtful, nuanced comment is so apropos for hateful people; you may not be aware of this, but hate is very ugly!
Lots of the fetus health tests are possible (or less unsafe) at around 20 weeks. For example, amniotic fluid to check for Dawn syndrome among others.
Should we force parents of defective children to have them?
"DEFECTIVE"???? You mean, like a widget or something in my lawnmower???
Also, check your defective spelling - it's "Down's" syndrome, not "Dawn".
My former brother-in-law AND former sister-in-law were Down's syndrome kids and the love and joy that they provided to their family and community was immeasurable. And no, my mother-in-law was not some rich soccer mom in suburbia - she was a young widow with 5 kids who moved to a community she could afford and became a teacher to support her family - a woman of strength, dignity, and CHARACTER.
I have no doubt your mother-in-law was (is?) an amazing woman but what happens to the Down syndrome kids as adults when their parents are no longer around to take care of them? I'm hopeful there is some type of group home or care facility but knowing how healthcare in the U.S. works I doubt this would be available to anyone without the means to pay for it.
OMG! Of course there are places for adults with Down's and have been since Down's existed and parents (generally older when giving birth to their child with Down's). I have a friend who cares for adults with special needs in her own home.
Referring to any child as "defective" gives me chills of horror.
I’ll assume that the wording of your response is perhaps not as articulate as you desired. And in Bari’s excellent article’s spirit keep everything polite.
The problem with the concept of a “desirable” or “non defective” baby is the slippery slope it creates. For example, we currently live in a society where anything at or below the mean is “undesirable”. Height. Intelligence. Facial symmetry. If you don’t believe me just check any article on grade inflation, or one on the diagnosis of learning disabilities in children. The range of what is deemed “a disability” has been growing exponentially over time.
Of course, that’s not the only “undesirable trait” someone might choose to abort. The number one cause of abortion across the world over the past 50 years, because of China’s one child policy, was incorrect sex, in a society that prized boys and rejected girls.
Little did the Chinese realize that they did not have to abort, just have their daughters decide they were sons instead.
Problem solved.
I wrote a paper on this once. Back before you could determine the sex of a child (the politically correct will hate this) many times, in China when a girl was born, the family would do what the ancient Greeks would do when they had child that wasn't perfect. They would put the baby out for the wolves to eat. A common joke among the Chinese back then, when they would encounter a little girl, they would say, "I see you survived the wolves."
I told you the PC wouldn't like this. Reality isn't their strong suit.
My SIL's parents had four biological children and adopted 8 more...mostly from Korea. One was given up (literally) because she was born to some royal (whatever that means in S. Korea) family and she had a birthmark on her face. That beautiful young woman (from the midwest) is thriving in NYC as a costume designer for stage performances and winning awards. Another brother has a club foot and another sister has severe intellectual challenges. This is the most giving, beautiful family. No one is disposable....there is always someone ready to love them and care for them.
Yes, the current fixation on being at or above average is what terrifies me about the pro-abortion crowd. My son is on the autism spectrum and has a number of learning challenges that put him below average in a couple of categories, but he is otherwise an amazing creative kid with a fascinating perspective on the world, who brings joy to so many. If autism ever becomes testable in the womb, I fear the eugenic policy that will arise and “medical” advice to scared parents that will be given.
That is why Roe has been a slippery slope for so long. God bless you and your son. Let's find the source of autism and get rid of it. We are a world with brilliant minds, we can figure this out.
That’s a pretty gross description of children. I can tell you first hand that many of these people you deem “defective” are the sweetest, happiest and most innocent among all of us in society.
Poor choice of words, but I agree with the sentiment. In Canada, all pregnancies are screened non-invasively for Down, and if the screening test is positive, the woman is offered amniocentesis to confirm. Very few women decline amniocentesis.
We now have a way to detect genetic abnormalities - and a third chromosome is an abnormality - before the end of the first trimester. This is why we see so few Down kids these days.
Excuse we while I puke because Canada thinks they are now God.
Better to get rid of the tards then let them live, right?
I have never met a defective child. Although, I have met plenty of defective parents.
Defective?
Sorry - not a native English speaker. Abnormal? If you have a better word, please share it.
Down's Syndrome could be described as "defective" in that it is not the normal development of a human being in the womb, but I believe it is just a variation of the human genome. Who are we to decide that someone with Down's Syndrome is not worthy of living? What if there was a genetic test for Autism? Would it be acceptable to terminate those pregnancies? What if there was a genetic test for homosexuality?
You see where I'm going with this, I hope.
I do see. Kids with Downs are usually very loving and affectionate and are usually smart enough to hold down a job. I would want more people with Downs in my community than be like SF with a bunch of junkies.
I know right? Who wants those tards around? Better to have them killed in the womb them let them live and remind us of our own inadequacies.
Well said. Common sense.
Thanks…just too hard to keep track of them all.
Thank you. I have noticed that myself.
I am pro abortion, but Roe v. Wade was one of the worse decisions rendered by Supreme Court in last 60 years. Instead of letting Congress do its work and legislate this issue, Supreme Court took active role of legislating by judicial activism of unelected judges that are there to interpret laws, not make them.
If this was done trough Congress, it would probably lasted several years longer, but the result would be the same and we would have legal abortion, as it happened in European countries. And this topic would be settled and regulated on state level.
Due to overreach of Supreme Court with Roe v. Wade, we ended up with such a polarizing discussion that has lasted for over 50 years now. And will continue to tear up US society for many more years to come.
There is nothing worse than activist judges, their zeal to legislate from the bench is one of the most anti-democratic things imaginable that tears fabric of our justice system. I you want to make laws and legislate, then take of judge's robe put the suit on and run for congress, don't do judistical activism.
To keep the thing short, this was great decision by Supreme Court, correction of Roe v. Wade was long overdue, sadly damage that this decision caused will follow US for decades to come.
Excellent, excellent comment. I might add that judicial activism and lack of legislative leadership (or statesmanship) have tended to go hand in hand. It seems to me that too many in the legislature have historically been all too happy to let unelected judges do their work for them via judicial fiat. Like you mention, many of the judges were all too happy to oblige. Meanwhile the legislature could wring their hands, act like a collective Pontius Pilate (if Pilate had been a petulant child), and head off to the next fundraising banquet.
The decision yesterday was a return to Constitutional norms and a return of power to the ballot box. I applaud it.
I’m afraid the problem is much larger than “legislators” embracing and promoting activist judges. They are only one element of the incestuous players that inhabit the Washington “swamp”. It’s the bureaucratic blob they have empowered to actually run the country that get to interpret, enforce or not enforce laws. DHS has allowed record numbers of illegals to cross our borders. Our intelligence agencies concoct hoaxes to undermine a duly elected president. The EPA has decreed that the very gas (CO2) that each of us emits with every breath is a pollutant. The JustUs department refuses to arrest anarchists that burn down our cities and threaten Supreme Court justices they dot like.
Our only hope is that the current Supreme Court will have the courage and fortitude to reign the rogue bureaucrats in before they strangle the life out of our freedom and pursuit of happiness.
Pelosi knows the danger Allito, Thomas, Barret and Kavanaugh pose to her agenda. Schumer warned them of the “whirlwind” that would be unleashed upon them and Pelosi has embraced it by refusing to enact legislation to enhance protection of them and their families. There has already been one assassination attempt. I doubt she’ll mind if there are a few more.
You’re absolutely right. I should have included unelected bureaucrats in that assessment as well. They are numerous and largely unbridled.
Yawn.
> DHS has allowed record numbers of illegals to cross our borders.
Link? I think it’s the same number of people crossing the border as when Trump was president.
> Our intelligence agencies concoct hoaxes to undermine a duly elected president.
link? Did you even read the muller report? The Steele dossier was basically a sham, but that wasn’t created or distributed by the intelligence agencies. But the muller report showed that Russian interference was real.
> The EPA has decreed that the very gas (CO2) that each of us emits with every breath is a pollutant.
Climate change is real and destructive. It is a crisis. Do you deny that?
Illegal immigration is much much higher YoY so far in 2022 then 2021 and 2021 over 2020.
However, it also was insanely higher in 2019 than 2018 under Trump.
