Political Supreme Court takes away the rights of Citizens
Who is Alito or the conservative court majority to decide what is best for women? The court is engaging in a pattern and practice of discrimination against a group of citizens which is of ‘general public importance (related directly or indirectly with the interest of citizens).'”
I expected Prof. Chemerinsky to write on the SCOTUS intention to overturn Roe V Wade. It is a good read and his points are opposing the court’s stance.
The brazenly political Supreme Court takes away the right to abortion – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
OP-Ed Prof. and Constitutional Lawyer Erwin Chemerinsky
Although it is shocking that someone in the Supreme Court leaked a purported draft of the opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, no one should be the least bit surprised that it is what the justices are about to do.
The confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett meant that there were five justices who were almost certain votes to overrule Roe. The oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health on Dec. 1 erased any doubt when Justices Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh made clear that is how they would vote, joining Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch to overrule the 49 year-old precedent that protects a woman’s right to abortion.
The draft of Alito’s majority opinion overruling Roe, which was obtained by Politico, is right-wing Republican politics masquerading as law. In it, Alito declares:
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
Every aspect of this statement is wrong. The reasoning of Roe, a 7-2 decision that was repeatedly reaffirmed by the court, was not weak. For decades before Roe, the Supreme Court held that the liberty of the due process clause protected fundamental aspects of privacy and autonomy. Prior to Roe, the court had protected liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to use contraception, the right to control the upbringing of children and the right of every person to choose “whether to bear or beget a child.”
Roe followed these decisions with the commonsense realization that laws that prohibit abortion and force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term against her will are intrusions on her autonomy and privacy. Unless the court is going to repudiate all of the other privacy rights, it is impossible to deny that laws prohibiting abortion also intrude on a woman’s liberty.
Of course, there is a debate over how the fetus should be regarded and whether a state’s desire to protect fetal life justifies infringing a woman’s right to privacy. Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion in Roe explained that there is no scientific or medical way to answer the question of when human life begins and therefore until viability — the time at which the fetus can survive outside the womb — it is left to each woman to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy or have an abortion.
There is nothing about this reasoning that is weak. Alito speaks of the damaging consequences. But who is he or the conservative majority to decide what is best for women?
As I read Alito’s reference to “damaging consequences,” I think of the women who became pregnant by rape or incest who would have been forced to continue their pregnancy and give birth under the laws that existed before Roe and that will go into effect now.
It also is a mistake to say that it is Roe that inflamed the national debate over abortion. There was a debate about abortion before Roe, as the first states legalized abortion. The debate over abortion has continued over decades and, ironically, what has really fueled the debate over abortion in recent years is the court becoming more willing to uphold laws prohibiting abortion.
Overruling Roe will not end the debate over abortion.
According to opinion polls, two-thirds of the American people believe that Roe v. Wade should not be overruled. At the oral argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked how the court could survive the “stench” of overruling Roe in a purely political act by conservative justices. How indeed?
“Unless the court is going to repudiate all of the other privacy rights, it is impossible to deny that laws prohibiting abortion also intrude on a woman’s liberty.”
Despite Alito’s appearance of gingerly tip-toeing around this point, his opinion opens the door to exactly this repudiation, and to the 5 right-wing Christian Taliban judges, that is a feature, not a bug. They all know they are turning gay marriage, interracial marriage and birth control access back to the states.
Those justices deserve our contempt, as do all the folks who support them. They will have the blood of thousands of women on their hands in the coming years. Shame.
“deserve our contempt” is a dangerous proposition. both politically and morally (which has something to do with sanity).
Marilyn Monroe v. Samuel Alito
NY Times – Maureen Dowd – May 7
I was watching Vogue’s live feed as Kim Kardashian tried to walk the red carpet at the Met Gala in her skintight, flesh-tone dress, gallantly helped up the stairs by Pete Davidson. I flashed back to Marilyn Monroe on another May night in Gotham, doing similar mincing steps in a similar shimmering dress she was sewn into, when she suspired “Happy Birthday” to J.F.K.
