[Politico] Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows

We can dream.

 

Protestors last year, straight up harassed public officials and their families and ranted on a bullhorn all night

Spoiler

Residents in an Overland Park neighborhood that was the scene of protests last month are still shaken, saying they have been harassed and bullied since the incident near Johnson County Community College.

Six people showed up to the city council’s public safety committee meeting Wednesday night in support of the police. Some said they were traumatized by the events of the July 24 protest that ended in four arrests in the neighborhood around 116th Street and Quivira Road.

“I’ve lived in fear now for a month,” said Amy Camp. She reported protesters in her driveway that night. “I’m scared at night. I can’t sleep. I’m worried for my children.”

The protest that day, organized by community outreach group Miller Dream LLC, was one of many that have taken place around the Kansas City area and in cities across the U.S. in the months following the police killing in May of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who died with an officer’s knee on his neck.

The Overland Park protest saw about 30-40 mostly young people turn out on a Friday night in late July near JCCC. The demonstration peacefully marched down College Boulevard and then wound into a residential neighborhood. There, it stalled when protesters and some residents exchanged words, with some homeowners asking protesters to get off their properties and leave the neighborhood.

Around that time, four protesters were arrested, including an attorney. The Overland Park Police Department said an officer suffered a scraped knee during an altercation with a protester.

Residents allege ‘political intimidation’ after the protests
Since the protest, residents said they have been harassed for asking the protesters to move along or quiet down, said Dan Herner, a neighbor who said he was speaking for several others who were too afraid to talk at the open meeting. The harassment has ranged from residents being followed, to cars racing and honking down the streets, to a mysterious pickup truck that keeps returning to the area, said some people who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting.

Another man said he’d been “doxxed” — meaning some of his private personal information had been published online without his consent.

“What this is is political harassment,” Herner said. “When someone stands outside your house with a bullhorn and says essentially, ‘Defund the police, vote how I want or there will be no peace in your neighborhood,’ that isn’t protest, it’s political intimidation.”

Camp said protesters were in her driveway, and she asked them to move so her toddlers could sleep.

“Then I was told if there was no justice, my kids could have no sleep,” she said. “I want my kids to have peace in their life and live in a residential area that does not have this coming into our suburban area.”

The neighbors said they were grateful police officers were allowed to “do their jobs” the night of the protest. Two speakers said having the police to control the protest was preferable to leaving it to neighbors to defend their own properties.

“We’re not Portland,” Herner said, referring to Portland, Oregon, where there have been frequent and often violent clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators in recent weeks. “If the police are not allowed to do it, we’re left to defend ourselves, and that’s not safe for us or the protesters.”

‘White privilege at its finest’
Stacy Shaw, a Kansas City, Missouri, attorney and one of the protesters that night, said residents’ contention that they are being intimidated and targeted by demonstrators is “absolutely a lie.”

“None of that is happening,” she said. “We are busy people with full-time jobs. We’re students or volunteers in other walks of life. We don’t have time to do what they say is being done,” she said.

Meanwhile, a statement from The Miller Dream LLC, the protest’s organizers, said residents’ complaints at the committee meeting Wednesday were “white privilege at its finest.”

“There is a great divide in who you choose to protect and serve,” the statement said. “Overland Park, the injustices must stop. We have to stop turning a blind eye to the problem that exists in America not only today but has existed for many years: systemic racism.”

Shaw was one of three people arrested and charged with blocking a public street on July 24. A fourth man was charged with battery of a law enforcement officer, but Shaw said that man ran into an officer as he was trying to get to his wife, who was being taken into custody.

Shaw also said the demonstrators, mostly young people, were acting peacefully and that some of the residents instigated the tension.

She said, at one point, a couple came out of a house screaming at the demonstrators.

“And these were middle-aged white people, yelling profanities, being immature and blatantly vitriolic towards people who could have been their kids’ age,” Shaw said. “Yelling stuff like, ‘Get off my property!'”

The conflict that night and the concerns being raised now by residents, she said, are signs of “entrenched white supremacy” in Johnson County.

“They are so offended by a group of young people — most of whom, by the way, were white, with just a few black and brown people — coming into their community that they call out the riot police and then go lie at a city council meeting” she said.

Pursuing police accountability
Henry E. Lyons, president of the Olathe and Overland Park chapter of the NAACP also spoke, saying his organization has not found evidence of systemic racism in the Overland Park Police Department.

The NAACP supports removal of racial barriers through the democratic process, Lyons said.

“Going on somebody else’s property, going on a residential street, creating havoc and disturbing people — that’s not the democratic process,” he said.