What people lose sight of is not so much the illegal immigration. The USA lightly can impact that based on “incentives” (leniency, etc) but it is not a huge impact. The way more impactful measure is the state of the governments/economies of the countries the people are leaving from. What is lost is how those individuals are treated once they immigrate to the USA illegally. Under Trump many more were deported, now a much higher percentage are allowed to stay if detained. So looking at sheer numbers of immigration can confuse the issue and get away from the point. (I also don’t support Trump immigration measures, just pointing out the difference in treatment).
Our intelligence agencies contact “hoaxes” all the time. 1. Depends what you call a “hoax”. In this context (although expanded upon through Mueller and was steered away from “hoax” territory), I think even opening up the Mueller investigation, and utilizing the Steele Dossier as a premise to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page is well within the realm of “hoax”. Outside of this context, Iran Contra, shipping pallets of cash to Iran under the auspices that they’ve “moderated, Gulf of Tonkin incident, Banana Wars (older), Havana Syndrome (very recent and basically admitted to being a hoax), etc. Usually these were all acted on in tandem with the administration but still “hoaxes” or at least purposeful misinformation of ulterior goals.
2. Whether it is the intent or not to harm the president is seemingly impossible to separate and unless you have a mind reading device or the plotters are absolute dipshits who are stupid enough to put that concrete intent in writing, will never be known. My personal opinion is that you should not assume intent, so I’d fall more on your side that you shouldn’t make this jump unless absolutely necessary. However, when you have intelligence officials saying something like the Steele Dossier looks legitimate (even just in interviews and not officially) and then have hundreds of intelligence officials signing letters saying Hunters laptop is a fraud (completely erroneously and without any information, just using their title as some source of special knowledge), it is hard to not at least wonder.
Climate change is 100% real. How serious it is, what the timeline is, what we do about it, and how our society should be restructured to deal with it is 100% up for debate. When people like AOC can straight faced cite reports that suggest humanity and civilizations are going to be irreparably damaged in the next 10 years (now like 6 years) by climate change. And Gore can make documentaries suggesting Miami should already be well underwater citing these same sources years before, it’s not a testament to the problem being not real. It is a testament to those sources skewing the data as much as they can to get secondary sources (AOC and Gore) to draw incorrect conclusions and steer public policy around that incorrect conclusion.
What is questioned with the EPA is are they so biased that even their correct data (as presented) draws people to incorrect conclusions. And is the bias intended and purposeful to get people to those conclusions.
Once again, I don’t like to assume intent. But their history has been questionable enough where they are certainly not my source for environmental data. I just frankly think their are many better sources that I trust much more (I.e. Michael Shellenberger) and will utilize before I go to the EPA.
IMO, You are sadly misinformed. These are the typical talking points, anyway, I can see that much for a fact.
It's almost like the legislators (on both sides) decided they'd benefit more by keeping the issue alive and burning than find an acceptable compromise.
Yesterday the Supreme Court reaffirmed it’s legitimacy and in doing so perhaps saved our democracy. Roe v. Wade made a mockery of our constitution. A majority of Unelected, blacked robed politicians masquerading as justices usurped the authority of actual legislators who were elected by the people. It isn’t the only time an activist court did so and in every instance, they diminished our constitution and inched the nation closer to authoritarianism. In the grand scheme of things, yesterdays ruling is just one step in restoring power to We the people.
Well put, Raziel. Shame on my rabbis, and on other liberal clergy around the country, for sending out pious diatribes to their congregations, excoriating the Court for this “awful” and “destructive” decision. Laws should be made in the legislature and adjudicated in the courts, not the other way around.
The same clergy, I might add, who were silent about threats on the lives of conservative Justices.
Many of the clergy you speak of do so in violation of their oath, making politics their default religion.
Oh I fully agree, and there are plenty of clergy who preached in favor of Republican candidates, too, even crossing the line into pure politics which they are supposed to avoid. This is why churches should be taxed--they are political entities and have been for a long time.
Interesting.
Me? I think the whole concept of tax exempt organizations can be revisted.
Preferably by such a simple tax code that non would be needed. That's just me.
I look at it from having worked as a corporate tax professional for 30 years. Taking away tax exempt status would be good for our country. Too much largess is associated with tax exempt status and it would be good to level the playing field. Not for profits have a mission to serve and they should break even at it over the modest term. They should spend their money on those they serve. It would force more $support$ into the community and that can only be good.
as a minster from the old school - ergo -when the Bible was our reference point for justice issues and there were plenty to use- today's clergy are SJW especially those who graduate from "liberal" seminaries as I did but that was long ago. I was horrified that my Presbyterian church and every other mainline church in Portland, had BLM signs posted on their outside bulletin boards and when I wrote my pastor and suggested she could find something better in the old testament prophets, I got no answer and the sign remained for two years. I on the other hand did not.
I was definitely pro choice at the beginning of Roe having known a few women who had to go to Puerto Rico or the "back alley" but when a parishioner of mine returned from a women's march in D<C< sometime in the early 90's and told with enthusiasm and pride about the woman wearing a t-shirt that read "I have had 11 abortions" I began to worry about what was coming.
Voting with your feet is powerful, good for you.
believing in tee shirts. is that a new religion?
Absolutely!
Have to agree. We would all be a lot better off had we just had the political fight. Until you get a national consensus on what should and what should not be allowed and that consensus makes it into law we were always going to have these back and forth fights resulting in instability.
This is a battle that needs to occur. Arguments need to be made. Compromises made. Laws passed.
Completely agree. Roe WAS the decision that made "supreme court justices" a turnout lever for Senate races for years. It no longer enough to campaign as a Senator about where you stand on issues facing your state, but rather, will you abdicate your legislative power to the court, or make decisions for your electoral constituency.
Maybe this will allow Senators to actually legislate rather than obstruct going forward.
Great point. RvW really did much more to divide us as a country than I think we realized.
Can we please have mandatory constitutional law classes in high school? So many people have no clue what really went down yesterday from a legal perspective. Are you US native born, Raziel? If not, I am seriously impressed with your understanding of the Constitution (well, I'm impressed either way.)
I agree with the majority of the commenters. Let the legislatures make the laws, the judges interpret the laws made. IMO, more things should be done at the state level anyway.
Jt, my thoughts exactly. The swamp is too far - physically and philosophically - from the world inhabited by most Americans. Three weeks ago I moved to a State more in line with my values and so it should be.
I agree, and You are so lucky to get away. Hope it's "Two Tickets to Paradise" for You and Yours. :-)
Solid, thoughtful, measured comment.
To reassure the writer: To my amateur eye, at least, this ruling does nothing more than correct the error of a previous Court. Roe was an attempt to legislate from the bench, and That Is Not Constitutional. IMHO it was a well-intentioned ruling that hoped to finally settle the abortion question at the national level, but we know which road is paved with good intentions. This ruling acknowledges that proper jurisdiction in this matter lies with the states. It does NOT have the first thing to do with gay marriage, contraceptives, or anything else. People who have their own agenda, none of which involves your welfare, are predictably setting out to scare hell out of you. Unfortunately for them, nobody trusts the Lamestream press now and are turning to places like Substack for some truth and common sense.
I shared at one time your feeling that the federal government was your friend and the states could be at times backwater regimes. No more. Last night the Weaponized FBI raided a retired couple's home, throwing flashbangs inside, near their terrified dogs, on the pretense that this couple was involved in Jan 6. Turns out the picture they used was a blurry picture of another man. The states are our greatest defense against the New Stasi, and we'd better damned well get control before Stalin rises from the grave.
Not a day goes by that I don't silently thank the Founding Fathers. I visit Jefferson's house near my home at least once a year, making certain to walk down the Great Man's mountain past his grave. I'm not a believer, but I DO quietly say, "Thank you, sir. Thank you so very much." as I pass. (addendum: By the way, his house and property was bought and restored from near collapse by a Jew.)
| It does NOT have the first thing to do with gay marriage, contraceptives, or anything else. |
That is easy to say, but Justice Thomas EXPLICITLY called out same sex intimacy, marriage and contraception as rulings he thought were a mistake. To say these are safe is just words at this point.
If you are against abortion, I can respect your position. If you are against abortion AND contraception then you're just a moralistic scold.
Here's what a quick google of Thomas' comments revealed: "... Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the court ought to revisit all of the substantive due process precedents, including Griswold and Obergefell (which protected the rights to legal contraception and gay marriage, respectively).
I'll research some more, but my reading of the above suggests that Thomas' thrust was revisiting all the "substantive due process precedents," which BY THE WAY included Griswold and Obergefell - not singling them out because they were about a specific thing. Naughty, naughty. Don't try to obfuscate by selectively leaving out pertinent details.
