Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade; states can ban abortion

dreng3

Elite Member
Aug 23, 2011
746
384
68
Country
Denmark
And now we wait for the SCOTUS to make a right to life argument, include that fetuses are people thus making abortion murder and illegal everywhere.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gorfias

Dreiko

Elite Member
Legacy
May 1, 2020
2,888
980
118
CT
Country
usa
Gender
male, pronouns: your majesty/my lord/daddy
Are... you... serious?
Yeah, she definitely called em deplorables and not degenerates, I'm 100% serious. I know it sounds pretty unbelievable lol.
 

Terminal Blue

Elite Member
Legacy
Feb 18, 2010
3,914
1,781
118
Country
United Kingdom
Yeah, she definitely called em deplorables and not degenerates, I'm 100% serious. I know it sounds pretty unbelievable lol.
"Deplorables" is a much, much less serious term than "degenerates" though.

"Degeneracy" as an idea originates in race science. It is genuinely one of the most insane concepts human beings ever came up with, and we are extremely fortunate that the world at large (outside that section of the far right who still buy into scientific racism) has forgotten its original meaning.
 

Dreiko

Elite Member
Legacy
May 1, 2020
2,888
980
118
CT
Country
usa
Gender
male, pronouns: your majesty/my lord/daddy
"Deplorables" is a much, much less serious term than "degenerates" though.

"Degeneracy" as an idea originates in race science. It is genuinely one of the most insane concepts human beings ever came up with, and we are extremely fortunate that the world at large (outside that section of the far right who still buy into scientific racism) has forgotten its original meaning.
Yes I know, but it connotes an idea of decorum being breached which betrays an expectation of decorum being there in the first place. Normal people don't care enough about such hollow concepts to make speech about them.

Hillary calling them all degenerate redneck cousinfuckers would have at least been interesting, you know. She'd seem human even if improper.


See, defending decorum is elitist asshole bs, being pissed off at someone an calling em an ugly slur is normal human behavior.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Specter Von Baren

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
20,079
4,830
118
So, can Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan just pack it in and leave, because really what's the point of these three being on the court anymore?
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
7,121
964
118
Country
USA
Sexuality is already protected under the 14th amendment, as sex is a protected class. If you punish a dude for having sex with a dude but not a gal for having sex with a dude, you're punishing him due to his sex. Same way with marriage
Your take here is genuinely better than the Supreme Court's in Obergefell. You're not trying to argue that there's an unstated fundamental right to marriage in the Constitution. To quote from the decision: "An individual can invoke a right to constitutional protection when he or she is harmed, even if the broader public disagrees and even if the legislature refuses to act." Their decision lived within the logic that the Supreme Court can insert itself as a super-legislature when a constitutional right is in question, and is one of many cases where it invented constitutional rights for that purpose.

Like, there was that case recently where a trans-woman was fired after socially transitioning because the employer wouldn't agree to the change in attire. The Supreme Court with a conservative majority still sided with the trans-woman in the case, but did so by largely the same logic you use here, that sex is a protected class, and if you fire a man for wearing a style of clothes that you wouldn't fire a woman for wearing, that's sex discrimination. They did not try to rationalize a fundamental constitutional right to gender identity or anything like that, and that's kind of a big difference.
I would not characterize the stripping away of rights from half the population as "giving power back".
Over stripping away the processes of government from the entire population, I'd say so.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Specter Von Baren

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
7,121
964
118
Country
USA
So, can Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan just pack it in and leave, because really what's the point of these three being on the court anymore?
So you don't have a problem with half a century of liberal majorities on the court legislating what they want from the bench without needing anything from the conservatives, but the moment the conservatives have a majority and don't have to uphold those rulings it's "why even be there?"
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,990
6,306
118
Country
United Kingdom
I'm as much a legal realist as any other person, but legal realism aside even a Supreme Court justice cannot merely say "because I said so". There very much still are boundaries on federal judicial power and the overall legitimacy of the court to consider, and even a justice like Felix Frankfurter -- the most-overturned justice to the best of my continuing knowledge -- needed legal bases upon which to write opinions.
Indeed they cannot merely say "because I said so"; they rather need to churn out some written sophistry to justify the decision they would personally like to make anyway. Such is not a great barrier, and has been done countless times to overturn laws that were perfectly legally sound, but which the justices did not like.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Thaluikhain

