An anonymous lawyer friend (who is not Joe Doakes) writes:
I’d get in so much trouble if I posted this, but when I see people say that 70% opposethe overtruning of Roe v. Wade, my first thought is that no more than 2% even know what it says, much less what overturning it would mean.
And they also have no idea what the Mississippi law, challenged in the current case, says.
In terms of what it means?
I’m looking forward to explainingi this to pro-choicers: it means you’re going to have to do what we Second Amendment people have been doing for about the past fifty years; convincing people, one at a time, nationwide, of the rightness of your cause and case.
35 years ago, the same polls of uninformed and largely disinterested people said that 85% supported gun control, including a majority that supported banning handguns completely. That number is under 50% for the first time in a couple of generations.
And that’s because 2-3 generations of people have spent a lot of time, treasure and shoe leather convincing their fellow Americans that a constitutional right of the people is, in fact, a constitutional right of the people.
The terror the pro-choicers seem to feel about that concept tells us that while 70% of the people may respond to “Do you support women’s ‘reproductive rfights'” with “yes”, when you change it to “how are you with the thought of killing a gestating human?” it’s going to drop way off.
Question of the day: will the fire bombing of a prolife group’s office in Madison be investigated as a hate crime? Or a case of kids playing with matches?
Forget about it Golfdoc, its Madison!
The question I pose to the pro-choicers is; If it is true that 70% of the population support abortion, then just do what you always should have done, have Congress pass a law (or better yet a constitutional amendment) establishing at the federal level the right to an abortion.
how are you with the thought of killing a gestating human?
This implies some sort of ethical perspective such that no one would ever advocate killing a gestating human that is viable from the, what, 4th month much less killing a baby who is about to be born.
The baby killing crowd has declared acceptance of both these positions.
Yea, I’ve been going round and round with a few of my DemoCommie friends, who invoke the name of the late RBG, like that radical group called Ruth Sent Us or some crap, encouraging violence at the homes of the conservative Justices. I gave them a smack down when I told them that even she said Roe was flawed. Then, I showed this to them.
https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-offers-critique-roe-v-wade-during-law-school-visit
Silence.
Abortionists spent a lot of time and effort softening up the public, too, back in the early 1970’s. It was cultural conditioning, changing people’s minds so they’d accept abortion. It only worked on half the public which is why we still fight over abortion today. But I know it happened, I was there and I remember it.
About two years before Roe, “dead baby” jokes suddenly were all the rage. Teenagers laughing about piles of dead babies desensitized my generation to abortion, which creates actual piles of dead babies (looking at you, Kermit Goswell). And right after Roe was decided, dead baby jokes were no longer funny. Conditioning successful, program ended.
Of course, that was in the days when changing minds was done the hard way, retail, person-by-person. Nowadays, we threaten to kill Supreme Court justices to intimidate them into ruling how we want society reshaped. Much easier to terrify five people than to persuade 300 million. Which is why the Left is so desperate about the Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe. They’re afraid they’ll have to start the cultural conditioning all over again. It’ll be like being back in junior high all over again.
I understand the arguments regarding states legislating— I don’t understand why it’s better to have the legislature decide about abortion rights. Why should the government be inside the room when doctors and women have very personal conversations about their bodies?
That said — I believe that life begins when the kids move out of the house. 😉
It’s not about abortion to the Left, it is about defining women as something other than child-bearing human beings.
There is no equivalent effort to legally change the meaning of being male. The Left’s vision of women is the same as Aristotle’s: they are spindly, mutilated, incomplete men.
I can spot a rAT plagiarization a mile away.. 😉
https://barbtaub.com/2021/05/01/free-today-life-begins-when-the-kids-leave-home-and-the-dog-dies-humor-nonfiction-freebook/
Whenever it gets through moderation, y’all can read the source of the rAT plagiarization of the day.
Mister mandatory vax delivers a short lecture on medical privacy.
“I don’t understand why it’s better to have the legislature decide about abortion rights.”
I’ve got to agree with E on this one. It’s just silly for 50 state legislatures to be deciding issues of morality and life-and-death. Issues regarding abortion should be decided by the Pope.
What? We don’t agree? Well, if not the Pope and not the people’s elected representatives in the state legislatures, then who should have the power to decide? United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights? The Public Health Officer for each county (parish, in Lousiana)? Lesko Brandon has a pen and a phone – can he decide for every person in America?
I don’t understand Liberals’ sudden distaste for representative democracy.
Schumer is going to attempt to pass a law to codify abortion rights at the federal level.
The vote will not pass the senate. Schumer knows this, so it will likely be larded up the wish lists of the fervent pro-abortion forces in the Democrat party.
This will make democrats look bad. Schumer has a habit of doing stunts like this — calling votes that he knows that he will lose.
It’s past time for the Dems to admit that there leadership problem isn’t just with Slow Joe Biden, it’s with Schumer and Pelosi as well.
I have not done this, but this is why you will be immediately banned if you show a picture (ultrasound) of a baby at 15 weeks on social media. Not just a clump of cells anymore is it?
The law in question is a 15 week limit. That’s four effing months, you not gonna know you is preggers in that time?