Thomas suggests that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment has been made to do too much work ever since the evisceration of the privileges and immunities clause in the rightly reviled Slaughterhouse and Cruikshank cases.
His concurrence in the 2nd Amendment case of McDonald v Chicago says "a more straightforward path to this conclusion, one that is more faithful to the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history (is that) the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause."
Thomas considers the phrase "substantive due process" to be an oxymoron, and thus it leads to better doctrinal outcomes to revitalize the Privileges or Immunities Clause and rescue it from its dormancy at the hands of a rights-hostile Supreme Court of the late 1800s.
(The editing function is not the greatest here ... I'm going to paste and summarize extensive segments from Justice Thomas's Dobbs concurrence ... not all of the beginning quotation marks, and inner quotation marks, may work properly. Sorry about that. I hope I am faithful in my description of this important concurrence ... that unfortunately has gotten short shrift from ideologically interested people who only want to paint a cartoonish caricature.)
In Dobbs, the Thomas concurrence repeats and extends his observations in McDonald, saying about Griswold: "Griswold v. Connecticut purported not to rely on the Due Process Clause, but rather reasoned 'that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights”— including rights enumerated in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth,
and Ninth Amendments — 'have penumbras, formed by emanations,'
that create 'zones of privacy ....' Since Griswold, the Court, perhaps recognizing the facial absurdity of Griswold’s penumbral argument, has characterized the decision as one rooted in substantive due process. See, e.g., Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 663 (2015); Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 720 (1997)."
For these reasons, "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous ....'” and instead "consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment .... To answer that question, we would need to decide important antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not
enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify those rights .... That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively
demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach."
Thomas identifies in the Dobbs concurrence a number of problems with the idea of substantive due process:
It "exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority. Because the Due Process Clause speaks only to process, the Court has long struggled to define what substantive rights it protects. In practice, the Court’s approach for identifying those fundamental rights unquestionably involves policymaking rather than neutral legal analysis. The Court divines new
rights in line with its own, extraconstitutional value preferences and nullifies state laws that do not align with the judicially created guarantees." Moreover, for Justice Thomas, the abortion jurisprudence is an example of the unmoored nature of substantive due process as "the nature of the purported liberty supporting the abortion right has shifted yet again. Respondents and the United States propose no fewer than three different interests that supposedly spring from the
Due Process Clause. They include 'bodily integrity,' 'personal autonomy in matters of family, medical care, and faith,' and 'women’s equal citizenship.' That
50 years have passed since Roe and abortion advocates still cannot coherently articulate the right (or rights) at stake proves the obvious: The right to abortion is ultimately a policy goal in desperate search of a constitutional justification."
"Second, substantive due process distorts other areas of constitutional law. For example, once this Court identifies a 'fundamental' right for one class of individuals, it invokes the Equal Protection Clause to demand exacting scrutiny of
statutes that deny the right to others. Statutory classifications implicating certain 'nonfundamental' rights, meanwhile, receive only cursory review .... Similarly, this Court deems unconstitutionally 'vague' or 'overbroad' those laws that impinge on its preferred rights, while letting slide those laws that implicate supposedly lesser values .... In fact, our vagueness doctrine served as the basis for the first draft
of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, and it since has been deployed ... to nullify even mild regulations of the abortion industry .... Therefore, regardless of the doctrinal context, the Court often 'demand[s] extra justifications for encroachments' on 'preferred rights' while 'relax[ing] purportedly higher standards of review for less preferred rights ....' Substantive due process is the core inspiration for many of the Court’s constitutionally unmoored policy judgments."
Justice Thomas also suggests that Dred Scott is a species of "substantive due process." I would have not said that ... the motives of those who invented that doctrine were quite different from those of the Taney court. But Thomas is not wrong to caution about how judicial power unmoored from text has not always been used for good. He concludes:
"Because the Court properly applies our substantive due process precedents to reject the fabrication of a constitutional right to abortion, and because this case does not present the opportunity to reject substantive due process entirely, I join the Court’s opinion. But, in future cases, we should 'follow the text of the Constitution, which sets forth certain substantive rights that cannot be taken away, and adds, beyond that, a right to due process when life, liberty,
or property is to be taken away ....' Substantive due process conflicts with that textual command and has harmed our country in many ways. Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity."
It seems to me that Justice Thomas is correct is wanting to pull up from their roots all those terrible Waite Court and Fuller Court cases on the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th amendment. The reporting on his concurrence does a disservice, and borders on outright falsehood.
Wow. Quite an analysis! Thanks! The more I read about Justice Thomas, the more I think that, as some say, he just might be the greatest living American.
I wrote a direct reply to Bari’s article trying to place abortion in the broader context of healthcare regulation. It may be worth the read.
One thing that may well motivate Thomas is how part of the opposition to the 14th amendment was that granting citizenship to black people meant that they would have arms for their own defense - overturning the specific ways in which the Waite and Fuller courts made the 14th amendment into a near nullity is a noble work, and in the course will make 14th amendment jurisprudence more coherent. Far from being some “uncle,” as the Left _ignorantly_ calls him, I think the importance of armed self-defense resonates across the generations to a native of Pin Point, Georgia.
The 14th amendment’s privileges and immunities clause was the vehicle meant to ensure equal citizenship for freed slaves by having at least the first eight amendments of the bill of rights enforceable against the states - no selective incorporation, no fancy footwork with what’s “fundamental” or not. The rest of the court is not ready for that, so Thomas writes his concurrences, appealing to the court of history.
I don't have a hardline position for or against abortion; I do, however, support the rights of citizens, through their elected officials, to decide that issue for themselves rather than having nine unelected geezers decide it for the whole nation. It is not the Court's job to make law, and to my eye this ruling simply corrected the previous court's error in doing so. It does NOT outlaw abortion; it simply says that is for the states to decide. My God - judicial humility. What will they think of next?
I haven't seen Justice Thomas' comments on the above. Can you point them out? I'd like to see SPECIFICALLY what they say.
100% agree on this comment.
Always appreciate the balance Bari shows. However, I found the person quoted about federalism to be quite hilarious. It’s not that they would be shocked the states have power and different laws.
They would be borderline devastated that so many issues have been pushed to the national level. Not a founding father, but De Tocqueville thought federalism and local control/freedom to be the strongest aspect of the American governmental structure.
More than anything else about Roe, I hope the decision brings that back. People start paying attention to local elections again, pay attention to state elections again. People move and migrate to where the local laws agree with their views. People understand that is their responsibility as citizens of this country. They start calling for more to be localized.
I’ve heard people attack this view as “polarizing”. Red vs Blue states. Getting redder and bluer. And that very well may be true. But what no one realizes, if the federal government keeps its powers limited. And a democrat doesn’t enforce their laws on a red state and a Republican on blue states, there is no “polarization” in a meaningful sense. The national elections will loose a great part of their significance and every election won’t be a war about what may happen to them in their state. They can be content that even if they loose national elections, their life won’t change as drastically and they can remain content where they are.
That is the power of federalism dreamed of at the outset. How do you array a diverse “melting pot” of people with every view ever thought up under one banner?? You let them govern themselves in their own localities and you don’t force them to conform under one ideology they don’t believe in.
Of course this has its limits. But I think that should always remain a guiding star to shoot towards.
Thank you for reminding me about how federalism should work. It does sound appealing. The problem is, I find myself in a state (NJ) that disgusts me but I can’t just pick up and leave and live in Montana.
I am in Illinois (Chicago) that also disgusts me.
Fully understand the “can’t just get up and move” argument in the sense that it can be insanely difficult. I have not gotten up and moved from Chicago for just these reasons.
However, I do not think the difficulty of this refutes the underlying premise. I.e., I just had an Uber driver this weekend who with 7 children at the age of 45 moved from Mexico to the US with no family in the US and no community or connections to speak of. Further, they initially moved to Florida, lived there for 4 years, then moved to Chicago.
Both of these moved I have to imagine were insanely financially straining, and also probably managed to turn their life on their head.
(Only speaking for myself here because I do not know your situation) If someone can make those decisions and manage to make those moves, I have to imagine the possibility of the change is available to almost everyone. The problem is, not many people are willing to flip their own life on its head to make that change.
