SCOTUS overturns Roe megathread (pg 53 - confirmed)

[GeorgiaModerate]

Assuming this is legitimate, has there ever been such a leak from SCOTUS before?

[GeorgiaModerate]

What's odd is that leading stories tonight are the Met Gala and its atrocious fashions, not this.  I wonder even if on the day Roe is formally overturned, most people will really care.  It's probably important if you're very one way - very pro-life or very pro-choice - but I suspect a post-Roe America will have a tremendous amount of apathy about abortion.

I'm sure that other news outlets are waiting for independent confirmation.  I would too in their place.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Pretty gross to see all the salivating from posters in here over this potentially saving Democrats in 2022 or whatever. A lot of people are going to die because of this, or have their life trajectories permanently worsened.

"Salivating"?  I think you're reading something into it that's not there.  Do you think people on a political forum should not speculate about the political effects of such a major decision?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Manchin is not "pro-life" or "pro-choice" he is an opportunistic narcissist. That said he will obviously do nothing about this.

Which is why Biden and Schumer needs to be clear that inaction by him will lead to removal of all committee assignments.

That continues to be how you get majority leader McConnell

Who would be happy to give Manchin some plum committee assignments to switch parties.

[GeorgiaModerate]

CNN now has the story (citing the Politico article).

[GeorgiaModerate]

Historically, issue polling tends to show less bias than election polling.  (Caveat: assuming quality pollsters and sound question wording.)

[GeorgiaModerate]

Here’s my take on abortion.  I spent a long time thinking about this many years ago and came up with a position that works for me.  It may not work for you.  I encourage you to do your own thinking about it.

First, I am not considering religious arguments because I am not a religious person.  If you have an opinion on abortion that stems primarily from religious reasons, don’t waste your time and mine trying to persuade me with it.  Despite what some extremely religious people I know believe, it is entirely possible to come up with sound standards of right and wrong that are not based on any religion.  But that’s a topic for another day. 

Second, some of my opinions have been formed by things that happened to people I know.  Other parts have been formed by my efforts to think through the issue logically.  Obviously, every person knows different people and everyone has different experiences, so one might argue that a person shouldn’t take into account such personal experiences in forming an opinion on such an important issue.  I would counter that our personal experiences necessarily influence our world view, and that how people are personally affected is an important aspect of such a personal issue, so using such personal experiences can only help in considering the issue.

Abortion is a complex issue.  It’s not clear-cut what is right and wrong.  If it was a simple problem it would have been solved long ago.  There's a common saying in my profession, which is engineering: every complex problem has a solution that is simple, elegant, and utterly wrong.  This is how I view simple "solutions" to the question of abortion.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the unnecessary or unjustified taking of a human life is wrong.  So the question becomes: when does human life begin?  If someone believes that human life does begin at the instant of conception, then it is logical to see how that extends to a belief that abortion is murder except in extreme circumstances.  My belief is that a fetus in an advanced stage of pregnancy is undeniably a person.  Late-term abortions should be prohibited, except in extreme circumstances such as the mother’s life being endangered by continuing the pregnancy.  However, I also believe that a fetus in an early stage of pregnancy is NOT yet a person; they are a potential person, but they are not one yet.  They could not survive outside the womb. 

So I believe that a fetus in the early stages of pregnancy isn’t yet a person, while one in the late stages definitely is.  At some point in between the two, we must have the beginning of personhood.  How should we define this in legal terms?  What I eventually thought about was the other end of life: a person can be legally dead even while the body is still functioning to some degree, if their higher brain function has irreversibly stopped.  Applying this principle to the beginning of life, we can say that personhood starts with the beginning of higher brain function.  But the problem at the beginning of life is that we can’t hook up an EEG to a fetus in the womb like we can to a person who’s dying.  The best that can be achieved is a time-based cutoff. 

