US Politics: Roe v Wade into the quiet part of the stream

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, Week said:

Those people have allied with the insane Christian Dominion Right and may not be able to tame the beast that they've empowered.

Kind of funny that the party of Jesus could never get Jesus' vote if he was alive today.

[Week]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Kind of funny that the party of Jesus could never get Jesus' vote if he was alive today.

I mean, I doubt many speak Aramaic. Going to be hard to bridge that language barrier with just charades. Republican's platform ain't gonna beat shadow puppets even.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

47 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Because we all could use a laugh:

 

That is hilarious except for the fact that there are voters who would see zero irony in that as and clamor to send that man more money to run…

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, Week said:

I mean, I doubt many speak Aramaic. Going to be hard to bridge that language barrier with just charades. Republican's platform ain't gonna beat shadow puppets even.

 

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That is hilarious except for the fact that there are voters who would see zero irony in that as and clamor to send that man more money to run…

Bridging the gap:

 

 

[karaddin]

7 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

They've been hyped for many months against trans people, it'll do.

I saw someone making the argument last week that they were whipped into the current frenzy by a Gallup poll which came out early this year showing over 20% of gen z responding as being LGBTQ+ which is more than double Millennials who are already a big jump from X etc.

The poll showed that shame and general societal homophobia and transphobia isn't cutting it anymore and wider acceptance will see those numbers continuing to rise, so (obviously) instead of learning they're on the wrong side of history again they are rushing to codify legal discrimination again. 

The timeline does look to line up.

[mcbigski]

19 hours ago, karaddin said:

 The part I haven't seen mentioned is that we now have mass data harvesting from our online activity which can do things like claim to identify when someone is pregnant and can certainly identify someone looking for information on abortions, and the government can buy this information without any 4th amendment concerns. 

If you want to talk more about how it's bad for the government and corporations to work together sub rosa to restrict our rights, I'm all ears.  Welcome to the party pal, to quote Die Hard

10 hours ago, Zorral said:

Not true.  You don't live here and you don't see it and hear it banged on 24/7 in the frakin' 'heartland. 

Don't you live in Manhattan?  There may be a gulf between what you're told the 'heartland' thinks and what actually goes on outside of the NYT bubble.

8 hours ago, Week said:

The anti-privacy trolls on here don't acknowledge (in addition to other aspects of reality) is that their arguments against abortion absolutely require an adherence and belief in extremist Christian theology. Other religions, agnostics, atheists, etc. do NOT agree and our rights are being infringed upon due to Christian theology.

You really shouldn't speak for all other religions, agnostics and atheists.  As an agnostic myself, I don't see a problem with some abortion restrictions. 

Or perhaps better said, I see a big problem with unrestricted abortions.  If partial birth abortions are OK, then infanticide should also be OK.  The latter is clearly safer for the mother after all. I don't see a difference morally between killing a baby five minutes after its born instead of five minutes before it would have been.

I don't think you have to be an extremist Christian to feel squeamish about infanticide.  

All that being said, I can accept some point before 3rd trimester as a dividing line.  Not so much from a position of moral clarity, just practically that a line needs to be drawn somewhere.  

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Kind of funny that the party of Jesus could never get Jesus' vote if he was alive today.

Wrong again.  Recent declines in Hispanic approval for Democrats would mean that more Jesuses are likely to vote for Republicans this year than ever before.  Though I expect the Dems to still corner the dead Jesus market.

[karaddin]

4 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

If you want to talk more about how it's bad for the government and corporations to work together sub rosa to restrict our rights, I'm all ears.  Welcome to the party pal, to quote Die Hard

Obviously it's just never come up at a point I'm involved in the conversation because I'm certainly not new to thinking this is bad. I suspect I'm probably more negative on the way corporations sell our data back and forth, but I do take issue with the government accessing that data. Sharing information with one party in no way consents to sharing it with other parties you'd refuse to share with directly and the government should not be able to simplify outsource violating your rights.

There sure as hell is not informed consent from 99% of people to share the level of detail that tech companies harvest due to not actually understanding just how much they know and can infer.

[Week]

10 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Or perhaps better said, I see a big problem with unrestricted abortions.  If partial birth abortions are OK, then infanticide should also be OK.  The latter is clearly safer for the mother after all. I don't see a difference morally between killing a baby five minutes after its born instead of five minutes before it would have been.

I don't think you have to be an extremist Christian to feel squeamish about infanticide.  

All that being said, I can accept some point before 3rd trimester as a dividing line.  Not so much from a position of moral clarity, just practically that a line needs to be drawn somewhere.  