Once again, I fully understand the sentiment and agree with it, it is currently effecting my life. But, I do not think the difficulty of the choice should be understood as being capable or incapable.
Great observation.
In my case, I am capable of moving but have family obligations in NJ, so here I am stuck.
Brian, try Michigan it's almost as good as Montana :-) We even have some Buffalo herds in the Upper Peninsula.
👍👍
That appeals.
But, for me anyway as I've posted elsewhere, change takes place faster and better the smaller the group, right? State, city, locality. It's also where people can try things without panic that if it doesn't work, the *entire country* will go down the tubes.
Politics like most everything else these days. It'll take some experimentation to see what fits best in what circumstances. The circumstances for the whole country? Does *anyone* believe they can even put a *finger* on a problem that big? IMO (In My Opinion).
I agree with you. When the Supreme Court took over the role of legislators they created a deep polarization within the country.
The abortion issue of our time is akin to the slavery issue pre-1863. Both were made worse by Supreme Court decisions and acted to harden positions.
Was just reading how Chief Justice Taney thought he was solving the slavery problem. Did a lot *more* to start the Civil War. Unintended consequences are a female dog.
I am nearly 100% pro-life Raziel, as you and I have talked about before. Honestly, until yesterday, I would have said I was OK with Congressional regulation though, essentially a European style solution. However now that Roe has actually been repealed, I find myself less certain about that.
Conservatives have been on the losing side of SCOTUS for decades, and now that we've actually seen a major goal accomplished through the Court, I kind of understand what possessed liberals to push for more and more and more for so many decades. There's gratitude, but also a rush of adrenaline that comes when your realize you've won. Immediately, your mind turns to, "What else could we win? What other issues could this Court set right?" I'm trying to resist that urge today, but quite honestly, pushing for SCOTUS to grant 14th Amendment protections for all in-utero babies is very tempting. What they did yesterday was actually a compromise, the maximal position was to grant fetal personhood.
I am honestly trying to take Nellie's advice and not rub it in. Considering the number of progressive SCOTUS gloat-fests I've witnessed in my 50 years on this Earth. As much as Court ordered fetal personhood sounds good, it's not he answer either, and I know that. Fundamentally, the more issues that the Court returns to the political process the better. For two groups of people who see the world so differently but must share a country, it's either federalism or warfare. And I prefer "live and let live". Fortunately today, babies get to do that too.
I agree. If there is a "red wave" come November, the conservatives MUST resist overreaching. I watched in horror when the Rebiblicans squandered the 1994 electoral landslide due to hubris and overreach, destroying their chance to fundamentally put the nation back on the rails. If you Righties win - and recent reports suggest that the Left is already working a plan to "win" in the same way they did in 2020, so don't count on it - don't screw the pooch yet again. You Republicans are really good at losing.
That's interesting, Jim, becuase I'm not worried about overreach from the GOP, I'm concerned that the establishment, blue-blood, donor-class who actually runs the show will work hard to keep the party from going far enough.
We have a major political party that believes:
1) America is irredeemably racist from the founding, and therefore justice should be race dependent.
2) "Man" and "woman" are simply ontological categories untethered to anything in the real world.
3) Abortion must be permissible right up to the birth canal.
4) Young children should be encouraged to choose their gender at an early age and as they get older, to alter their bodies (preferably with state financing) to reflect that choice.
5) Enforcing the country's border is racist and must stop.
6) If you speak against any of this, you are guilty of hate speech and must be silenced at all costs.
7) Government and corporate power and censorship are not a concern as long as they are used to hurt the other side.
I am far more concerned that the Republicans will fail to take this threat seriously, that once elected, they will go back to the only thing they know: pushing tax cuts. Because to the donor class, that's the real problem in America.
Countering those things is not overreach; it's just common sense. Overreach consists - my favorite - of Congress' inserting itself into the Terry Schiavo case. Attacking gun owners with laws that do absolutely nothing to reduce gun crime but hamstring the overwhelmingly law-abiding legal gun owner. (That would be me.) Using government power to "get" your enemies. (That would be the current and past Democrat administrations.) The abominable PATRIOT Act, which attacks your freedoms in ways you can't even imagine. Creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA (Republican administration). Using government power to curtail rail shipments of fertilizer, diesel fuel, and coal in hopes of ramming through some version of the Green New Deal. (I just had THAT confirmed by my neighbor, a railroad engineer who Actually Drives The Train. There are railroad cars covered with tarps sitting on side tracks, filled with fertilizer, with permits to pull the cars being withheld.) Using the FBI, the NSA, the IRS to persecute - not prosecute, persecute - people who disagree with you politically. EPA using government power to promote an egregious Leftist agenda. That sort of overreach. Also known in some cases as "corruption." (edited for clarity)
I understand the basis for why it was a bad legal argument, but was this decision also not judicial overreach? They could have simply ruled on the Mississippi case supporting the 15-week termination without also negating Roe and Casey. That to me felt like activism.
Well if you believe as a matter of law as the court did and many of us do that Roe was unconstitutional because of it’s legal reasoning then the correct thing is to undo that incorrect decision (like Brown did to Plessy for example). Now is the opportunity through our closest elected leaders to pass common sense laws on the issue that are both legal and find sufficient compromise.
Makes good sense. I agree.
Thanks Kathy, I have a much longer response here where I lay out my overall take on this and how we can get there and frankly why we should. This simply isn’t an issue where one side can win completely, we really must find middle ground.
Activism is reaching an outcome unsupported by the text and tradition of the US and its Constitution.
If there’s no constitutional right to an abortion, as they argued, then the issue must be turned over to state legislatures.
To do otherwise - to come up with yet another standard as Roberts tried to do with “reasonable time to get an abortion” - is continuing the original error of legislating from the bench.
In order to reach your conclusion they would need to find that there’s a constitutional right to abortion, in which case they would have sided with Jackson.
Well put.
Then this would have been revisited again and again in the coming years. Roe v Wade was unconstitutional and needed to be overturned. This is the first Court with the courage to do that.
The follow-up question, then, is why Roe wasn't overturned much earlier, without supposed activism? Now even if it is activism, it is not an overreach. There is no other way to correct previous judicial decisions. It had to be judicial, as Congress couldn't even consider making laws that would be different than stated by that precedent.
I don't think the majority of the Supreme Court wanted to be faced with having to review every states' abortion laws, the Court wanted to be rid of the issue. Moreover, the Court (like most legal observers) understood the Roe Court simply amended the Constitution to its liking, rather than interpret it.
The activism was on the part of the abortion activists who decided the Mississippi law--despite its exceptions for medical emergency and severe fetal abnormality--was too enough for them. The SCOTUS cannot make a ruling out of thin air. The Left pushed this right onto their plate.
Roe was a bad ruling. Even Ginsberg thought it was a bad ruling.
Maybe Obama should have kept his promise to codify Roe at the beginning of his term, when he had a supermajority.
Celia M curious to get a source for Ginsburg saying it was a bad ruling
https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-offers-critique-roe-v-wade-during-law-school-visit
https://thespringmagazine.com/2022/05/11/what-ruth-bader-ginsburg-thought-of-roe-v-wade/
What about the activism that led pro-abortion activist to challenge the Mississippi law in court? It had exceptions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormalities--in other words, it *protected* the third-trimester abortions that people claim are necessary. And it limited elective abortions to 15 weeks, which is on par with Europe.
That wasn't good enough for abortion activists.
If they hadn't fought that very reasonable law in court, Roe would still be in place.
I agree.
Well said.
I'm in the anti-Roe, pro choice camp. The SCOTUS decision was inevitable, and it pointed out a failure of the legislative branch, which should have passed a clean bill legalizing abortion with terms more reasonable than allowing the equivalent of, imho, infanticide.
The problem with the pro choice movement, similar to the second amendment issues, is that both movements are in the hands of fanatics. I believe the majority of the citizens support a right to choose, but with something similar to the European laws. I also believe that most people support the second amendment, short of bazookas, while respecting an owners rights. I, personally don't support red flag laws as they are ripe for abuse by activist states.
Anyway, Congress is the common problem as they are owned by lobbyists who represent the fanatics, and the elected officials are incapable of pursuing reasonable legislation.
Interestingly, the polling data confirms this. The majority of Americans support abortion rights, but with significant restrictions - which seems like the right place to try to land a legislative compromise.