TheMysteriousGX

Elite Member
Legacy
Sep 16, 2014
8,468
7,034
118
Country
United States
So you don't have a problem with half a century of liberal majorities on the court legislating what they want from the bench without needing anything from the conservatives, but the moment the conservatives have a majority and don't have to uphold those rulings it's "why even be there?"
Good things are good and bad things are bad
 
  • Like
Reactions: crimson5pheonix

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,990
6,306
118
Country
United Kingdom
I don't appreciate the comment only because he limited himself to those few issues. I appreciate the broad perspective on governance and jurisprudence that Clarence Thomas has. We live in a stupid time where the legislature pretty much actively avoids settling any controversial issues and waits for the courts or a sufficiently zealous executive to just order things be done, and that isn't the constitutional republic that America was built to be. This ruling is a rare moment in history when a powerful institution is saying "no, we shouldn't have this power, take it back", which I'm a fan of. If people want legal protections for abortion, pass them. If people want sexuality to be a protected class like race, get an amendment in there. Let's get back to the point where our representatives actually had to legislate.

But that he only mentioned major cases that offend his personal political sensibilities is a bad look. Not unusual for Thomas, who is hardly a politician and has been very blunt from the moment he was nominated, but still pretty ugly as far as polarizing the country.
OK, so you're happy with the delineation of powers that his statement implies.

How do you feel about the fact that such a finding could end up making it illegal to take contraception or have a same-sex relationship? I mean the practical, tangible outcome the finding would have. That's what people are cut up about.

The reason he only pointed to laws he personally doesn't like is fundamental: the conservative justices only intend to use this logic to overturn findings they don't personally like. It is not a matter of principle with regards to the power of the Court.
 
Last edited:

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,990
6,306
118
Country
United Kingdom
Like, there was that case recently where a trans-woman was fired after socially transitioning because the employer wouldn't agree to the change in attire. The Supreme Court with a conservative majority still sided with the trans-woman in the case, but did so by largely the same logic you use here, that sex is a protected class, and if you fire a man for wearing a style of clothes that you wouldn't fire a woman for wearing, that's sex discrimination. They did not try to rationalize a fundamental constitutional right to gender identity or anything like that, and that's kind of a big difference.
This logic could apply just as easily to same sex marriage. Preventing a man marrying a man is preventing a man from doing what we allow a woman to do. The supreme court justices are simply not interested in bringing arguments up if they run contrary to personal sympathies. Hence, the conservative justices had no interest in bringing that perspective up with regards to DOMA.
 

meiam

Elite Member
Dec 9, 2010
3,573
1,809
118
If people want sexuality to be a protected class like race, get an amendment in there. Let's get back to the point where our representatives actually had to legislate.
People want these things, but the system is setup in a way where the people who don't want these have a massive electoral advantages and so can actively block the will of the majority. If the system fairly represented the will of the people, the current republican party would be almost non existent in all three branch of government.
 

tippy2k2

Beloved Tyrant
Legacy
Mar 15, 2008
14,603
1,967
118
Everyone expected it but still sucks to see it actually happen. At least here in my state they've vowed to make sure it stays legal but a lot of people just received a Death Sentence for the crime of being poor in the wrong state.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
20,079
4,830
118
So you don't have a problem with half a century of liberal majorities on the court legislating what they want from the bench without needing anything from the conservatives, but the moment the conservatives have a majority and don't have to uphold those rulings it's "why even be there?"
Yes.

