USSC decisions

They'll have to come up with some crazy logic to uphold the Mississippi restrictions while not overturning Roe. Roe is built on the idea that abortion is a constitutional right until fetal viability (24-28 weeks). The premise is that until a fetus is viable, it is simply an extension of the woman's body and a woman has the right to make her own health decisions.

If you uphold a 15 week restriction, then the legal basis of Roe is gone since you're now saying that states can ban abortions before viability. And if you're allowing states to ban abortion before viability at 15 weeks, what's to stop a state from banning abortions until 5 weeks or even prohibiting abortions outright. Roe v Wade's legal logic doesn't function if you let this stand. And nothing in the oral arguments suggested that the Conservative majority had some sort of alternative legal brightline to protect abortion before 15 weeks. So I'm reasonably convinced that Roe v Wade is probably gone.

 

Allow states to do what they please is completely overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The status quo pre-Roe was each state had their own laws. Roe was about establishing a Constitutional right to abortion found within the "penumbras" of the bill of rights, such that no state could make a law that ran afoul of the minimum protections established there.

 

What’s the point of a Federal constitution then anyways?? Why not just operate as 50 different countries from now on without pesky federal rights they have to abide by.

Oh yeah… that’s right… because right wing states need the revenue and taxes from blue states to survive.

 

Can I just make a note about an observation:

Unlike Republicans and RBG, have you seen one Democrat here or anywhere talking nonstop about Clarence Thomas and Alito's impending deaths??? I mean every time SCOTUS was brought up at least one of them would chime in for 4 years about "well I don't want RGB to die or anything but...."

I think Dems deserve a pat on the back for being decent human beings for once in awhile. We could be talking nonstop about how great it would be these two years if one or more of the old conservative judges fell ill but it's good to see we just don't go there like Republicans do.

 

Today’s decision should be a wake up call to every moderate in the country who still feels both sides are equally bad. In any normal country, the absolutely unconstitutional ruling (for as much how they ruled as why they ruled) would lead to immediate impeachment of the guilty justices, but our country has lost all normalcy. Just look at this board - almost all the conservatives here are either bad faith trolls or gun fetishists who would literally overturn and election and deny the right to vote to others so long as they can keep their personal arsenals.

This is not the end of the world by itself, but it’s just another 10 feet in the slow crawl to a reactionary authoritarian country. I hope it doesn’t all end in bloodshed, but at this point, I think it is inevitable.

 

The only way to test this is to start passing tons of bounty hunter bills in blue states.

 

Countless lives saved by this decision, praise be

 

It's the result of putting extremists on the Court. The 3 originalists nominated by Trump and confirmed by Republicans were liars and are extremists. With this 5-4 ruling, the... well this is what Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:

"The clear purpose and actual effect of S. B. 8 has been to nullify this Court's rulings. It is, however, a basic principle that the Constitution is the "fundamental and paramount law of the nation," and "t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). Indeed, "f the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery." United States v. Peters, 5 Cranch 115, 136 (1809). The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake."

 

No dumbass it isn't...if a woman wants an abortion she'll get one, the GOP is just making it more difficult and costly.

 

the other justices don't agree that killing the unborn is a federal right

 

Then the other Justices lied during Congressional testimony and placed their philosophical or religious beliefs above defending the Constitution.

 

I really had it wrong when I thought SCOTUS would rule for Mississippi in the Dobbs case and rule against Texas (in the US lawsuit) and for the petitioners (in the SB8 lawsuit). My prediction was based upon the older assumption that Roberts was the babysitter who oversaw the court, which is no longer the case. Not to get too nerdy, but this "pre-enforcement decision" which Gorsuch claims is no biggy, is simply a roadmap to all enforcement with proper tweaks to the law.

 

What's funny is that I think a few of judges would interpret (incorrectly) that the Constitution demands such a structure.

 

I want to have a Constitution based exploration of this. I'll try to be word economical, but this is complicated.
I don't think the conservative justices are being sincere when they're making their arguments about the constitutional connections.

Let me give you a counterfactual: if all state legislatures passed laws that allowed women to terminate pregnancies up to full term, but it wasn't a constitutional amended right, would pro-Life activists still exist? Of course they would. Would they try to say these laws are unconstitutional? Of course. What is the basis of that? Fetal personhood - some of the amici already state that argument, and it's the freudian slip that every conservative justice makes when they refer to a fetus as a little girl. John Roberts asked a question in oral, "why is it that the moment the baby is born, they have rights, but one day before, they don't?"

