While We Wait On The SCOTUS Ruling
By Mitch Berg
Let’s talk about Roe.
I’m pro-life. I’m also one of those quaint hold-outs who’d like to avoid having a civil war if we can.
I’m also a *constitutional originalist*. We’ll come back to that.
I’ve seen a fair number of friends – people I know, personally, to be neither ignorant nor delusional – repeating some ignorant and delusional things about the Alito opinion, and about what’ll happen if “Roe” is struck down. Ban interracial marriage? Ban same sex marriage? Criminalize miscarriages? Force pregnancies?
It will do none of that. That’s *disinformation*.
So what *will* it do?
It’ll mean that choice supporters (and pro-lifers, for that matter) will have to do what gun owners have had to do for the past fifty years; convince voters, and legislators, one at a time.
That’s it.
Support reproductive choice? Then you have to convince voters, who elect legislators, that pass bills that get signed into law.
That’s it. Nothing else. It’s a power reserved to the states, and The People, under the 10th Amendment.
Now, if 70% of a state’s population supports abortion on demand – as the media continually tells us, every time the subject has come up this past few weeks – then pro-choice laws should slide through the legislature as fast as resolutions praising this year’s Eagle Scouts.
Shouldn’t be hard, should it?
If your response is “rights aren’t subject to popularity contests”, then:
- you get to convince people it’s a right. Not judges – voters.
- please apply that to every gun control law.
So what happens in Minnesota?
*Nothing*.
Abortion is considered a right in the MN Constitution (and an entitlement, as well), as it is in several other states. If you’re a pro-lifer and want to change that, you’ll need to get a constitutional measure on the ballot, and have it win.
That’s the case, with or without Roe).
May 19th, 2022 at 7:06 am
If I am not mistaken, these cases were decided on the principle of equal protection which is well-grounded in the constitution, whereas Roe was decided on the basis of privacy, which appears nowhere in the document.
Perhaps a privacy amendment would be a good idea, I would certainly support it – but SCOTUS is supposed to interpret amendments, not write them.
May 19th, 2022 at 7:15 am
Abortion is considered a right in the MN Constitution
Darn tootin’. We like killin’ babies here.
May 19th, 2022 at 1:25 pm
Interesting how the trappings of slavery, allowed by the original US Constitution, has been pushed out the front door only to now come through the back, ideologically justified by the constitutional ‘originalists’.
Just to clarify: Alito made it clear in his reasoning in the draft opinion why and how they will go after other unenumerated rights. Abortion pill access as well as some red states will criminalize traveling to other states to get an abortion, and will prosecute anyone helping. There are GOP initiatives already in the works to ban contraception. As the 2A argument goes — ‘slippery slope’….
May 19th, 2022 at 1:26 pm
The one thing I can see changing here in MN is that nationwide,Planned Infanticide and other abortuaries depend strongly on subsidies from the federal government and states, and have sometimes successfully appealed to the courts to preseve that funding. My guess is that if Roe is overturned, surrounding states to MN instantly end subsidies and put strong restrictions on the practice, and that will tend to drive people desiring abortions here.
And all of a sudden, MN liberals are going to have to explain why they’re helping fund abortions for not only Minnesotans, but people from North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and probably Nebraska as well. I would not be surprised if Minnesotans declined to pay that bill.
Regarding “it doesn’t do anything for contraception or same sex mirage”, sort of. Remember that the justification for Griswold and Obergefell is also “privacy”, so if that was somehow overturned, as is likely, we’re going to end up undermining those decisions as well, and possibly returning those to the states, too.
May 19th, 2022 at 4:43 pm
I, for one, live in terror at the thought that the people of Wisconsin will ban contraception for married people.
What hysteria . . .
The law Griswold overturned had been passed in 1879 and wasn’t enforced.
The idea that a similar law would be passed, and enforced, in 2022 is a joke. If you live in a state that WOULD pass and enforce such a law, you got a lot more problems than a ban on contraception.
May 20th, 2022 at 1:17 am
“ The one thing I can see changing here in MN is that nationwide,Planned Infanticide…”
Ok (huge sigh) … me again.