It is so terribly ironic that the very same people always harping on about government infringing on individual liberties (e.g. on gun laws) demand just that when it comes to abortion. I’m all for access to safe abortions, and I think states are making terrible decisions in denying abortions to their citizens, but it is ultimately a state level question.
It is so terribly ironic that the very same people always harping on about “if it saves just ONE life…” push for the ability to kill children up to and including the birth process.
The federal government has robust means of detecting and combating actual conspiracies. Too robust, probably. That’s why the left looks so ludicrous when it continues to push its fake “Russian collusion” scandal.
So I wonder when the FBI, etc., is going to bust the organized intimidation campaign against the conservative SC justices?
You can’t “kill” a fetus that is unable to survive outside the womb. It’s not alive.
People who cannot differentiate between biological male and female have no opinion on abortion worth hearing.
E’s 11:18 is not a new idea, it echos ancient Sparta. After a baby is born, leave the newborn infant on a hillside alone for a few days. See if it can “survive outside the womb.” If not, the child was never really alive and therefore its death is no loss to society.
Excellent method of reducing over-population. Not sure how well it would go over in Woodbury. Some ‘helicopter’ moms seem very protective.
Emery’s comments are proof that the best way to discredit progressivism is to encourage progressives to keep talking.
That is really the question: is abortion an inaliable right like freedom of speech or is it not? Remember that pretty much every country in Wester Europe concluded it is not and therefore it was up to the legislator to rule. All of them rightly decided to give women the right to abortion. When put in a referendum in some countries, voters backed overwhemingly the right of women to decide on this. Even in Catholic Italy or Ireland. The argument therefore was closed.
Emery is now arguing that abortion is and is not an inalienable right.
^ You’re almost right — if you go down the US route, where *some* argue that abortion is an inalienable God given right, people will continue to fight over it.
It is so terribly ironic that the very same people always harping on about government infringing on individual liberties (e.g. on gun laws) demand just that when it comes to abortion.
Its only “ironic” if you find the two comparable in any way.
Lawful use of firearms harms nobody (who doesn’t have it coming, from a legal perspective).
Lawful use of abortion destroys, depending on who you ask, either a human life, or a clump of cells who, without any interference orbecome human.
The comparison makes no logical sense.
That is really the question: is abortion an inaliable right like freedom of speech or is it not?
When does life begin?
I mean, exactly.
Please be utterly, legally specific.
All of them rightly decided to give women the right to abortion.
Consider your use of the word “rightly,” Emery.
You know what a “right” is, I presume?
Read the first six pages. Alito makes no determination of when life begins, or whether an unborn child has a right to be carried to term.
What Alito does is demonstrate that Roe V Wade was legislation, not judging, and that Casey was wrong by its own lights in saying that respect for precedent demanded that Roe be upheld.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21835435-scotus-initial-draft
@MBerg — I’m not really sure a partially developed embryo can be called human life, but I can see where you’re coming from, its not a black and white issue.
Why do Republicans persist on dying on this hill. I don’t understand why Republican can’t say abortion is wrong but women have a right to make decision with their bodies in reference to abortions. Republicans are the party of small government and do not like the government telling what they can and can’t do.
E, your 1:42 reveals more about you than about us. Your argument fails on two levels.
First, you’re trying to employ Alinsky’s Rule 4 – make the enemy live up to its own book of rules – because you think Conservatives believe “small government” means “no regulation of horrific crimes.” That’s not what we believe.
Second, you’re trying to employ a begging-the-question logical fallacy by saying a woman’s choice to kill her baby doesn’t violate the baby’s right to life because the baby has no right to life. You skipped the hard part of the analysis – why DOESN’T the baby have a right to life? And who are you to decide?
Give it up, E. The more you post, the dumber you look.
What’s the 2A argument — “slippery slope”?
The GOP’s newly expansive view of government inserting itself between private firms, private employees and their healthcare providers is happening. This is an attack on women, but it also represents an incursion on healthcare, itself.
Rubio Targets Citi, Amazon With Bill on Abortion-Travel Benefits
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-05/rubio-targets-citi-amazon-with-bill-on-abortion-travel-benefits
You can’t “kill” a fetus that is unable to survive outside the womb. It’s not alive.
A fish cannot survive outside water, so by rAT’s moronic logic, it’s not alive.
I am so tired of leftist idiots (birm) saying “look at all the small government types wanting the government to control abortion.”
What a bunch of maroons. It’s called federalism you dolts. Let the states decide, not the gummint in Washington.
^ We agree on something — regulation is merely moving back to states. People get to decide what is best for them state-by-state.
^^ OR if they like the people can pass and ratify a constitutional amendment that makes it federal – if its true that 70% support abortion it should be easy, right?
Emery, a fish cannot live outside the water, either. Is it not alive?
There are many reasons that the states got into the business of prohibiting prenatal infanticide. For starters, there’s another human life involved, and going further, the “cads” of the world have learned to use legal abortion as a means of covering up their behavior, from getting girls pregnant all the way to forced prostitution and flat out rape, not to mention maternal death due to the procedures. “Covering up sin” is actually the big reason most states banned abortion.