Then Variety sent out a news bulletin that Kim was actually wearing Marilyn’s dress. I had last seen the crystal-strewn souffle concoction back in 1999, at a Christie’s exhibit for an auction of Marilyn’s property. It sparkled amid detritus such as sombreros, see-through nighties, and lighters from Frank Sinatra’s Cal-Neva lodge. The “nudest dress,” as the designer Jean Louis called it, was reverently displayed in a room by itself, lit from above like the Pieta.
As I was contemplating the comeback of this sartorial symbol of American seduction, I got another news bulletin: The Supreme Court was going to yank away the right of women to control their own bodies, strapping us into a time machine hurtling backward.
The two simultaneous emails were a perfect distillation of America’s bizarre duality — our contradictory strains of sexuality and priggishness.
Samuel Alito’s antediluvian draft opinion is the Puritans’ greatest victory since they expelled Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Alito is a familiar type in American literature: the holier-than-thou preacher, so overzealous in his attempts to rein in female sexuality and slap on a scarlet letter that one suspects he must be hiding some dark yearnings of his own.
That was certainly the case with Clarence Thomas, another of the justices wanting to turn America into Saudi Arabia. (Saudi Arabia at least allows abortions if the woman’s physical or mental health is at risk.) Thomas — married to the off-the-wall right-wing activist Ginni — got on the court with the help of Republican senators who smeared Anita Hill as a pervy liar when they knew all along that Thomas was the pervy liar. …
Fred
Interesting, only the rich . . . heh?
“damaging consequences”
yes, why do you make me keep hitting you?” or, as Putin says, them damned Ukrainian nazis are causing damaging consequences by shooting at our brave soldiers who are only trying to save Ukraine from NATO.”
that said, “who is Alito to..?” well, he is a Justice of the United States Supreme Court and he represents a supermajority of that Court who believe that abortion is murder and half the country (more or less) who don’t want to live in a country where murdering babies is the norm.
don’t misunderstand me. i disagree with Alito and that half, more or less, of the country. And I especially abhor the kind of “reasoning” that Alito resorts to…. make a statement and pretend it is a well founded “fact”….but we don’t help our cause if we can’t remember “who is Alito to…”
Coberly:
“Who” are you addressing?
everyone.
Coberly:
Each Justice is an independent member of the court. That they may band together on one decision does not mean they will again and again. Although, the likelihood of the Republican Justices doing so is high.
In case you did not read it, Gorsuch agreed with Sotomeyer on Puerto Rico and still did not concur with her in print even though he agreed. Kagen and Breyer (non-Republicans) did not concur with Sotomeyer on Puerto Rico. Democrats do show independence in deciding. Repubs not so much and even less now.
You are making things up when you say, “half the country (more or less) who don’t want to live in a country where murdering babies is the norm.” Is this cited somewhere? May 2022, Forbes is quoting Quinnipiac and Marquette polls.
Furthermore, you are picking a portion of the sentence. Common practice to cloud the issue. Toss up a lot of sand and act self-righteous. You do not want to help. You do want to argue.
I would score you as agreeing with Alito.
well, you would score me wrong then. does having a point of view differing slightly from yours make me self righteous?
you asked (essentially) who does Alito think he is? I replied he is a Justice on the Supreme Court, which gives him the right to write opinions on the law… even if I think his opinions resemble the thinking of a psychopath. but I do think we need to keep in mind who he is when we disagree, however violently, with him.
as for “half the people more or less” the key here is “more or less”. “Rights” and “the Law” are a little hard to disentangle from “popular opinion” sometimes. And populare opinion is a bit slippery, changing unexpectedly enought for “a large minority” to sometimes become “a small majority” faster than you expect. Leadership makes a difference. If you’d asked the American people if they believed in deficit spending in 1932 most (many more than half) would have said no; hell, even FDR would have said no. But FDR was a genius so he was smart enough to go from “no” to “oh!” when he saw how things worked.
I generally don’t cite sources. I do my own work. I sure as hell wouldn’t cite an 18th century British jurist who believed in hanging witches as an authority for my legal opinions.