Because I cannot read this misinformation without writing about my experience back in the day, as a young (24 yr) female, in a monogamous relationship (strict Catholic guy BTW, so no birth control for him), who was solidly and responsibly on the pill (99+% effective) and found herself a week and a half late. So, I go to Planned Infanti……oh wait, Planned Parenthood for the free pregnancy test. Shaking with fear the entire time. I’m waiting, then I’m called into the Doc’s office. She sits me down, and tells me, very sternly, that I’m NOT pregnant. The reason they brought me into the office of bad news was because their first and foremost concern was why there was a possibility of me becoming pregnant in the first place when I wasn’t ready to be pregnant.
So again……please stop with the crap about PP being an abortion mill or ‘pro abortion’. I have issues with their mission statement myself, but the core truth remains, and it is that they have helped prevent abortions through access and education.
May 20th, 2022 at 3:18 am
…and I do realize that my post is irrelevant as far as the political issues at hand, but I really need to offer a true real life experience to keep the discussion real. Because …. the only real solution is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And that can’t happen politically, only socially. And here we are back at the whole problem of no personal responsibility anymore.
Proceed. Love this blog!
May 20th, 2022 at 6:07 am
Starbuck, if Planned Parenthood focused solely on the planning of parenthood, ie, pregnancy tests and contraception, rather than chopping up babies and selling their parts (a multi-million dollar business) their name would never appear in this blog – and most others.
May 20th, 2022 at 8:03 am
Starbuck, thank you for speaking up. Yes, Planned Parenthood takes a lot of hits from Conservatives – I’ll put my hand up to that – some of which it doesn’t deserve. Fair point.
And I acknowledge that your story explains why 75% of the public wants to preserve some access to abortion: just in case. If Roe is overturned and the legislature proposed limiting abortions to the Roe v. Wade “first trimester,” it would pass in an instant despite concerns from we who are abortion absolutists on the right-hand margin of the topic.
I suspect Planned Parenthood takes hits for the same reason the National Rifle Association does: they’re the biggest advocacy group for their particular special interests. That makes them the most visible targets. And Planned Parenthood does deserve to take some hits. It doesn’t limit its advocacy to family planning and first-trimester abortions. Planned Parenthood advocates for abortions up to and during birth itself after which (as Greg correctly points out), it was caught on video talking about taking orders to sell the nearly-newborn-infant’s dismembered body parts for medical research. That’s not ‘just-in-case,’ that’s murder-for-hire. Planned Parenthood surely deserves criticism for that.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/health/planned-parenthood-undercover-video/index.html
May 20th, 2022 at 9:00 am
Starbuck, as I read their reports, about 40% of Planned Infanticide’s revenue is state and federal subsidies, another 30% is private contributions, and of the remaining 30%, over half is revenue from abortion. Source, ultimately, is Guttmacher.
Reality here is that without all that private and public subsidies, most of Planned Infanticide’s abortion clinics go away. And yes, many will object “look at all the good things besides abortion they do.”
I’ll grant that, but my contention is that those “good things” simply fund the abortion side. For a variety reasons, most people don’t want to get other obstetric care from an abortionist, starting with “I don’t want muscle memory to kick in when my child is being delivered.” and continuing with “that’s just creepy.” Hence abortionists need their own clinic in this country. Since abortion doesn’t cover the bills, they need something else to do so.
And along the same lines, you really don’t want abortionists functioning as a partial general or family practice doctor. The patients coming in deserve full medical service, not just a person to write a prescription for birth control.
May 20th, 2022 at 9:22 am
Planned Parenthood vehemently insists that it does not profit from tissue harvesting.
So why then would they do it?
In this risk-adverse age of outrageous medical liability what legal department would advise or board accept anything that accrues risk without showing a substantial offsetting profit?
May 20th, 2022 at 9:49 am
my experience back in the day, as a young (24 yr) female, in a monogamous relationship (strict Catholic guy BTW, so no birth control for him),
I assume your “monogamous relationship” wasn’t marriage, and yet y’all were, according to the Church, enjoying fruits relegated to married couples, so he wasn’t much of a strict Catholic after all, was he?
May 20th, 2022 at 2:51 pm
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May 21st, 2022 at 1:55 am
Right? Maslow=1, Catholic Church=0. But, I was 24. Not the best age for reason. BTW….the guy was also divorced. Strict Catholic, unless………