I thought the Court was saying that the issue should be decided by voters and the legislature and not a theocracy…
^^utterly misses the point again.
Personally I think that the reason we got Roe was that, after the sexual revolution, bourgeois parents were terrified at the idea that their daughters would get pregnant and take them down a notch socially as their daughters social prospects diminished.
One of the things that we don’t enough about re: abortion is that no one is going to be forced to raise a child that they do not wish to raise. Feminists are afraid that after going through nine months of pregnancy and then giving birth to a human being, even the most progressive woman was likely to choose to keep the child rather than give it up for adoption.
Speaking of legal protection for the unborn, and JD, maybe you can help with this – are there not cases where a person was charged with double homicide if he killed a pregnant woman? If that is indeed the case, does this not show the law is settled?
Personally I think that the reason we got Roe was that …
I think your theory is tenable. I would add that I think back then we trusted the government to do the right thing in complicated issues. The anti-abortion Christians were tagged as nuts and so had little societal clout. Abortion, like so many other leftist causes (since then), was sold as a responsible if uncomfortable procedure that would never be misused.
The Constitution does not deal with the issue of abortion. Obviously it cannot deal with every single issue but only the underlying principles to be followed and that is the reason for having a Supreme Court, to ensure that individual state legislatures follow those underlying principles for the sake of the union. The principles allow freedom of choice whenever there is no overriding reason for restricting it. The Supreme Court in Roe vs Wade took a view that there was no justification for individual states to restrict freedom of choice in this matter and that was their duty to decide.
https://twitter.com/jimmied857679/status/1523088069322485761?s=12
OK, Emery, if it was the “duty” of the Supreme Court to decide that personal sexual conduct was so private that the states could not regulated it in matters like contraception and abortion, why did it take them decades to decide about the same regarding homosexuality? Why haven’t they decided that regarding, say, rape, pedophilia, pederasty, and bestiality?
A look at what they have, and have not, decided in Roe and other decisions reveals that the logic of Roe is nonsense. There is a very real limitation of government investigation in the 4th & 14th Amendments. However, if you’re going to argue that the people that enacted the 14th Amendment simultaneously were intending to enact a protection of abortion, you’re full of it, because those very same people were involved in expanding laws against abortion at the very same time.
To use your words, Emery, there is no “duty” for the Supreme Court to enact a decision on the grounds of the 14th Amendment that would have been an abomination to those who wrote and enacted it into law.
A fact.
About one in five pregnancies in the US today is terminated by abortion.
I haven’t checked the numbers but I would bet that this number is constant through time, before Roe and after Roe.
MP, it actually got quite a bit higher–about 30%–in the early days of Roe, and it’s dropped steadily since. Estimates of abortions pre-Roe are generally about an order of magnitude lower.
What goes on is that pro-choice advocates mix two categories, spontaneous abortion (e.g. “miscarriages”) and induced abortion to get the notion that abortion is relatively constant. It’s a lot like gun control advocates mixing suicide and homicide to get horrendous sounding death rates.
The Constitution is the same in Texas and New Jersey, so the issue is not actually the Constitution.
The issue is the separation of Church and State, which is more robust in some states rather than others. In New Jersey they are distinct. In Texas the division is muddled, not because of any Federal laws, but simply because of local beliefs. That is why people will talk about State’s rights. As if a woman has different rights in different states, or as if biology just works differently in Texas. The concept of equality is simply stronger in some places than others.
The Constitution is the same in New York City as in New York Mills. So the issue is not actually the Constitution.
The issue is fear of armed Blacks, which is more robust in some states that others. In New York City, they are terrified and strictly control guns. In New York Mills, they are not. The division is not because of any Federal laws, but simply because of local beliefs. That’s why people will talk about State’s rights. If a gun owner has different rights in different states, or firearms just operate differently in New York. The concept of freedom is stronger in some places than others.
[Want me to do Voting next? How about Zoning? I can parody your stuff all day]
Still not seeing where anyone on the pro-choice side is pointing out the errors in Alito’s reasoning in his opinion. The document has been out for over a week now, and all I read is really wild stuff about theocracy (no mention of God in the opinion) and even wilder stuff, from people who should no better, about Loving V Virginia.
It’s just a primal, irrational rage scream from the self-described “party of science.”
“About one in five pregnancies in the US today is terminated by abortion.
I haven’t checked the numbers but I would bet that this number is constant through time, before Roe and after Roe.”
There’s no way to know for sure, because there are no reliable numbers to check, anteRoe, but I’d bet my next paycheck you’re wrong, for a lot of reasons.
Yeah, I can see it both ways, Blade. On the one hand, marginal utility would mean that easing access to abortion would mean an increase in the number of abortions.
OTOH, abortion was legal in states that could be traveled to, and the expense of raising a child would far exceed the expense of going to New York for a legal abortion, so you’ve got a big incentive to do that.
I tried looking up the numbers, There are few refereed papers on the topic (but lots of propaganda) and those I could find mentioned how difficult the pre-Roe numbers are to quantify.