Again Coberly
Essentially, that is not the question I asked. Nowhere is violence being stated. You can not conflate 65 or 70% with more or less which implies small variations and not 10 or more percent. We are citing from a poll. No, you do not cite your own work in this case. You are making this up with the intent of high jacking the thread. In this case, you could not survey the numbers of people to arrive at a more or less conclusion.
People get pretty frustrated with your dialogue and tendency to skew the conversation.
Run
down below you say you have said enough. You still have not looked at what I have said and realized it is nearly the opposite of what you think I have said, much less that my motives for saying it might not be mere mischief making.
i cannot imagine how my saying that Alito reasons like a psychopath makes you think I agree with Alito. I recommend you reread what I have said about the leaked opinion,
I consider it a very dangerous example of the essentially inhumane reasoning by the Supreme Court really since the end of the Warren Court. That is the real Enemy.
Or part of it. the general Project of the Right…which has taken over the Republicn Party… has been to sell anti-humanity to the people so they will accept a fascist police state to protect them from their imagined enemies. The Democrats have been incredibly flabby in resisting this. More likely to damage their own cause (our own cause) by making enemies we don’t need to make by supporting meaningless rhetoric as their only answer to the R’s campaign of hate.
I do not disagree with your aims, but I do disagree with your tactics and strategy. I am very sorry if you think that makes me your enemy.
“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Pogo Possum
good ol’ Pogo (and Porky). miss ’em.
Coberly,
Definitely less than half of US want to protect unborn babies, but a bit over half if you throw in partial birth abortions. The baby killers vary on trimester limits perhaps even a bit more, but partial birth abortions has support from less than half. Without partial birth abortions thrown in then variously from 60% to 70% want to protect women’s right to choose depending upon which poll that you want to believe.
For my part, then I want to restrict the right of SCOTUS to interfere with the legislative process on any such important issues as abortion or campaign contributions. Well either that or let plebiscite overturn them when they go too far.
well, they have gone too far. meanwhie R control of elections makes a plebiscite doubtful. i don’t think there is an answer to the “baby murder vs right to privacy” disagreement… except possibly to convince people to understand that there will be no answer, but putting people in jail is more dangerous to them (all of us) than someone else’s choice to have an abortion. based on the responses i get even on Angry Bear, i despair of convincing the people of anything.
failing that, next best solution is for pro choice people to win elections in states where they can, and to provide essentially a private charity to fund expenses for women to go to those states at need. if one read even the Alito decision, it allows for your plebiscite state by state…somewhat cynically because he knows that it won’t happen and meanwhile his decision further weaks the whole idea of protecting people from the government. somewhat ironic since that is what the Right claims to believe in….while creating the infrastructure for absolute tyranny.
Meanwhile the Left replies by sloshing around protests against evil white men and “religion.”..which don’t do anything but convince white men that the Left is coming for them, and threatening “religious” people with taking away everything that gives them hope and solace. Because, after all, “Science.” Which most of them (us) don’t know a damn thing about.
Coberly,
Unfortunately then I must agree with you again. However, I hold some hope that the Right learns its own lesson about unintended consequences, something that they are long overdue and typically too dense to understand when it happens and entirely unlikely to accept their own responsibility in making the mess that ensues. Of course, there is nothing special about the Right in those respects. We all want to live, but learning from life should apparently be avoided at all costs is taken under unanimous consent :<)
Ron
re “less than half”: i am trying to get people to see the danger of thinking in those terms. far less than half of Americans are Indians. Far less than half of them embrace the peyote religion (Native American Church?). Yet Scalia wrote an opinion denying that tiny minority the protection of “freedom of religion, on the grounds that freedom of religion must give way to “the law enforcement function of government.” Alito was once called “the little Scalia.” Interesting to me, the law against Peyote was descended at least from a time when “the church” (i don’t remember which) had the belief that the peyote ceremony was communion with the Devil. only a coincidence that Little Scalia takes his precedents from a jurist who believed witches were in communion with the devil.
But note..is it okay to deny some American Indians freedom of religion because they are only a tiny minority? some of our liberal friends right here seem to believe it is a significant fact that the people who belive in “choice” are in the majority, and a more than more or less majority. So I guess a time may come when we can restrict abotions because the people who want them are no longer in the majority.