These are already pretty only limited to instances where the mother's health is in jeopardy. So unless you want women to risk their lives for what are often not viable babies (late stage deformities). Well, you've just killed the mother in addition to an already lost baby. Your argument isn't really relevant to this discussion. It's a <1% of all procedures - they seem to be too rare for a percentage to be put on it - as I haven't found one.

https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/bans-specific-abortion-methods-used-after-first-trimester

Same logic - flipping the narrative (despite it still being rare)

 

Etaa- limits to contraception will be next for many states.

[DMC]

26 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

If partial birth abortions are OK, then infanticide should also be OK.

Why the fuck are you bringing up "partial birth abortions?"  Those were banned by federal law in 2003.  You won that battle a long time ago.

[The Anti-Targ]

How many late term abortions are because the person suddenly decides they don't want to have a baby after all? I would have thought pretty much all third trimester abortions are because of significant health complications or discovery that the foetus is not actually viable.

Speaking on behalf of my religion (for which I have no real authority to do, but this is my understanding) abortion "just because" is not permitted. But there are completely legit reasons for abortion, even late term abortion when one of those reasons is applicable would be OK. Our theology would see it as a mercy for an unborn child to be terminated rather than be born live only to die within hours or days, for instance. There may even be a case for partial birth abortion. But also, even if someone was to have an abortion because having a baby is simply an inconvenience there is no punishment to be meted out for that decision, the matter is between that person and God. Also, we have zero interest in imposing our religious laws on people of other faiths or no faith. So whatever I've said is without judgement on anyone else, and it is not even for me to judge others in my religion, since I can only be a judge for my own choices, and I don't have a womb so I will never be faced with such a decision.

As to the draft decision. My skimming of an article I read suggested Alito's view is that Roe v Wade, and the other decision, was judicial overreach in that it imposed a federal limit on state's rights (my paraphrase). But I thought the philosophy of the constitution was really protecting individual rights, not state's rights, (we hold these truths to be self-evident... only talks about the individual, right?) which means neither federal or state legislatures interfering with people's lives without justification. To that end it would seem that Roe v Wade decided that there was insufficient justification to infringe on individual freedoms to the extent of completely criminalising abortion, or legislating to the extent of an effective ban. If my understanding is largely correct, it would appear that possibly 5 SC justices have rather a warped understanding of the constitution, or they understand well the constitution but are motivated by something other than upholding the constitution.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Kind of funny that the party of Jesus could never get Jesus' vote if he was alive today.

It's hard to get the vote of a social justice Jew that they would gladly crucify. 

 

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

The poll showed that shame and general societal homophobia and transphobia isn't cutting it anymore and wider acceptance will see those numbers continuing to rise, so (obviously) instead of learning they're on the wrong side of history again they are rushing to codify legal discrimination again. 

The timeline does look to line up.

People say this about so many things, but THEY DON'T CARE so long as they are the ones with the power to set back the clock to their idea of a good ole times past that never was. If they can cause "libtards" misery while doing it, then all the better. As far as they are concerned, history is written by the victors, and they are the ones winning. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

As to the draft decision. My skimming of an article I read suggested Alito's view is that Roe v Wade, and the other decision, was judicial overreach in that it imposed a federal limit on state's rights (my paraphrase). But I thought the philosophy of the constitution was really protecting individual rights, not state's rights, (we hold these truths to be self-evident... only talks about the individual, right?) which means neither federal or state legislatures interfering with people's lives without justification. To that end it would seem that Roe v Wade decided that there was insufficient justification to infringe on individual freedoms to the extent of completely criminalising abortion, or legislating to the extent of an effective ban. If my understanding is largely correct, it would appear that possibly 5 SC justices have rather a warped understanding of the constitution, or they understand well the constitution but are motivated by something other than upholding the constitution.

Alito would say that Roe v. Wade read an individual right into the Constitution that did not exist, and as such represented an intrusion by the court into political decision-making. In short, that the correct venue for the abortion debate is the elected legislature and not the court-room.

Of course, the tendency for such judges to overreach themselves (Citizens United) means that this comes across as a tad insincere.

[The Anti-Targ]

19 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Alito would say that Roe v. Wade read an individual right into the Constitution that did not exist, and as such represented an intrusion by the court into political decision-making. In short, that the correct venue for the abortion debate is the elected legislature and not the court-room.

Of course, the tendency for such judges to overreach themselves (Citizens United) means that this comes across as a tad insincere.

So that would be the same argument for reversing same sex marriage I guess. Perhaps a little bit complicated by the fact that I suppose marriage itself is a right, and the constitution does not stipulate that it's confined to one male + one female. So perhaps "you can't read things into the constitution that aren't there", is an argument that supports the constitutionality of same sex marriage.