Now that 50 years of human rights have been stripped away, with clear spoken promises of more to be taken, from a majority that will remain in power undisputed for at least the next 30 years, this should scare the fuck out of anyone that has even one shred of humanity in them.
 

evilneko

Fall in line!
Jun 16, 2011
2,218
49
53
If they had managed to codify Roe, wouldn't this SCOTUS still have claimed 'Yeah sorry, but it's still not in the original constitution' and then overturned it anyway? Not an expert on this, but this SCOTUS (the dipshit conservative side at least) seems to just do whatever the fuck it wants.
Yes. I will grant that for that to happen, a lawsuit must be filed and appealed multiple times, but that is practically a given--it would happen.

That is why I said the first step to getting out of this mess is to unpack the court by adding more Justices. Otherwise, any Federal law

Over stripping away the processes of government from the entire population, I'd say so.
You'd rather have the power belonging to the government than to the people.

Good to know.

I just wish none of this was on the books. No guarantee of abortion or legal punishment for having one. *sigh*
These two states cannot coexist. One or the other must be enshrined in law. Prior to yesterday, choice was enshrined. Today, punishment is.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Casual Shinji

XsjadoBlaydette

~s•o√r∆rπy°`
May 26, 2022
1,094
1,376
118
Clear 'n Present Danger
Country
Must
Gender
Disappear
It's worth considering the amount of under-the-radar anti-abortion terrorism within the modern history of America in regards to this too


In the face of Monday’s unexpected leak of a draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito that confirmed that the Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion advocates and providers are bracing for a surge in clinic violence. In a Wednesday call, officials with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security raised concerns about an increase in violent rhetoric from far-right aggressors in the wake of the draft opinion’s release. And private intelligence groups have released reports detailing violent reactions and threats to bomb clinics and hurt pro-abortion protestors on far-right online forums in response to the draft leak.

For nearly 50 years, as anti-abortion legislators in states around the country have chipped away at the constitutional right to a safe and legal abortion, they have done so with the steady drumbeat of violence at their back.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the most recent attack on the constitutional right to abortion last December. The question in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is whether Mississippi’s ban on pre-viability abortions is constitutional. Under the Supreme Court precedent set by Roe v. Wade in 1973 and reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey in 1992, the answer is clearly no.

Though violence and threats of violence directed against abortion providers have been a prominent aspect of abortion in the United States since Roe was decided, anti-abortion legislators would like to ignore this history. Instead, they try to frame the history of post-Roe abortion as a “hard issue” and one of mere “controversy” that should be settled by these same state legislators. But decades of violence make clear that the debate over abortion in America isn’t a matter of some “civil disagreement.” It is the subject of unrelenting attacks by those who have no regard for the rule of law.

In the decision expected within the next few months, if the Supreme Court overturns or severely guts Roe v. Wade, it will send an unmistakable and dangerous message: that the violence against abortion providers has worked.
anti-abortion-violence-terrorism-roe-v-wade


Mississippi provides a dramatic illustration of how extremists have employed violence and other lawlessness to reduce access to abortion. After a rapid expansion of abortion services in Mississippi in the years immediately following Roe, anti-abortion extremists waged a campaign that included stalking, intimidation and violence against doctors who provided abortion care.

This campaign was not isolated or sporadic but sustained and pervasive. The campaign of violence and threats was effective, coinciding with a sharp decline in the provision of and access to abortion services in Mississippi. In fact, Jackson Women’s Health Organization—now the last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi and the target of the law at issue in Dobbs—was established in response to the clinic closures that resulted from this anti-abortion violence. At the time of its founding, only one other provider offered abortions for Mississippi residents.

Although Mississippi stands at the heart of the current attack on the constitutional right to abortion, violence against reproductive health providers and clinics has cast a shadow across the entire country. March 10, 1993, marked the first-known time in the U.S. that an anti-abortion extremist committed murder. Michael Griffin joined an anti-abortion protest at a reproductive healthcare clinic in Pensacola, Fla., and then fatally shot Dr. David Gunn in the back as the doctor was walking into the clinic.