That’s probably about right. Though even then, you can drill down to specific communities and find differences. Among urban black women, for example, abortion is so commonplace as to be a lifestyle choice rather than a rare necessity.
I think it's instructive that even in the most pro-choice states, the figure if not higher than 70%. Younger generations also aren't pro-choice under all circumstances. For instance, it's really unpopular among younger people to permit abortion in the case of fetal abnormalities, which states have been quietly attempting to ban for the past decade.
Pew says 61%. See state data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/21/do-state-laws-on-abortion-reflect-public-opinion/
@Jon 100%. Congress could have passed a federal law guaranteeing reasonable access to abortion and yesterday’s decision would have been meaningless.
The Republicans have an opportunity to nail down a huge voting block were they to take their post 2022 majority and pass a reasonable abortion law.
Yeah, I doubt it too, but it would be a pretty cool thing.
A law like Denmark’s which is abortion is allowed in first trimester only and after that only to save the life of the mother would be the best compromise and most reasonable Americans would support. The extremists who run both parties will never compromise and this issue will continue to be weaponized.
That law, if sponsored by the GOP would be opposed by 100% of the DNC. And vice versa. Congress is about power, not legislation for the people.
Elected officials know this much: If they solved problems that we face, they would be useless. So they don't have any incentive to solve anything. Just to say the other side doesn't wanna.
Government is best at creating problems and convincing us only it can fix them.
They certainly could , but I couldn’t imagine they would
It’s actually not quite that simple, as Congress does not have the authority to pass laws about whatever it pleases. By and large, criminal statutes are put in place at the state level. When states agree about what constitutes a crime then this isn’t a problem--detained murderers are freely transferred to the jurisdiction in which they committed murder to face judgment.
Differential laws about abortion brings us into uncharted territory, as we now have some states which consider it tantamount to murder, one of the gravest felonies, while others consider it to be a routine medical procedure.
They could pass it under an extension of Civil Rights law, and probably would.
Good analysis here: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/does-congress-have-the-constitutional-authority-to-codify-roe
Yes, I probably should have clarified that Congress *can* pass any law it pleases, but not all laws are Constitutional and enforceable. In other words, any such law would be immediately challenged.
I do agree that from a purely constitutional perspective that a Federal Law is quite likely problematic. I do have a feeling though that IF (and it’s an enormous IF our Federal elected officials passed some reasonable middle ground solution on the issue where each side saw something that was far better than today the court might be inclined to to pass on reviewing. In the meantime common ground seekers should work with our legislators in our own states to push middle ground compromises instead of the extremes that have happened on both sides in some states.
Thank you, you’re right. I did not consider this. Another reason why I like the comment section!
The typical Congressional workaround for issues like this is to punish states by turning them away from the federal teat (i.e. no tax dollars) when they pass laws that don’t meet Washington’s standards. However, this is one issue where the ideological zealots probably will not be deterred by such tactics.
Well the partial birth abortion ban was upheld so congress has some ability to get involved.
What you say is true. One of the real tragedies here is that SCOTUS will be blamed for the failures of Congress and that will lead to distrust in the one branch that can serve to keep our society intact by upholding the Constitution. Those who keep asking SCOTUS to make law simply do not understand the Constitution and the theory behind it. They are in fact shirking their own responsibilities of their participation in this REPUBLIC by trying to short-cut the process and bully into place their own desired laws.
That’s rule by MOB.
If this trend continues we won’t just be seeing people moving to states of their choice based on abortion availability, we will be seeing people leaving the country to go somewhere where the law of the land is better appreciated and abided!
You nailed it. Clarence Thomas (I haven't seen his specific quotes) has talked about other bad SCOTUS decisions he would like to go after, and I believe they're not because he opposes the specific position (gay marriage), but because they're the products of activist judges carrying the water for a hopelessly screwed up congress. Nancy, and Harry Reid took congress in a very divisive direction ever since they took control of both house back in 2006, and there is no longer any room for compromise. Until that's fixed, SCOTUS is going to be tempted to 'pass laws' to address problems in the country.
Justice Thomas remarks appear very indiscreet and provocative rather than esoteric remarks on state laws and the constitution. What cases are heard by the Supreme Court should not be proactively announced by any justice. His timing to make this announcement on social issues that are divisive and could impact an election seems to continue the sad trend of justices making and taking political stances. (Justice Ginsberg comment that her husband would have moved to New Zealand if Trump is president) These comments by the justices are eroding the respect once held for the wisdom of this court.
I believe him—he’s a Constitutionalist. I support limited abortion, gay marriage, and gun ownership, but I believe in following the laws as they were intended by the framers. When you read history, you realize how important that is—but we may be past that anyway. The Democrats who are threatening to burn down the country aren’t really interested in laws and debate—they seem to be motivated beyond a particular ‘issue’ —they are always looking for the next reason to spread hatred, looting and burning.
Yes, very true. Advocates of abortion have been too lazy to develop a comprehensive approach, build the necessary consensus and submit / pass a workable legislative solution. But why should they ? They had it all with Roe and waisted 50 years. I think a majority of Americans support a reasonable framework to deal with this issue. Let’s hope elected officials can muster fortitude to accomplish the task.
It is no longer a "pro-choice" movement. It has been turned into a "pro-abortion" movement. That has sickened me and pushed me to the other side.
“We know that it’s chic these days to write off virtues like civility and decency and humility and grace. We believe those things are the only way forward. That the only alternative to violence is persuasion and argument.
We hope that in some small way Common Sense is able to facilitate that exchange, to provide a forum for good-faith argument, to make it easier for people of varying backgrounds and opinions to forge a greater understanding, not with an eye toward papering over our many differences or the profound moral and medical and political implications of yesterday’s ruling, but with the hope that that might make living together more possible.”
I had to get off of social media yesterday because it worse than I had imagined it would be in the wake of this decision. The above quote is a reminder that panicked vitriol will continue to get us nowhere.
'We know that it’s chic these days to write off virtues like civility and decency and humility and grace.'
The great Walter Sobchak once said:
Nihilists! F*** me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
You could say that they're "over the line."
Haha, perhaps The Dude could teach us all a lesson here.
SHUT THE FUCK UP DONNY!! (that actually applies ;P )
As soon as I heard the news I logged off everything. And I mean ev-ery-thing. I do not regret it.
I never go *on* social media. I'm lucky that way.
I went on Twitter for about 6 weeks a couple of years ago. Never again. Nothing to be gained there. Haven't tried any others.
TY... Don't blame Ya.
I have FB and Twitter accounts. Never used FB. But have used Twitter a little, just to look at a few tweets. Not even that any more. Instagram and all them I never got involved with.
The only social media I use these days is Substacks. *Too* much on them, I s'pose. Ah well...
I'm tempted to think Kavanaugh, et. al. leaked the verdict on purpose in order to blunt yesterday's reaction. Given how hostile it was - can you imagine if it came out of left field without a two-month runway?
Really. Really? You think Kavanaugh was the source of the leak. On what grounds?
I did say et. al....
I think that everyone knew this would be a bombshell if it came without warning - and that the conservative factions (maybe not the justices themselves) knew that this victory could be pyrrhic if it was sprung on a society on edge. The fact that some of the crazies on both sides had 2 months to prepare - and the media, as well, 2 months to spin, blunts the impact of yesterday's announcement by an incredible amount.
It doesn't change the facts on the ground - but it may have prevented a Rodney King situation.
Agree. It allowed Republicans to start formulating their messaging in advance.
That said, I don't think the energy was very much displaced after all. I think a lot of tuned out people from cable news didn't much hear about or importance the leak. I think the actual decision did. There was always some listless hope on behalf of liberals that the leak was really just a trial ballon draft opinion - "they really wouldn't shoot the hostage would they??" kind of magical thinking. The actual ruling itself removes all the theoreticals about the leak, and now it's for real, and so far about 13 states now have legislated full bans on the books. It's not theoretical anymore, IMO.
Interesting times indeed...
My thoughts exactly.
Beyond unlikely.
The repeal of Roe did not come out of nowhere. State legislatures have been winning the fight over access to abortion for the greater part of a decade. Winning the war was inevitable and the consequence of poor political maneuvering by the pro-choice movement.
It shocks me that at a time when Feminism ™️ has never been more institutional that these developments weren’t front page news day after day.