Me, I think that if there is only one of them, it is much better for even the rest of us if we regard it as none of our business. ….or extremely dangerous for us to disregard the “rights” of even a one person.
Coberly,
Well I can understand your reasoning, but disregard some of your facts. E.g., illegal peyote works just as well as legal peyote and is just as plentiful since it grows wild in the limestone desert of south Texas. Law suppresses the open display of behavior, but does little to suppress behavior that leaves no lasting evidence or even any evidence that can be easily hidden. Hell, law does little to suppress narcotics trafficking and human trafficking and we still have way too much murder. Mostly law suppresses the behavior of public professionals, at least when they are openly servicing the poor. Rich people can have even medical service privately provided for a price.
So, what we are saying is whether just nine old people in robes should decide in private or the general public should decide openly with discussion, protests, editorials, and such. Although the wisdom of crowds may be limited and the tyranny of the majority may be possible, then the idiocy of insular small groups is infinite and the injustice of the privileged minority is certain.
[More importantly though, Scalia’s opinion did not fly.]
https://www.kut.org/texas/2018-11-13/in-the-only-state-where-selling-peyote-is-legal-the-cactus-is-threatened-and-still-controversial
…
“My father was still living and he had moved back to Mirando. He sold peyote for about 18 years. I came out back here and I applied for my license, and I started selling peyote. I’ve been doing it ever since,” Johnson says.
But distributors like Salvador Johnson are only allowed to sell peyote to registered members of one religious organization called the Native American Church. To buy it, church members must prove their ancestry.
“The most important document for a person to have is what we call the Certificate of Indian Blood, because that will show you who you are, who your parents are and your blood quarter; you have to be at least one-fourth [American] Indian to purchase peyote in the state of Texas, or possess peyote in the state of Texas,” Johnson says…
Ron
true, but learning of any kind is severly limited by the way the brain works: essentially “first in last out.’ a result all but guaranteed by “association and repetition.” logic and morality have nothing to with it except to the extent that logic and morality are reinforced by repetition. what makes it worse is that “learning” something first guarantees that something will be repeated (by the neurons involved) every time the subject comes up. even if it is repeated in the process of denying it. which is why “liberals” have come to believe that Social Security is in financial straits (and) the only way to fix it is to tax the rich [which is their answer for everything]. Nancy Altman wrote a whole book explaining the difference between worker-paid insurance and welfare and why Roosevelt insisted SS be worker-paid. Then in her last chapter she recommended “fixing” Social Security by taxing the rich.
See how nicely I changed the subject.
Ron
“restrict the right of the Court…”
unfortunately the game needs an umpire. more unfortunately we have let the owners of the opposing team pay the umpires.
I read an article the other day that mentioned a poll/survey finding that 20% of the nation did not expect Roe to be over turned. 20%! The question becomes: What have they been voting for then?
49% of the nation could not and can not see the personality of Trump as not being one that can do for them. 20% was not seeing the stacking of the court for the purpose of overturning Roe.
Makes you understand why we are in this mess.
With that, the issue with this ruling that is not being discussed is the states rights argument of this ruling. This is what the money of the right really wants. This is what will get them the unregulated state they want. Think about the EPA. Remember their solution for health care? It was letting each state to their thing.
In the meantime the planet is changing in a way that we are going to struggle to survive. The right has issues with immigration now? Just wait.
Daniel:
Since 2016 mostly when they did not take trump seriously.
Gerrymandered districts and the “anybody but trump or Clinton” vote created much of this. trump would have been a has been if not for a minority of people who bought into the swill spewed forth. Or they bought into the propaganda Clinton was a bad choice because of the lies. National Democrat party arrogance led to Michigan going Repub for the first time since 2000. PA and WI since 92. The Dems did not take the issue in Michigan seriously.
There are more there like Lana Theis. Mallory McMorrow hit her between the eyes. That is what Dems need, more Mallories to call the Lanas out “hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won’t.” What happened with that leak from SCOTUS is something which was planned. Maybe, I am wrong, I think Repubs did it to incite. We need to turn it around and lay it at their feet.