Just over a year after Gunn was murdered, Dr. John Britton and Ret. Lt. Col. James Barrett, a volunteer clinic escort and a veteran of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars, were gunned down in the parking lot of another Pensacola clinic. Barrett’s wife, who saw her husband and Britton murdered, was shot in the arm.

December 1994, an anti-abortion extremist opened fire on two clinics in Massachusetts, killing both clinics’ receptionists—Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols—and wounding five others. In 1998, Eric Rudolph, who bombed the Olympic Games, a clinic, and a lesbian and gay bar in Atlanta, detonated a bomb at a clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killing off-duty police officer Robert Sanderson, who served as a security guard at the clinic, and critically injuring a nurse. In 1998, a sniper murdered Dr. Barnett Slepian in front of his family as he was standing in the kitchen of his home in upstate New York.

On a Sunday at the end of May 2009, Dr. George Tiller was attending services at his church in Wichita, Kan., when anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder entered the church, raised a gun to Tiller’s forehead and shot him at point-blank range. Tiller had survived being shot in both arms by a different anti-abortion extremist in 1993.


Most recently, Robert Lewis Dear Jr. traveled to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., with four SKS rifles, five handguns, two additional rifles, a shotgun, more than 500 rounds of ammunition and propane tanks, intending to wage “war” on the clinic because it offered abortion services. Dear shot at six peo- ple outside the clinic, killing two and injuring three more. He then shot his way into a clinic entrance while 27 healthcare providers, employees, patients and their companions attempted to hide, one of whom was shot during the course of the attack.

In the approximately five-hour standoff that ensued, Dear turned his weapons on law enforcement, shooting and killing one officer and injuring four more. In total, Dear fired 198 bullets during the attack. According to Dear’s documented interview with the police, he was “happy with what he had done because his actions … ensured that no more abortions would be conducted at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs.”

The murders are, of course, the highest-profile examples of violence against reproductive health providers and clinics, but they alone don’t come close to telling the full story of the unrelenting, daily violence and harassment that anti-abortion extremists visit on providers and clinics. Attempted murder, death threats, stalking, kidnapping, bombings and arson are a routine part of life for providers and clinics.

And disturbingly, studies show that violence and threats have not only continued in recent years, but have risen.

A steady stream of examples illustrates the ever-present risk to providers, patients, staff and the public. In 2019, a 17-year-old in Texas was arrested after threatening to “commit jihad on an abortion clinic.” An Ohio man was charged with threatening to assault federal law enforcement officers after he made online threats against Planned Parenthood and others; authorities recovered more than a dozen rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammunition from his home.

In 2020, a Rhode Island man was sentenced to federal prison for stalking and sending threats after he threatened to torture and kill a university professor who supported abortion rights, and left more than 100 threatening voice mails for a clinic. And in 2021, a Delaware man pleaded guilty to federal charges after he threw a Molotov cocktail through a clinic’s window and painted a slogan associated with white supremacist groups on the clinic’s wall.

Anti-abortion extremists have employed and continue to employ violence and threats as part of a deliberate strategy to reduce or eliminate abortion, with a concerning number of anti-abortion extremists openly endorsing violence. Shortly after Gunn was murdered by Griffin in 1993, a statement signed by 34 extremists was released, stating:

“We, the undersigned, declare the justice of taking all godly action necessary to defend innocent human life including the use of force. We proclaim that whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child. We assert that if Michael Griffin did in fact kill David Gunn, his use of lethal force was justifiable provided it was carried out for the purpose of defending the lives of unborn children. Therefore, he ought to be acquitted of the charges against him.”​

Over the years since, several more versions of the statement were released, each time adding more extremists as signers.