From what I read at the time (a long time ago, and later research may have refined these numbers) co-ordinated brain function begins at around 22-25 weeks of pregnancy.  To add a safety margin, I chose 20 weeks as a cutoff point.  If you want to add a further margin and go down as low as 16 weeks, I can go along with that.  Old English common law, which was the foundation for the laws of the English colonies that became the U.S., allowed abortion until the time of “quickening”, i.e. when the baby starts to move detectably.  This typically happens between 16 and 25 weeks, which matches up well.  However, anything like 6 weeks is too short.  It’s quite possible that pregnancy won’t even be detected that early.

In summary, I believe that a fetus is not yet a person until higher brain activity starts, and it is reasonable to define a time threshold for this somewhere in the range of 16 to 22 weeks.  Until that point, abortion should be freely available.  Afterward, I would prohibit abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger.  In that case, abortion should be permitted at any point.  (This is colored by one of those experiences that happened to someone I knew; never mind the details.)  For some of the other exceptional cases:

If it is discovered after the cutoff point that the child will be severely defective…this is a tough one.  I’m inclined to say that abortion should be allowed, but I don't feel completely firm about this.  However, if it’s outlawed then the government should provide some support for the child after birth.

Rape or incest: if the pregnancy is discovered before the time cutoff, which it should be in the vast majority of cases, there’s no problem; all abortions would be allowed in that time frame.  If for some reason the pregnancy is not discovered until later, and it was caused by rape or incest, I would allow the abortion.  Forcing someone to carry a rapist’s child is wrong (another one based on experiences of someone I know).

As I said earlier, these views are solely my own.  I put in a lot of time thinking about them and I’m content with them.  Your mileage may vary.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I'm going to find the server room for this website and smash them all with a hammer.

Luddite.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Third, the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly States, and I quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens. Implying citizenship to a newly fertilized egg or even a three months old fetus is at best and extremely novel argument, and more accurately completely antithetical to the 14th amendments explicit language.

So if somehow the right manages to twist around the literal word "born" in the Amendment to imply citizenship to the unborn, here are a couple of interesting questions:

1. Would a child born in the U.S. but conceived outside of it be a citizen of the U.S.?

2. The reverse: would a child conceived in the U.S. but born outside of it be a citizen?

And if that's not enough cans of worms yet, how about the census?  It calls for enumerating the number of "persons" in the U.S.  If personhood begins at conception...

[GeorgiaModerate]

I deleted the post quoted above as I could not find a second source to verify it.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Everyone does realize that abortion bans typically are supply-side bans by shutting down clinics and punishing providers, not demand-side bans to punish mothers, who were mostly lied to and deceived by the abortion industry, right?

I'm going to tell you a story that happened to someone I know when she was a teenager, about 15 or 16 I think.  This is one of the personal connections that I mentioned in my long post on my abortion views earlier in the thread.

She was on a family vacation to Florida.  While she was in the hotel room alone, a stranger broke in and forcibly raped her.  It was reported to the police but the rapist was never caught.  She missed her next period a couple weeks later, and her mother got her a pregnancy test.  It was positive.  The girl was not sexually active and there is no question that the rapist was the father.

Her mother took her for an abortion as soon as possible, and it's something she's been thankful for ever since.  She grew up to be happily married with several children.  She and her family have had a good life.  Had she been forced to carry the rapist's baby to term, it would have had a devastating effect on her life.   Her family at the time was just scraping by, so if she had kept the baby (which I think is very unlikely) it would have grown up in poverty, along with pushing the rest of her family into it.  Even if she didn't keep it, she would have been forced to carry a baby to term as the result of a horrible, violent act.  I have no doubt that this would have emotionally scarred her for life. 

Now tell me again that abortion in the case of rape is wrong.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Tesla is covering travel costs for employees seeking out-of-state abortions, joining the ranks of major companies who’ve introduced a similar policy to benefit workers affected by new restrictions in the past few months.

The company said in its 2021 “ Impact Report ” released Friday that it expanded its Safety Net program and health insurance offerings last year to include “travel and lodging support for those who may need to seek healthcare services that are unavailable in their home state.”

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-business-travel-4553c60632c09fd9a4944d4e29d6e720

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/DouglasKBlair/status/1523095574156742657

The people who leaked this need to be arrested and throw in prison for years

For what crime?