It has been a long time since Giddeon Vs Wainwright. Common people need to get angry and this could be the issue which will drive it. Have you ever filed in a COA or SCOTUS?
I do not believe a Dem did this. We will find out I am sure.
Dan;
This is covered by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state action the right to privacy, and a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion falls within that right to privacy. A state law that broadly prohibits abortion without respect to the stage of pregnancy or other interests violates that right.
This was not just made up with Roe v Wade. As Chemerinsky points out “For decades before Roe, the Supreme Court held that the liberty of the due process clause protected fundamental aspects of privacy and autonomy. Prior to Roe, the court had protected liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to use contraception, the right to control the upbringing of children and the right of every person to choose ‘whether to bear or beget a child.’”
(edited by fixing print 5/8)
Well here we are. Do we go with “faith, miracles and belief” or science, understanding and actual scientific advances? Covid is not being solved by religion or praying or miracles. We are not all flocking to sainted relic sites to pray for deliverance and be exposed to illness and die as in medieval times. It’s an age old war between religion and science. Science is winning as it is based in evidence, experimentation, the furtherance of knowledge and a humanitarian way forward.
The real issue of the ruling is does religion trump science? The Flat Earthers as always vote for miracles and magic but as the population becomes more educated and enlightened it is science that has saved us from drastic consequences. Do we force women to give birth to children they can not care for and can not survive? Science is hard and presents hard choices but there is choice. The right of privacy gives that choice; religion does not.
Becker
I think you are right about that states’ rights thing. the Federal government was bigger than the corporate power, but the corporate power was bigger than any individual state power. but now that the corporate power is bigger than the federal power, you may find them happily overruling state power when it is to their advantage. so, i guess “is” is turning to “was.”
First, I need to correct my first statement. It was only 20% thought that Roe would be over turned. (My thinking moving faster than my typing.) This is a disturbing number as to how shallow the citizenry is paying attention to the political movement in this nation. If people are one issue voters, that 80% did not expect Alito’s decision says Abortion has not been the issue for them.
Run, I totally understand what you have pointed out. I’m not disagreeing with it at all. I am saying, that in Alito’s ruling is the statement that the ultimate decision for this states with each state. The Republicans have been noting this about his decision and are following up with supporting statements. It is a huge error if We, the Dems do not acknowledge it as state’s rights had been part of their program since Reagan at least.
The Republican implemented political strategy we have been fighting began long before Trump ran in 2016. Recall the BS they threw about Gore and it worked. Recall the super BS they threw about Kerry. They convinced enough people that what Kerry’s history was, was the complete opposite of what the reality was. Even this last presidential election there has been research reported on how a big issue for the Dem congress/State losses if because too many Dems never went past electing the president on their ballot.
Too all this I note that 12 people watch the Rodney King video and were convinced that what they saw was the opposite of what they were seeing.
Lastly, listen to what Senator Whitehouse has been saying about the Supreme Court being totally in the pocket of Corporate America/Money America. States’ Rights is a major part of Alito’s ruling. We ignore this to our detriment.
DD, yes science vs religion. That has always been with us. But, when it comes to control of this nation, what hands are on the levers of power, the fight is not between science and religion. Those two are just the source of the justification being used. The fight has always been money vs little to no money.
Dan:
Thank you for the explanation. I wanted to make sure people understood the 14th Amendment had meaning decades before Roe v Wade. Not well-meaning people seek to hide the history of the 14th and its meaning. If there is any one thing I would advise people of, avoid courts and judges as you will lose your ability to defend yourself having to relay upon others.
In 2006, Congress asked then Duke University Prof. of Law and Political Science to testify to Congress as to whether now Justice Alito should be considered for a position as a Justice.
Conclusion
Alito’s Qualification as a Justice
“The Constitution was written in 1787 for an agrarian slave society. It can govern us only if it is adapted by interpretation. There must be, and always has been, a living Constitution.”
“I agree. In a recent opinion poll, 68 percent said that they favor continuing Roe v. Wade. I’d guess 90 percent want federal law to regulate machine guns. The problem is that Bush picked a Justice to please 25 percent, not the majority.”