I don't know where to draw the line about fetal personhood rights incoporated via the 14th, but I think it's a fair constitutional argument. And I think it's the next phase in pro-life legal battle plans after Roe gets overturned. And it's based on a differing factual belief: most pro-life people and judges think that the life begins before birth. When that starting point is lacks uniform agreement. This is much better anti-abortion reasoning than in the early 1800s in the US when it was mostly based on too many protestant women having abortions and losing the birth rate race to Catholics and dirty immigrants.

Okay, now let's take the abortion consitutional right defense. Is it unenumerated? Sure. The debate for rights that exist without being written has raged from the framing. Lincoln debated Douglas as prospective congressman to argue that slaves have rights (prior to the passage of the reconstruction amendments), while Douglas said it's up to the majority of the region to decide whether blacks were people. And of course over the last 100 years, the courts have decided many rights exist regardless of states making laws saying otherwise: the right to buy a condom if married (then if single), the right to kiss someone of the same-sex without going to jail, the right to bang someone of the same sex without going to jail, parental rights, the right to attend public schools that aren't segregated, the right to marry someone of a different race without going to jail for it, the rights to marry someone of the same sex without going to jail...

All those things and more were never written, but have been deemed constitutional rights due to connections to things that are written as rights or interpreted to be rights. From an abortion standpoint, the connections are a privacy interest (Roe), an equality interest (Casey), but also a Liberty interest - if you're going to be originalist, then be freakin originalist. One big change in passing the reconstruction amendments is to give black women their first control over when they decide to be mothers and not bred like dogs. There's also a life and equality interest in black women, where in Mississippi are 13 times more likely die from pregnancy from white women.

These are real constitutional connections in my dumb opinion. To argue that they don't exist or that to deny their existence does not endanger any of the rights I stated above is logically inconsistent and also insincere. To argue in court that States' Rights is more important is insincere by pro-Life activists, because they don't really believe that as the foundational moral reason to be anti-abortion. The foundational moral reason is that the fetus has rights, and it so happens that some states have a legislature believe it too. But the value isn't what in the legislature believes, but it is in unborn having value.

Solution: if pro-life activists are willing to truthful and logically consistent, then the best constitutional solution may be a cap on abortion for all states based on the recognition of some constitutional rights for a fetus. At the same time, there should be some constitutional recognition of the woman's rights as connected to privacy, equality, liberty, and life. So I say figure out a ceiling and a floor and have states vary the restrictions in between. And of course have some exceptions for when the woman has a huge complication and could die late in term.

To me at least, this is being real for pro-Life activists instead of being full of crap. The original petition for writ of cert from Mississippi wasn't to overturn Roe, but was just to roll back the Casey definition of undue burden. At least Roberts was okay with this. He even asked why the hell Mississippi changed their their position from their rough draft to their oral arguments because he said that's messed up and shouldn't even be allowed. They lied through their teeth, because everyone knew RBG dying and getting replaced by ACB with her 5 pregancies ain't no thing was a game changer.

 

Furthermore the justices didn’t actually make the real decision to overrule Roe - instead they just allowed a law that blatantly violates Roe to stand, and thus essentially have allowed a state law to trump the Constitution for the first time in the history of this country. That’s what makes this ruling so awful and what pisses me off is that it should be immediate grounds for impeachment yet nothing will be done. It’s possible that some blue states will try passing laws that subvert the 2nd amendment and the right wing press’ first Amendment protections, but while that would normally lead to invalidation of the abortion laws, I fully expect the current 5 to come up with bad faith and arbitrary reason for overturning the gun laws while leaving the abortion laws in place.

Conservatives cheering this decision have no clue how badly this decision destroys the concept of the Constitution being the supreme law of our country.

 

I save my ugly thoughts for the Orange one

 

If the fetus had constitutional rights, the court would outlaw abortion. Fetal rights aren't being considered.

What's being considered is the supposed constitutional right to kill a fetus.

"The courts have historically ruled X" appeal to authority isn't a compelling argument. You didn't even try to quote the constitution in your post.