[GeorgiaModerate]

How about taking the traitor discussion to its own thread?  It's derailing this one.

[GeorgiaModerate]

How about taking the traitor discussion to its own thread?  It's derailing this one.

I was gonna ask if anybody remembered where we parked the Roe-mobile. 

At the Sears & Roebuck, of course.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Is there a death certificate issued for miscarriages?  (Genuinely curious about this.)

[GeorgiaModerate]

CNN has reported that "fetus" is no longer a valid solution in Wordle.

Here's more on that story:

https://twitter.com/DougSaunders/status/1523634240612564992

[GeorgiaModerate]

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said Sunday that he will call a special session of his state's legislature to pass a total ban on abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this term.

"Nebraska is a pro-life state. I believe life begins at conception, and those are babies too," Ricketts told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" when asked if he thought the state should require a young girl who was raped to carry the pregnancy to term. "If Roe v. Wade, which is a horrible constitutional decision, gets overturned by the Supreme Court, which we're hopeful of, here in Nebraska, we're going to take further steps to protect those preborn babies."

"Including in the case of rape or incest?" Bash asked. To which the governor replied: "They're still babies, too. Yes."

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/15/politics/nebraska-abortion-ban-roe-v-wade-cnntv/index.html

[GeorgiaModerate]

Protesters outside a reactionary nutjobs house: "Call the National Guard!!"
Protesters outside a women's clinic: "Freedom of Assembly!"

I think there's a very large difference between protesting outside someone's residence, which we generally deem sacrosanct, versus a public place of business.

There is a distinction I'll Grant you. However, that's an ethical and moral distinction rather than a constitutional one. Regardless, the complete 180 flip that some extremely silly posters made regarding free speech over that relatively lesser distinction was at best comical, and at worst hackishly hypocritical.

This, and there's the fact that SCOTUS has ruled that anti-choice protesters have the right to protest outside of the homes of abortion providers' employees, which I've yet to see any of our blue avatar friends disagree with, despite the anti-choice movement having such a violent record.

They do have the right, but that doesn't make it any more unsavory.

There is a wide boundary zone of things that are lawful but unpleasant, distasteful, and/or morally questionable.  Some of those I'm OK with and some I'm not; everyone reading this likely has a different set that they're OK with.  But as long as they're lawful, then people do have a right to engage in them.

[GeorgiaModerate]

This is probably going to help Republicans in the midterms.

According to you, everything helps Republicans in the midterms.

Well, the GOP kept their promise to their base.

It is much more likely to have the opposite effect.  People who are angry are more motivated to vote than those who are satisfied/happy.

[GeorgiaModerate]

How does the majority opinion compare to the leaked draft?

Quite close, from what I've seen on Twitter.

[GeorgiaModerate]

FWIW Clarence Thomas saying "we should also overturn these other decisions that I dissented in" is hardly surprising or out of character for him. Most justices consider that sort of thing to be poor form and they try to address only the case at hand but he's never cared.

You'll notice he didn't mention Loving v. Virginia.  I wonder why not...

[GeorgiaModerate]

FWIW Clarence Thomas saying "we should also overturn these other decisions that I dissented in" is hardly surprising or out of character for him. Most justices consider that sort of thing to be poor form and they try to address only the case at hand but he's never cared.

You'll notice he didn't mention Loving v. Virginia.  I wonder why not...

Because the basis of that was the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and not the "right to privacy". It's not really a related case at all.

Mind-boggling that anyone would seriously entertain the idea Clarence Thomas, happily married to his white wife, would ever seriously propose the reversal of Loving vs Virginia. It's an utterly hysterical suggestion.

Yes, that's called "irony".

[GeorgiaModerate]

It appears Kentucky had an IMMEDIATE trigger ban, so wow, it's already illegal here.

And for a close to home example it appears Wisconsin also had such a law. However the Democratic Attorney General has already said that he will not enforce it.

How much does that control what local prosecutors do, though?  Could one in a very conservative county still prosecute someone under that law?

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1540383691280904192