Is there no argument that abortion is a matter that should be subject to some level of federal statute since if it's legal in California but illegal in Arizona then unless Arizona is going to infringe on people's freedom of movement there is nothing to stop people from taking a trip to California to get an abortion? And if you are going to arrest that person when they cross back into Arizona, then you are again infringing on freedom of movement for a procedure that is legal in the state where it was performed. So there should at least be a case for a minimum federal statute that abortion must not be rendered illegal nor effectively prohibited (e.g. no abortion after 6 weeks) by any state legislature. Outside of that states can put reasonable measures in place, which I guess is the current status. What are some examples of things that are legal in some states and not in others where you can be convicted of a crime in the state where it's illegal for doing the thing in the sate where it is legal? Smoking weed is not an example, because as long as you don't take weed into the state where it is illegal there is no crime for having smoked it in, say, Colorado.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

9 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Pelosi is endorsing at least one anti abortion Dem this year.  Blaming Susan Sarandon for this situation is nonsense.

Pelosi is trying to keep Dem majority. If that involves failing another purity test, I am fine with that. But, ok, if you want to burn that witch, Alito can surely provide you with legal cover for it.

As for Susan Sarandon et al. They didn't want to vote for Hillary and claimed there's virtually no difference between her and Trump, and went public with that rather silly opinion. One difference between a Trump and HRC Presidency: two seats on the Supreme Court.  So yeah, I feel some degree of culpability for the make up of the SCOTUS and the decissions they produce lies with those: we can't vote for Hillary there's no difference to Trump crowd. Susan Sarandon is the very face of those morons.

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

It's hard to get the vote of a social justice Jew that they would gladly crucify. 

 

People say this about so many things, but THEY DON'T CARE so long as they are the ones with the power to set back the clock to their idea of a good ole times past that never was. If they can cause "libtards" misery while doing it, then all the better. As far as they are concerned, history is written by the victors, and they are the ones winning. 

Just to be clear, I know and agree and am not surprised in the slightest. Just thought the poll gave additional context for the timing of the actions, not the actions themselves.

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Pelosi is trying to keep Dem majority. 

At some point you have to answer the question of "what is the point of compromising to get/keep power if you don't use that power to actually fix problems". Maybe you could make the argument that focusing all your political capital on shoring up democracy and protecting the vote is the upmost importance at the moment, but if the Dems have made a lot of progress on this front I've missed that news. Tywin's pessimism about the GOP further gutting the right to vote doesn't make me think I have missed anything though. Just "we aren't actively making things worse" isn't enough to justify "give us money to fight these fights" that you never actually fight.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

24 minutes ago, karaddin said:

At some point you have to answer the question of "what is the point of compromising to get/keep power if you don't use that power to actually fix problems". Maybe you could make the argument that focusing all your political capital on shoring up democracy and protecting the vote is the upmost importance at the moment, but if the Dems have made a lot of progress on this front I've missed that news. Tywin's pessimism about the GOP further gutting the right to vote doesn't make me think I have missed anything though. Just "we aren't actively making things worse" isn't enough to justify "give us money to fight these fights" that you never actually fight.

Sure, but from Pelosi's perspective it's important to keep in mind, that not all Democratic voters are the same. As much as I'd love a House and Senate dominated by AOC like politicians, that's just not gonna happen. In some districts going hard for a pro-choice message is not gonna get you elected. Now campaigning on pro-Choice on the back of that insane ruling is an elephant trap. Sure you galvanize part of your base, but it's been a much better mobilizer for the right. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So that would be the same argument for reversing same sex marriage I guess. Perhaps a little bit complicated by the fact that I suppose marriage itself is a right, and the constitution does not stipulate that it's confined to one male + one female. So perhaps "you can't read things into the constitution that aren't there", is an argument that supports the constitutionality of same sex marriage.

Undoing the same-sex marriage ruling (Obergefell v. Hodges) would be a tad icky even for this lot, since its reasoning hinges on Loving v. Virginia - which ruled inter-racial marriage-bans are unconstitutional (marriage being held to be a right). Basically, they'd have to argue against Obergefell while upholding Loving, because going after Loving would raise some serious eyebrows even among Republicans.    

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Pelosi is trying to keep Dem majority. If that involves failing another purity test, I am fine with that. But, ok, if you want to burn that witch, Alito can surely provide you with legal cover for it.

As for Susan Sarandon et al. They didn't want to vote for Hillary and claimed there's virtually no difference between her and Trump, and went public with that rather silly opinion. One difference between a Trump and HRC Presidency: two seats on the Supreme Court.  So yeah, I feel some degree of culpability for the make up of the SCOTUS and the decissions they produce lies with those: we can't vote for Hillary there's no difference to Trump crowd. Susan Sarandon is the very face of those morons.