Alito Confirmation Battle Shapes Up
Some comments on Justice Alito in 2005.
Hopefully the answer for when “Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked how the court could survive the ‘stench’ of overruling Roe in a purely political act by conservative justices” will be that it cannot, at least without new restrictions or the application of countervailing public power (e.g., plebiscite). The “Citizens United” decision should have made this clear, but it apparently takes a matter with more visceral moral content to motivate voters.
Of course if Congress cannot pass law over important matters, then constitutional amendment is out of the question. FUBAR!
As far as the GOP is concerned, the Supreme Court went off the rails when Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice by Ike Eisenhower, who thought he was getting a conservative Chief Justice to correct the excesses of FDR & Truman, or so the GOP hoped.
It took a while, but with Warren Burger & William Rehnquist, the GOP thought they were getting things back under control. What with Citizen’s United and Bush v. Gore, they had begun anyway. But Roe v. Wade, and protection for Civil Rights, there was still work to be done. That is now under way.
This is what comes from electing GOP presidents.
Fred,
“…This is what comes from electing GOP presidents.”
[Although that is completely true in and of itself, I still find that the Democratic Party has been routinely complicit in the success of the GOP by virtue of its own elites that inspire little trust or confidence. The electoral advantage of the GOP is that its candidates provide what almost all conservative voters actually want from politicians, while the Democratic Party fails to provide what almost all liberal voters want from politicians. Perhaps that is wrong, but one thing that is never wrong is that our power to change things is ultimately limited to changing ourselves.]
The electoral advantage of the GOP is that its candidates provide what almost all right-wing voters actually want from politicians, while the Democratic Party is now the conservative party and fails to provide what almost all liberal voters want from politicians.
FIFY
Joel,
Amazing! No way that I could agree more with you than on this.
Over time, the Dem Party has ‘expanded its tent’ to include a lot of voters (such as me – also Howard Dean & Hillary Clinton – who used to be of the GOP) who have centrist tendencies. There are very few centrists left in the GOP.
This no doubt causes a lot of grief for Dem progressives. However, the main advantage that the GOP has, aside from appealing to racists, is that the rural middle of the Good Ol’ USA, the rural heartland, dislikes all things urban.
And each of those states, 25 or so, gets two extra electoral votes thanks to the Constitution, just because all states have two Senators. Go figure!
I have a good friend, an elderly fellow from Texas long ago, who was a life-long registered GOP voter until Trump came along. Now he is what MA calls ‘unenrolled’, but he flinches when I tell him I will never again vote for a GOP candidate (& now a Dem, when I used to be ‘unenrolled’ also.)
Perhaps he thinks the same fate awaits him.
However, being a Dem in MA accomplishes little, and now I have to send funds elsewhere. Truly, ALL politics is not local.
I do not need to be reminded that all states get 2 extra electoral votes due to their Senators. The problem is that the two dozen or so underpopulated states in effect get more electoral votes than they are entitled to from their populations. As can be seen by the fact that Trump got almost as many electoral votes as Joe Biden, but about 7 million fewer popular votes.
The evenly split Senate was a result of 38 million more votes for the Dem Senators than for the GOP Senators.
The 50-50 Senate tie (& the Biden victory) owes a lot to the miracle in Georgia that elected two Dem Senators, with somewhat less than 5 million votes cast, a small margin going to Dem candidates as well as to Biden & Harris.
Unfortunately, a ten vote Dem majority in the Senate is necessary to enact most progressive legislation.
It occurs to me that there are so many ‘centrist’ Dems among the 50 in the Senate presently that there could still be progressive unhappiness if it is discovered that a 60 vote majority turns out to disappear when progressive legislation is up for a Senate vote. So, let’s find out!
It is worth pointing out that Ike sent in the army to enforce Brown v Board. And his opinion of the Right was that they were “few and stupid.” I’m not sure I’d take a reported, out of context, alleged comment by Ike expressing disappointment with Warren as convincing, given what Ike actually did. [anymore than I would take out of context remarks by Lincoln trying to win election in a country still deeply anti-negro as evidence that Lincoln did not care about ending slavery. For that matter not every political statement by FDR can be taken as evidence of what he “truly” believed.