I'm thinking it was also done by a repeal supporting Justice and/or their aides. But I think it was done to get votes in line. Promise a dangling fruit to the base that brought them there, to rescind it would take some judicial ju-jitsu to explain why their votes changed *after the leak* on behalf of the signees of the draft at the time - and watch Republican politicking over Supreme Court appointments collapse in the next election, if they couldn't get it done with 6-3 then never. Let alone let some of the left make butts of themselves (predictable) like the idiot who turned himself in on a plot to assassinate Kavanaugh to create a bunker mentality among the signees to proceed forward... Frankly, I think we need to look at Ginni's emails again ; P
Makes sense
With the number of abortions performed each year, it is clear it has become a method of birth control instead of just an emergency remedy for rape and incest.
I would like the screaming, violent women to take a deep breath and remember that pregnancy is not a tumor that just mysteriously forms in their uteri. They had sex with some guy. They need to use one of the many options available to prevent conception. How difficult is that? Not doing so makes them appear indifferent to the consequences, and if killing a little baby is necessary, no big deal. I find that unacceptable, even cruel.
Feminism was supposed to make women strong and independent, and yes, that meant no more waiting til marriage for sex. Fine. Have all the sex you want. But bear the responsibility of prevention.
I also think it is time the abortion process came out of the closet. Along with the “Jenny gets her period” movie we got in 5th grade, let’s have a “Jenny considers an abortion” movie. Let’s see what’s involved—-pills that cause serious cramps, bleeding, and passing a lump you flush down the toilet, or worse, an operation in which tiny limbs are sucked out. Maybe young women would be motivated to get and take that BC pill religiously if they knew what they were risking.
This country was founded on the idea of states as independent laboratories. We got away from that by allowing too much power in DC. I am happy to see that change a bit. State like CA, NY, IL will become abortion profit centers. Some will allow 9mo abortions. If that’s what their citizens want, so be it. But other states’ citizens find abortion has become all too common and easy.
There are tests now that detect pregnancy at 2 or 3 weeks. Women who have unprotected sex should take these tests regularly. If positive, use the pills as soon as possible. Women have miscarriages pretty often early in pregnancy, so I could rationalize aborting these early pregnancies as a miscarriage. But letting them go til you need that horrific surgical abortion—-which I wouldn’t do on puppies—- is just unacceptable.
When will we get back to valuing life? I look at those death cultish, screaming women with their bloody baby dolls and signs that say, “Fetus=good snack” and recoil in disgust. They sure don’t help their cause.
I donated my babysitting earnings to NARAL back in the day. Today, I make every single point you made above in arguing for the reasonable limits on abortion that most first world nations have.
The pro choice crowd acts as though we are still living in the sixties, when it was more difficult to get contraception, abortion was mostly illegal and women often didn’t know they were pregnant until four months or so.
Today, condoms are available everywhere—even in high school guidance counselors’ offices—Plan B pills are at every drug store, pregnancy tests reveal pregnancy within days of a missed period, and birth defects can be detected by bloodwork much earlier than the riskier amnios of my day. Most importantly, the age of viability of the fetus is around 24 weeks if not before.
On the this issue, as in many others, my former, lifelong side has gone off the rails. The concept of personal responsibility is anathema to them.
Your comment perfectly articulates my outrage over the pro-choice movement's framing and tactics. The lack of attention to the "root causes" of why so many women, especially Black women, are seeking abortions is delegitimizing. Most women seeking abortion were not raped and don't need it for a medical reason. They are women who weren't using birth control and this needs to be thoroughly researched, understood, and remedied. Also, 1/4 of women who have had an abortion have previously had one?! This is according to PEW. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/
(I support abortion for any reason, btw, because I think single motherhood is a terrible scourge on society).
I do too. I support a return to marriage and monogamy. The family with a father who has a job. Society would be a whole lot better if we returned to these “old-fashioned” values.
Thank you for saying what I’ve been reluctant to say out loud.
Very well articulated. Bravo.
I came of age in the late 70's, early 80's. The right to abortion was taken for granted in the circles in which I ran. The whole sexual revolution was a given. As a woman I thought this was all good and right and I didn't question it. It was only as I moved into my 20's that the cracks began to show in my own life. I won't bore you with the details but over the years (decades actually) I changed my mind about abortion. Philosophically I reasoned that it wasn't ok for a larger more powerful person to take the life of a small powerless person. (With the advent of high tech ultra-sound it was no longer possible to deny the humanity of the fetus in the womb.) On a practical level, I know both from my own life and from reading various studies (I am too lazy to provide links but they are out there) that the sexual revolution has made both men and women less happy- and unlimited abortion is the backstop to the sexual revolution. Casual sex without attachment has infantilized men and objectified women's sexuality more than ever. Our dignity, both men's and women's, has been sacrificed on the altar of sexual permissiveness. None of us are better for it. I do not want to criminalize abortion. I was fortunate to never have one but here's something ironic for you- the friends I knew who had abortions all had the same sentiment, "I felt I had no choice." I find it strange that "pro-choice" people often target pregnancy centers for their criticism. Is not the desire to raise a child from an unplanned pregnancy a "choice?" I am almost 60. I want to help create a culture for life. I want human beings to embrace their dignity. I want abortion to be unthinkable. I want men and women to flourish and I want every newly conceived life to be embraced with wonder and awe. Human beings are selfish- none more than me so I know this is a tall order but it is one I am willing to work for. Peace to all regardless of where you fall on this issue.
You might enjoy reading the thoughts of Jennifer Morse at ruthinstitute.org
Thank you- I have heard of her. I'll look it up-
Fortunate for me has been my decision to keep minimal social media accounts and to frequent them only once a day. The exception is participation in thoughtful comment sections on thoughtful blogs. This being one such of a few.
Admittedly, I did bristle at the first line referring to “constitutional right to abortion.” I have always thought that was a wrong characterization. It is not the SC’s role to make law and there is nothing in the constitution that I can find that creates a right to abortion, so there is nothing in the constitution for SCOTUS to affirm.
I think we will do well to thoroughly read both Justice Alito’s and Justice Thomas’s explanations. I do sincerely trust that they have not justified the decision merely on personal religious or ideological grounds but on grounds relating directly to what are the role and responsibility of the Supreme Court in deciding ANY case.
What's this nonsense about a Texas woman driving to New Mexico for an abortion "being extradited" back to Texas. Stop with the frivolous hysteria that only throws fuel on the fire. Anyone wanting an abortion will be able to do do.......just like anyone of color wanting to vote (as in Georgia) will be free to do so. By the way, Gavin Newsom has announced that California will provide free abortions to out-of-state women. I wonder if birthing men will also be allowed free abortions in California?
That part made me roll my eyes too. There’s also the whole concept of venue and jurisdiction. If you murder someone in New Mexico, they don’t charge you with murder in Texas. I agree that this was a hysterical comment based off a disregard for elementary understanding of legal procedures.
That part made me squint too. I decided to give Bari the benefit of the doubt that she was just posing questions others will have. I think it is clear she disagrees with the Court and being gay and married to another woman she likely worries what will come of other decisions the Court has made.
Bari, as do we all, has the right to her opinions, but she will at some point have to concede that “abortion” is not a Constitutional Right, or else I (et alia) will have to be convinced somehow that said right is actually in there.
Mind, I have not said anywhere in this discussion what my own position is and the reason I have not is because I do not believe that SCOTUS up to yesterday was deciding whether or not abortion is good or bad, or legal. It is ONLY deciding whether or not ROE was ever appropriate.
This is what the mob will never look at.
I agree. That was beneath Bari’s intellect to make such a hyperbolic statement. That and that abortion was a constitutional right. I couldn’t read further after tripping across those two wholly false assertions.
It was a bit disappointing, though I’m sure she probably wrote this in haste. The rest of the article was an eloquent plea for civility; something I generally agree with. However, In the current political climate, reasoning and conversing with the jacobin-like mob types is kind of like trying to convince a lion to eat lettuce.
Good point. I do appreciate the call to civility, but I suspect her readers aren’t the ones who need to hear and digest that message.
She’s not perfect. She’s doing her best. She’s doing a huge amount of good. Let’s cut her some slack.
I dunno. I think cutting people slack, in general, has gone outta fashion.
Can't cut a person slack, unless they agree with You on *every* issue, right? And mebbe not even then.
I believe most of us really appreciate Bari and the amazing work she's doing. So many comment regularly. The repeal of Roe is very volatile and several leaders are inciting violence based on their ignorance of the laws for which they took an oath to uphold. Perhaps, like medical doctors, politicians' oaths should include the promise "to do no harm."