Neither Susan Sarandon nor Nancy Pelosi are remotely responsible for any of this.  Pelosi is an actual politician with power, Sarandon is just a person with some name recognition.  Susan Sarandon did not elect Donald Trump.

Quote

Now campaigning on pro-Choice on the back of that insane ruling is an elephant trap. Sure you galvanize part of your base, but it's been a much better mobilizer for the right

"Don't talk about abortion!  Don't say Trump's name!". This is borderline superstition.  If the Dems as a party actually care about this it's insane not to campaign on it.  Especially when their opponents sure as hell will be.  At some point it's not a purity test, it's a principle.  I don't think there is any point in supporting anti-abortion Dems.  They can find other qualified candidates.  

[DMC]

4 hours ago, karaddin said:

At some point you have to answer the question of "what is the point of compromising to get/keep power if you don't use that power to actually fix problems".

Having - again, literally - one anti-abortion member in her caucus is certainly worth keeping the majority.  Especially considering the only way Congress could "fix" abortion is if the filibuster is abolished and that has nothing to do with her chamber.  I would have voted for Cisneros over Cueller, but in theory it makes perfect governing sense to support an anti-abortion Democrat in a district that slightly leans Dem but is overwhelmingly Catholic.

3 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Sure you galvanize part of your base, but it's been a much better mobilizer for the right. 

Don't get why you think this.  The GOP base may care about abortion more than the Dem base, yeah, but the Dems obviously have much more to be pissed about on the issue right now, and anger is usually one of the best mobilization tools.  Plus the GOP, in general, is already pretty well mobilized in a midterm where they're completely out of power.  Anyway, the Dems are obviously going to use abortion as a campaign issue this fall and they should.

3 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Undoing the same-sex marriage ruling (Obergefell v. Hodges) would be a tad icky even for this lot, since its reasoning hinges on Loving v. Virginia

Don't be so sure about that - GOP Senator Mike Braun Claims He Didn't Mean To Say States Should Be Able To Ban Interracial Marriage, Despite Saying It Multiple Times. 

Anyway, this SC is perfectly capable of overturning Obergefell without invoking Loving.  While the majority in Obergefell cited Loving as one of the precedents, that really isn't gonna matter to the six justices that control the SC - three of which dissented in Obergefell.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 5/3/2022 at 7:40 AM, Fez said:

That would be tricky. There's been a ban on federal funding related to abortions for a long time, so it'd be very difficult to find a plausible connection. Maybe they could try to come up with some fake thing like "less abortions means more taxpayers eventually", and keep firing the senate parliamentarian until they find one willing to go along with it. However, if they were willing to go that far they'd probably be willing to just remove the filibuster. So if there aren't the votes for the later, there probably isn't for the former.

It's the same situation Democrats face with Manchin/Sinema now. They don't just like the filibuster for its own sake, they like the impact it has on the senate. Liberal groups coming up with creative rule changes that keep the filibuster but remove it impact are just wasting their time. And if there aren't 50 Republicans who want to remove the filibuster then they'll face the same.

I was mostly kidding, but I truly hadn't considered the federal funding issue related to abortion. 

On 5/3/2022 at 7:41 AM, cock_merchant said:

65% oppose abortion in the second trimester, which is a restriction unconstitutional under Roe. With RvW potentially being overturned, late term abortions will reduce.

Not sure I really understand what you're driving at here, but it sounds like you're saying this ban is good and/or the best way to stop second trimester abortions. That issue actually came up on our ballot last year--to ban second trimester abortions--and it was shot down by the people in our state. The issue here is it's a dishonest proposition. The types of abortions "we all agree" should be banned are actually being reserved for a select few people who are in a terrible position. Typically couples who desperately want a child, but an abortion is required for the safety and health of the mother. It's a terrible thing for anyone to go through, and acting like it's something doctors will do for anyone who pops in off the street is pretty offensive in its either dishonesty or ignorance.

On 5/3/2022 at 8:01 AM, DMC said:

 

No legitimate parliamentarian is going to allow an abortion bill into reconciliation.  They'd have to either overrule her or install a puppet parliamentarian, both of which are effectively the same thing as abolishing the filibuster.

 

Well, mostly sarcastic, but at this point, I'm not sure there is much legitimacy in our institutions to protect us. 

22 hours ago, LongRider said:

Workers' rights and workplace safety tho?  Gonna be rough.  Also, the new anti-lynching laws?  Possibly a very short life.       

Certainly new Jim Crow laws and lynching being tested as socially acceptable in the south.