Maybe we need to go back to the way it was with the Dems & GOP during the Eisenhower-JFK-LBJ era, when the was ‘Not a dime’s worth of difference’ between the two parties, when both were littered with ‘moderates’. The Dems did include the Dixiecrats, who would never ever vote for GOP legislation, unless there was funding in it for them. Ah, those were the days! (NOT!)
For what it is worth, the Mississippi limit of 15 weeks is close to the limits in all 4 EU countries I lived in. Spain and France are at 14 and Greece and Czech Republic are at 12. They do have options for some circumstances for points later than these limits, but it is not considered a right in the sense that significant regulations can be imposed. The Texas “limit” of fetal heartbeat is well before these.
@Eric,
You need to put “fetal heartbeat” in scare quotes. It isn’t a heartbeat because there isn’t a heart when these electric impulses can first be measured.
I don’t understand why the US should consider standards that are unmoored from science and medicine just because the governments of certain countries came up with arbitrary limits.
Professor can you address fetal pain science?
LJ
Long time since I have seen you. I think Joel did address what you ask somewhere in the threads. I am sure he can do so again.
For some reason you were in spam. Pulled you out.
@lj,
What, specifically, do you want to know?
Maybe just a general overview of the science. I’ve seen some journal articles but wasn’t sure what bioethicists have to say.
LJ
I don’t think Joel issued a course description here. What did you read. what are you wanting to understand. etc. Joel is a good gut; However, I do not think he is going to teach a course here. If he does do so, I am in . . .
Here’s a quote from an article in Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics:
“While it may be accurate . . . that some of the anatomic structures within the developing nervous system are present in a normally developed fetus at 20 weeks postfertilization gestation, it is misleading to suggest this physical reality is sufficient for a fetus to “experience” pain. It is further misleading to suggest that observable neuroendocrine, metabolic, and reflexive responses to stimuli are equivalent to meaningful pain perception. Each of these later responses can be elicited even in the absence of nociception and none require consciousness.”
Read the whole thing here:
Cohen IG, Sayeed S. Fetal pain, abortion, viability, and the Constitution. J Law Med Ethics. 2011 Summer;39(2):235-42
Thank you for the reference.
Eric:
When it comes to discussing some of your comments I sometimes feel like Jen Psaki in replying. I am not as smart or as quick as she is in answering Peter Doocy. It is said Fox news sets him up to be an annoyance almost akin to the stench one might experience after mistaking stepping in the remnants of dog droppings.
I have had broad experience in working and traveling internationally over 30+ of my 45 or so years working in supply chain. Assimilation helps . . . I have found Europeans to be quite liberal in their thinking or allowances. While they have progressed from the inquisition and burning at the stake, the US mentality is still stuck in the era of pressing, dunking, and imprisoning people for issues which are accepted in Europe by the people and adjudicated by its laws and processes.
Yes there are some countries which restrict peoples choices. The overwhelming decision is by Request.
European Abortion Laws
Same quotation site.
The US through right-wing politicians and Justices have no plans for the US to establish such laws to govern the when of abortions. Indeed, it will be left up to the local state pols of the Mississippi’s of the nation to make law to govern such. A hodpodge of state laws. Fifteen weeks is not enough time to determine pregnancy. And no, I do not see European nations having such time limits. Neither do I see European nations going backwards and allowing various regions setting laws. Reference the above citation.
Pre-Roe v. Wade; the 14th Amendment was used in various instance protects the rights of the individual. It was discussed by Congress as Alito claims such dialogue be noted.
I have said enough . . .
Quite sexist to invoke the right of women when men can get pregnant. Awful sexist bias. As for the right to privacy and personal health care decisions over one’s body (my body my choice) I agree, and this includes the right to refuse vaccines, especially experimental ones.
Hi Vladimir,
Here in America, everyone has the right to refuse vaccines, experimental or otherwise. But you don’t have the right to attend public school or serve in the military without being vaccinated. And of course, here in America, private organizations have the freedom to enforce vaccination standards to protect others.