The summer of 2020 destroyed so many lives: people died, lost their homes, businesses and so much was the result of ignorance. We've learned it doesn't take much for many people to make an excuse for doing harm. The wrong words can cause a very wrong reaction.
When it comes to this issue, Bari needs to take a Civics class; she defaulted to her NYT political identity which lacked "Common Sense."
She’s a Lefty, but she mostly stays in reality. At least as much as a Lefty can lol.
My boss, an attorney, said the exact same thing. His source was CNN lolol
I wonder how Newsome will pay for it. Another federal bailout?
Exactly. Anyone who "rats out" an abortion-seeking woman will be in violation of HIPAA - which IS a federal law. I would trust the DOJ to come out with full force against any schmuck who would violate HIPAA in order to turn in an "abortion-seeking womxn."
Given social media usage these days I doubt HIPAA would play any part.
I think she is referring to the attempts by Missouri and Texas to pass laws allowing residents of those states to sue abortion providers in other states if they perform an abortion on a woman from Texas or Missouri.
Thanks for clarifying!
Yes, birthing men will as their identity will be respected.
I think the heart of the abortion debate comes down to whether or not you recognize the humanity of an unborn child or not.
The pro-choice side makes very convincing arguments... if you believe the unborn child is just a “cluster of cells” or a “parasite”.
For me, I simply haven’t heard any arguments to convince me that an unborn child is not an unborn child.
It doesn't really need to be, you can recognize the humanity of a fetus while still supporting abortion rights.
A decent analogy is blood or organ donation. If I am a perfect match for donation for someone close to me and for some reason am the only possible donor, it would still be wrong for the law to compel me to give blood or a kidney. Even if it means the certain death of that other person, no law should force one citizen to provide the contents of their body to another.
Medical consent must be free if it is to have any meaning at all.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the argument you're presenting. An organ transplant is not the same thing as a developing human being.
I've also heard this comparison: if you were hooked to life support with someone else, would you be allowed to unhook yourself?
The question, to me, seems kind of silly. In what possible situation would you be somehow hooked on life support to another person and through what circumstances would that have occurred? A developing human being inside a pregnant woman, however, is the most natural and common thing in the world.
A pregnancy will result in a person being born. If you are pro-choice, then at what stage of development does it become acceptable to terminate the life of the child?
That is a specious argument IMO. The human reproductive process needs no external interference to do what it is formed/designed to do: create humans.
Your argument turns the human into a parasite without actually using the word.
This argument seems to leave us at the same point as any other - is there no limit? If medical consent requires allowing a woman to do what she wants with anything inside her then aren’t we back to allowing abortion up until birth to take the argument to its logical conclusion?
And this is what should be debated at the state level. Yesterday's decision for me wasn't so much about the act of abortion itself but which political authority has the authority to regulate it. Is it the courts or the people? It should be the people.
Exactly. Striking down RvW doesn’t really have anything to do with the morality of abortion, per se. it has to do with whether it is a constitutional right and how the government should regulate it. Given our federalist system, I think RvW was the right decision.
From a moral perspective, thank God this evil has at least had restrictions put on it.
I disagree. The social media vitriol that I’ve seen leads me elsewhere. It tells me that many woman first and foremost, view this decision as an attack on them personally, their womanhood. Secondarily, they consider the unborn. That attack engenders moral outrage and emotion, the likes of which sought to pass an Equal Rights Amendment, but could not. It burns like a flame. It’s a place I can’t even go with many of the woman in my life because it hurts too much. They don’t even care about what the constitution says. They want their dignity.
I’ve always been insulted by the claim that my most important “right” is to kill off my children.
I can’t comprehend the mindset of the when of whom you speak.
I understand and greatly respect your point of view. But my choice is to either persevere or walk away. I cannot change them. So I persevere.
Sometimes that’s all one can do.
👍👍
Abortion is not illegal in 13 states (though it may soon be in Missouri, at least for now). The Supreme Court decided it is not an enumerated right of the Federal government to decide such matters (the Supreme Court) under the Constitution, meaning the states shall decide. If a state decides abortion is illegal, then it will be illegal within the borders of that state. If a state decides it is legal up to or during delivery at 9 months, then it will be legal.
The Roe decision was wrong and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said so much. The case is based upon “substantive due process” which is a foggy interpretation of the 4th and 14th Amendment that sweeps up rights and obligations that are not in the Constitution and protects or creates these from state or federal law. The problem with “substantive due process” is just that, it is substantive and can serve both right and left. It goes both ways.
Abortion is a decision that must be made by each state under a Federal system. The same is true for gay marriage and other rights to “privacy.” It may take time and may lead to twists and turns, but in the end society supports and grows to accept the codification of such changes. You, Bari Weiss, are not an emotionalist. You may support abortion anytime or anyplace, but you also must support a government of laws and a Constitution that is not written to solve all contingencies at the Federal level.
The states get to decide all that is not an enumerated power in the Constitution, unless you want to do away with state and local government. But think first before you jump all the way. There are bigger issues here. One Federal government - all powerful - carries risks of authoritarianism. Take your pick: Have uniform abortion in all 50 states and risk centralized, authoritarian power, or let the states decide. Trust “we the people”, they and their state legislatures will eventually arrive at legislative solutions that are best. 9 people sitting on a court in Washington too often get it wrong, struggling for decades to unwind what they have done (see slavery and Jim Crow). Better to read the Constitution and the Declaration in the clear language with which they were written.
Huzzah! Thank you for weighing on this, Mr. President. Give our regards to Dolley.
Does the federal government have the power to mandate that states permit abortion? My educated guess would be NO under the much under appreciated 10th amendment.
The Federal government cannot compel the states to legalize anything unless it involves a denial of procedural due process (application of the Bill of Rights to the states via the 14th Amendment) which can require a state to take affirmative action or repeal an existing law. But, as we all know, the Federal government often uses Federal funding to impose rules on the states in order to qualify for funding - a kind of bribery. The concentration of wealth in the central government through the Federal income tax amendment, undisciplined Federal borrowing, and the creation of a 4th branch of government, the administrative agencies, opens many financial and regulatory means to enlarge the Federal government and subjugate the states, greatly undermining state power and forcing them to comply.
As for those who sometimes cite “states rights” and secession as vital rights, secession was decided once and for all - states can join the union, they cannot leave it unless expressly authorized by Federal law. As for states rights - the argument the states can abridge the Constitution and the full application of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights was resolved by the 12th 13th, and 14th Amendment - which sanctioned Lincoln’s illegal action in the Emancipation Proclamation. As for “Jim Crow”, that required the application of the 14th Amendment to eradicate this despicable practice and could have been fully addressed by the judicial branch had it read the Constitution along with the Declaration and Bill of Rights. Instead, the Supreme Court adopted Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 until Brown v. Bd. of Education was decided in 1954. There is no doubt state laws were denying one class of citizens equitable and fair treatment under Jim Crow laws, and procedurally were violating the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
That's what I was thinking, the will deny health care funding unless the provider offers abortion services. The bat rastards!
You've got the right of it on how we got here, Sir (I assume).
I've been reading some papers You wrote to the citizens of NY back when the question of ratify the Constitution came up. Slow going, as a lotta it seems to apply even today. Learning a lot. And Alexander Hamilton has been noted in saying the Central Gubmint would never get *TOO* strong. Too bad he couldn't foresee Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and the pretender Biden.
I don’t fault Lincoln as much, but his administration set some bad precedent out of necessity. And don’t forget TR. He was all-in on regulation.
Yeah, it's hard to *fault* Lincoln. And, yeah. TR had more EO than "almost" all-a them put together.
With our political leaders hurling invective with such ease I don’t know that they’ll be able to come together with reasonable, common sense federal legislation on the issue of abortion. Hatred is the order of the day, and hatred sells. I pray they’ll drop the hyperbole and get to work on on federal laws that both sides can live with, but I fear that these attention seeking overgrown children will intentionally spike legislation with absurdities to prevent a compromise and keep the issue unsettled for political purposes.
You're right. Keeping the people angry is the goal. It's up to the states to legislate abortion laws which means these goofballs have to work; something that is antithetical to most of them. Our fading president weakly implores for peaceful protests knowing full well that it was intimidation and violence that helped get him elected.