He said his group would still pursue complaints of police bias. “If the police are wrong we have no problem saying they’re wrong,” he said.

You might think this type of escalation is warranted, until it happens to you or your side. Then you might consider it indecent, or become outraged enough to escalate things further.

I'm not sure why you think MLK and other leaders would warrant this lack of decency when they and their families faced constant threats to their house and safety from vigilantes "activists" on the other side. I mean it was already tilted with the government actively against them, but you can mostly avoid the police when you spot them a mile away. Random psychos who feel morally justified to ruin your day or life is much higher on the anxiety scale.

Furthermore, this is a reversal of a Supreme Court decision and presumably Congress can still pass real laws to change it. It's just that we're so used to shouting across each other and have written off Congress passing Real Laws that we think we have to take it to another level. Most of these losers don't even vote.

Resorting to violence or extreme intimidation/provocation is just sad and disempowering to our fundamental values. We should at least try out the democratic process before writing it off and burning it all down.

Who's to say that someone else won't pull the same thing when you eventually get your way?

 

Who cares honestly? It is nothing but a diversion to the larger issue at play, which is the tug of war over the legality of abortion in the USA.

 

You really are not off base.

This is like the vast majority of opinions coming out of the SCOTUS for a long time.

First, the court is extremely political, and the exercise now is to take the conclusion you want and essentially throw anything that can possibly be used to validated the conclusion wanted, regardless of how shallow or off point it is. It just needs to be something to appease those that support the position.

Honestly, at this point there are more grounded and fair opinions at the appellate level, because they at least concede and address the strong points of the "loser", because they don't want to be spanked by the higher courts. There is no higher court that the SCOTUS, and a lot of these Justices are very partisan and were largely picked because of their age and how predictable they are politically.

The illusion of the SCOTUS being above politics is quickly falling.

 

First, 54% of white women did not vote for Donald Trump. The number boasted of by Trump was 52%, and that was based on some exit polls that are notoriously inaccurate.

Also why draw the distinction at white women when abortion impacts ALL women, and women as a whole overwhelmingly supported Clinton and Biden? Also, a larger percentage of minority women support abortion rights as a whole than white women do.

Seems like a very arbitration distinction that really isn't all that relevant.

If you want to b**** about the amount of power that white people have in this country and the world at large, by all means go ahead. However I better not hear you complain when women complain about the amount of power in the social dynamics that ALL men have in society. You can't be consistent with supporting one and not another.

That means not supporting idiots like:

 

I agree with you.

 

Conservatives are still leaking to the Washington Post on this like a Russian cruiser:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/07/supreme-court-abortion-roe-roberts-alito/

"But as of last week, the five-member majority to strike Roe remains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter," ​

We traced the call it's coming from your house.

 

It's weird how people can compartmentalize this when unelected Fauci and other public officials were doxed and harassed for their" fascistic power grabs"...

Psaki pivots and finally says Biden condemns protests with 'violence, threats or vandalism' - after activists targeted Supreme Court justices' homes, churches and an anti-abortion office was hit with Molotov cocktails

• Republicans are claiming it's too little too late after outgoing White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fo flipflop on condemning threats and violence against Supreme Court Justices
• '[President Joe Biden] strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism,' Psaki tweeted
• 'Judges... must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety'
• Comments come after protesters showed up at churches and at homes of Supreme Court Justices
• Far-left Antifa also threw a Molotov cocktail into the offices of an anti-abortion group in Madison, Wisconsin
• Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton said: 'The White House is playing word games. Biden needs to clearly condemn the mob for *showing up at private homes* at night (with kids present) to intimidate the Justices'
• 'This intimidation is unlawful and unamerican'
• Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy denounced on Sunday pro-abortion groups and activists that are threatening Supreme Court Justices and staging protests outside their homes in the D.C.-area
• 'No one should be threatening violence against any Supreme Court Justice or member of Congress'
• Pro-abortion protestors gathered outside the homes of Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts on Saturday
• The addresses of the six conservative justices were doxxed online by pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us

 

Doctor is killed by anti-abortion radical

Doctor Barnett Slepian is shot to death inside his home in Amherst, New York by an anti-abortion radical. His killing marks the fifth straight year that an abortion-providing doctor in upstate New York and Canada became the victim of a sniper attack.

Slepian and his family had just returned from religious services at their synagogue when a bullet shattered the kitchen window and struck him in the back. Each of the five attacks, the first four of which did not result in fatal wounds, occurred in late October or early November.