Biden also refused to condemn the blatant, illegal physical intimidation of Justices in their homes, even the guy threatening openly to assassinate Kavanaugh.
Very true. It was barely covered in MSM. The bias has become dangerously out of control.
I think this was inevitable. After all, the 2020 election wasn’t really a choice between Trump or Biden, but either Trump or not Trump.
After Trump was gone, what else were they going to focus on? Covid? Vaccines? J6?
Now they can wave the bloody shirt about abortion.... which seems appropriate.
Waters is actively inciting violence. Again.
Who is?
Maxine Waters. Formerly of "get up in their face" fame.
Ya know for me bottom line - this decision is now back in the hands of the people. As most decisions should be with the exception of protecting our borders and ensuring our military is well funded to fight off enemies foreign and domestic. That is the purpose of the federal government. Its too bad the decisions in the hands of the people led to the destruction of small business and the destruction of the psyche of many children across America the last two years. Because the decisions of the people sometimes suck for some people. But thats how it rolls in a Republic - states rights govern and those of the elected officials in those states. And that right there my friends is why I #walkedaway from the Democratic party and will NEVER go back to those cretins. Because they want the decisions in the hands of a few crazy federal bureaucrats. NO THANK YOU.
Agree. No matter what one thinks and feels about yesterday’s decision, it was a great day for those who believe in the beauty of a Representative Republic. It will encourage all of us to focus locally, which can only be a good thing. I’m hoping the power corrupted asshats in DC stay out of this, but I know I’ll be disappointed.
I agree it OUGHT to bring about what you say. Sadly, I am not so sure that it will because it really has been a very long time since we have seen real representative democracy in action, a lot of people have no idea of what it means to be a republic, let alone understand their responsibilities as members of it.
A niece and very sweet, young, new graduate from a very big university in her social media post about yesterday’s decision is solid evidence that at least her generation has no understanding or respect for how our government is meant to work. I fear the coming violence by the mob.
I think you’re right. The question of abortion’s morality aside, it seems to me that this is something that should be decided by individual states instead of the federal government, considering our federalist system.
It’s almost like the founders of this country already saw this sort of thing coming lol
This is the one issue that is extremely difficult to find common ground. In my old age I have come to understand both sides of the argument. Particularly after I educated myself on Roe, which I suspect 90% of the people do not bother to do. I am optimistic that logic and reason can light the way.
My view: it should be legal to murder unborn babies in the first 15 weeks. Let’s just cut the semantics and call it what it is. Stop trying to make ourselves feel better by using words like “healthcare”. Then we can have a reasoned and logical discussion. Abortions have a lot of societal benefits and not everyone wants or is ready to have a baby. I’d vote to allow abortions and also to provide free services for all women. That said , given there is a second life involved , I do understand why some people, societies, or jurisdictions might view things differently not want to allow it. I don’t think that killing an unborn baby can be an unalienable right.
So, yes I am pro choice, but I will not sacrifice logic and reason. The Roe decision was flawed and the court made the right call which is why the dissent is completely void of any fact or legal argument (par for the course for the Left). That said , I hope all 50 states or even the Federal government pass laws allowing abortion.
For this greatest nation to survive, we need to get back to unemotional and unpolitical discourse. The Left has no ability to apply logic and reason, only to force their will.
In my view 15 weeks is too long. A woman has missed 4 periods in that time, and there are many other symptoms that alert her to the fact that something is going on in her body. The baby at 15 weeks in fully formed and recognizable. Surely she should be expected to act sooner than 15 wks. I would say 8 weeks.
Fair point. I am not locked into 15 weeks specifically, I don’t even know why that number was in my head. I thought that was the accepted timeline.
It was locked in my head my whole adult life, I never questioned it. Then I googled what a 12 week fetus looks like and I changed my mind about everything at 35yrs. I agree with NCmaureen about this one.
great. so I will count on you to call first thing Monday to your elected officials and encourage them to codify a law that abortion is safe and legal up to 15 weeks
a "woman". how about a girl. how about a 13 year old?? and you are assuming that 15 weeks equals 4 missed periods. just not true for everyone. some people may even be on birth control and have a pregnancy. not foolproof you know
As a libertarian leaning Canadian male, my opinion on US abortion is probably not very relevant.
I’m personally a “you do you and I’ll do me” sort of person. I suspect I fall in a majority view that after the first trimester, I feel abortion should be restricted to rare health issues, but up to that point it should be a woman’s personal decision what she does.
I do think the decision is likely the proper one legally. The Democrats had numerous opportunities in the last 50 years to attempt to craft a national law to ensure some measure of abortion rights, yet I can’t help but feel they didn’t because the specter of Roe v Wade being overturned helped keep a percentage of their base highly engaged and contributing.
I do agree that the pandemic highlighted the importance of states’ rights, in a way I wish we had in Canada, to provide a counterweight to an omniscient federal leviathan bent on taking away individual choices in the name of the greater good.
And perhaps this issue is part of the price to pay to maintain that counterweight. If you don’t like your state’s abortion law, and that’s an important issue to you, move to one you do like.
Perfect argumentation
The American federal government was set up to do certain limited functions, leaving other necessary functions to the states, which were already sovereign units.
In the past 150 years, the federal government has exercised some powers over the states, most notably when states treated groups like African Americans badly. Mostly, federal oversight came when an amendment to the federal constitution could be cited as justification.
A federal law regarding abortion would have the same lack of jurisdiction as the Roe / Casey ruling. Lacking a new amendment, the federal government has little say. It remains a state matter.
The federal government only has the power granted to it by the Constitution. I would bet that a national law mandating states to permit abortions in the first trimester would be unconstitutional. There is no appetite for our legislators to have such a debate either.
I think that depends on the state. I hear that roughly half will effectively ban abortion within the next few weeks. Some others will legalize abortion and even provide material assistance for out of state mothers to abort. There may indeed be some state legislatures that have other things on their minds, but those are probably states that already enacted laws that would take effect when Roe got overturned.
so I will assume your phone will be being used to call your state reps Monday AM to make sure they know your ( and most peoples) stance on this issue and let them get back to less inflammatory but more important issues like our economy
"And cultural ones: How did we wind up with a feminist movement that is policing our ability to say the word woman, but has been unable to safeguard second-wave feminism’s most important victory?" Outstanding column Bari, as usual. Unfortunately the trans movement has preempted the feminist movement, and ultimately will erase many of its gains. The recent proposed changes to Title IX, for example, will in the long term destroy women's sports. Other things are being lost for women and girls, like the simple right to modesty and privacy in dressing rooms and showers.
Roe being overturned should shake up the boneheaded "Feminism is for everyone! Trans women are women!" crowd. Now more than ever, sex based rights need to be defined and protected via the democratic process. (Duh.) Citizens just need to get over their fear of democracy (and their indoctrination concerning The Other- I'm unsure which is worse these days) and get off their butts and use it. A new era beckons. Will America step up and embrace it?
Too true and too sad.
The case before the court, Dobbs v. Jackson, would have put the US in a point of consistency with 90% of Western Europe. It is hard for me to see that as Draconian when so much admiration has been heaped on our European brothers and sisters. One has to wonder whether we couldn’t have navigated this fraught issue without the demands that abortion be legal up until delivery.
For this reason, I was so dismayed when Senator Schumer promised that right immediately upon the leak of the draft opinion. Surely that is not a position supported by anything close to a majority of Americans. That is why our nation is pulling its eyes out. We have no ability to compromise, no ability to recognize that we will never agree on all issues. And, yet, we march forward with these strident positions: open border, wall the border, gender is self-determined and a choice for minors, it never ends.
Thank goodness for Merrick Garland encouraging nonviolence yesterday. What I heard from our POTUS was simply dividing the country at the time of raw disappointment to so many, calling this simply a decision of Trump justices, and further gouging our divisions and turning what should be our most sacred branch into a political tool.
We must stop partisan behavior in ourselves or men like Trump become attractive as wrecking balls. The most difficult political position to occupy is dead-center. If we are not willing to impose that discipline on ourselves, and choose strict right or left options, we will abort this democracy.
timing is everything is it not? have no fear this was also timed.. the leak.. the leftist comments.. the division.. the lack of real explanation of how this works. the lack on both sides to encourage a middle of the road law that will work for 99% of the USA..even the notion that a federal law would solve all of this tomorrow.. no. all planned I fear