Investigators in both Canada and the United States believed that James Charles Kopp, known among abortion opponents as “Atomic Dog,” was responsible for Slepian’s murder. Although he had been seen in the vicinity of Slepian’s home in the weeks before the killing, Kopp, a member of the terrorist group Army of God, was nowhere to be found after the incident

 

Why I think that? Because MLK literally said it.

Actually, I've been pretty consistent when it comes to protests. 9x out of 10. I respect them. Most times the anger is justified.

This is literally MLK saying the same thing as I just said, that keep taking away rights and find out what happens. Look at ANY historical context where governments deny rights, protests happen like clockwork, then they continue to escalate.

Expecting civility from a government that ignores its people and isn't at all respecting their rights? **** happens.

Let's not get into what the various founders said about civil unrest...but many of them very openly supported it. Hell, one of Jefferson's most popular quotes is "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure." so fundamental values? A fundamental value of this country is rebellion AGAINST government, and bloody rebellion at that. That is a core value of this nation and one expressed time and time again throughout this country's history. That when government oversteps, the people humble government. That the people have not only the will to do so but the capability is why this country still has a democracy today because the moment the government isn't scared of its people is the very moment you will lose your democracy. That's just reality of the situation and history.

As I mentioned, overturning Roe v Wade is hardly that moment, but people getting all flushed because some neighbors protested in front of his house is odd to me, especially considering what he himself did, that women will die because of his decisions, that people will have their lives ruined because of his decision. Anger should be expected. That people will look to confront him, he should expect that. His decisions affect millions of lives. Heavy is the crown. He's not the Disney CEO, determining how 'woke' the company should be. He's a SCOTUS judge whose decisions can grant or take away rights of millions of people. You mention congress, congress could pass that bill and this same SCOTUS can rule it unconstitutional, then what?

 

RIP Kevin Samuels...didn't expect to see him in an abortion rights thread but whatever.

 

This is horrible. I will never understand the logic of murdering someone "because pro life". So senseless.

 

Look at this libtard trying to interpret the Constitution as he sees fit. Clearly bear means carry and arms means weapons. If the almighty founders meant ammo they would have spelled it out. The decision to allow people to produce and carry bullets should be left to the states as god intended. You can always go to another state to buy bullets.

 

I can. When you've been indoctrinated that a embryo has a soul, you believe those doctors are essentially committing mass genocide. Would you kill someone committing mass genocide?

Quite frankly the people who commit violence for "pro-life" causes are just taking the logical course of action from the rhetoric they hear. So when a conservative pundit says they are baby killers, the logical step for someone who sincerely believes they are baby killers is to kill the baby killers.

This should make sense to you and shouldn't be surprising

 

The "logic" is that this doctor was a serial baby killer that had immunity from the law. So people who want to put an end to the baby murdering are forced to take the law into their own hands. If one is radicalized to the idea that facilitating abortion is literally murdering babies, this unfortunately can happen.

And here's another logical head-scratcher for the pro-life side:

Death Penalty for Abortions Becomes Pivotal Issue in GOP Runoff in Texas (newsweek.com)

 

Hmm, if only there were a way to make sure blacks and women were allowed to vote, that didn't involve suddenly interpreting the same words in the entirely opposite way. Maybe we could change (or AMEND) the document (or CONSTITUTION) to specifically ensure black people and women could vote. We could even attach numbers to these AMENDMENTS like 15 or 19.

We could come up with another AMENDMENT to make sure we aren't allowed to chain up an African and force him to tend our crops. That one might be say, thirteen or so.

Undoing a mistake is not wrong.

 

I understand the train of thought, it's obvious, but it still doesn't make sense, of course. Just like killing "infidels" doesn't make sense.

 

Protesters certainly have the right to protests peacefully and on public property near the homes of people for what they do professionally but I don't think it's a good idea. I felt this way even when the target was Derek Chauvin.

As other posters have noted this tactic has been used across the political spectrum so as much as we might want to justify protesting at the homes of LEO who kill black people or judges that make rulings find appalling that tactic has also been used against doctors who provide abortions and doctors involved in health policies.

Besides that it is highly disruptive to neighbors and others who likely have nothing at all to do with what the target does and might not agree with them politically. Most concerning though is that such protests could be used as cover for those who are willing to use violence to further their aims and even for those who are just there to incite and inflame the situation. Certainly that possibility exists with protests in other settings but in a residential neighborhood it puts the neighbors and many others at risk.

I also see the "riot is the language of the unheard" being brought out again. While MLK did say that in the very same speech he also reiterated again the importance of non-violence and said that violence is self defeating.

 

So what's your take on Brown vs Board of Education? The standard you are describing here could be used to undo that decision as well, couldn't it?