Anti-abortion extremists have also expanded the targets of their violence beyond abortion providers. A number of prominent anti-abortion extremists were among those who participated in the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Individuals interviewed outside the Capitol that day cited their anti-abortion views as the reason they traveled to Washington, D.C., with one person explaining that her decision to come to the Capitol was, in part, “to fight for the unborn.” Another extremist who filmed himself at the Capitol that day was previously convicted of planning to bomb an abortion clinic in 1988, and later admitted to setting fire to that clinic and another.

Violence has also been directed toward the Supreme Court. A shot was fired through the window of Justice Harry Blackmun’s home following years of death threats that began when he wrote the Court’s decision in Roe.

Extremists have used these acts of violence and other illegal tactics to further their goal of stopping abortion by reducing or eliminating access to abortion services, which disproportionately impacts low-income women, women of color and teenage girls. Over time, the violence has contributed to a substantial reduction in the number of clinics as well as the number of physicians and other clinic staff able and willing to perform abortions. Many doctors trained to provide abortion care opt not to do so to avoid subjecting themselves to harassment and violence, and other trained providers are leaving the practice due to the stress and burdens of living with the constant threat of violence.

As one doctor explained, she stopped providing abortions altogether because she was attacked on the internet and “hunted down by protesters” who broke into her home and left behind dead animals.

Anti-abortion extremists have employed and continue to employ violence and threats as part of a deliberate strategy to reduce or eliminate abortion, with a concerning number of anti-abortion extremists openly endorsing violence.

There is a real risk that overturning Roe would further embolden extremists to engage in violence in their crusade to end abortion in the United States. While some states would ban all or nearly all abortions if Roe is overturned, many states would continue to allow abortion, and there is little question that providers in those states would remain targets of violence.

After all, extremist violence has not been confined to those jurisdictions that would be expected to curtail abortion rights if Roe is overturned. Six of the murders committed by anti-abortion extremists occurred in jurisdictions that would likely preserve access to abortion: Colorado, Massachusetts and New York. If anti-abortion sentiments are unable to sway legislators in some states to ban abortion outright, there are very real reasons to be concerned that extremists—who for decades have disregarded the rule of law and legitimate political process—will take matters into their own hands.

The Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.) and a number of other women’s and civil rights organizations, represented by pro bono counsel John Hall, Elizabeth Saxe, David Zionts, Kate Thompson, Molly Doggett, Marisa Tashman and Megan Keenan of Covington & Burling LLP, filed an amicus brief with the Court last fall in Dobbs to ensure that this long, devastating history of violence is not ignored as the Supreme Court considers the most serious challenge to the constitutional right to abortion care in a generation.

In 1992, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe in Casey, it said it could not “overrule [precedent] under fire.” Overturning Roe now would, whatever the Court intends or says, be perceived as rewarding anti-abortion extremists’ violent acts and would undermine the rule of law. In Casey, the Court refused to overrule a landmark precedent under threat of violence. It should not do so now, a generation later, when even more anti-abortion violence has become an undeniable part of our nation’s history.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,937
3,809
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
It is a less than ideal solution, and a bandaid at that, but the first step to fixing this mess is to unpack the court. Three more Justices, STAT. Snap to it, Congress.

But to accomplish that we've got to pack both houses. And to do that, Dems have got to learn to fall in line like the Republicans do. That's how we ended up with Trump. That's how the court got packed.
The funny thing is that even republicans don't fall in line like we think they do, they have their dissenting opinions just like democrats do, look at someone like Liz Cheney who the republicans actively hate right now.
 

Specter Von Baren

Annoying Green Gadfly
Legacy
Aug 25, 2013
5,637
2,856
118
I don't know, send help!
Country
USA
Gender
Cuttlefish
You'd rather have the power belonging to the government than to the people.

Good to know.
These two states cannot coexist. One or the other must be enshrined in law. Prior to yesterday, choice was enshrined. Today, punishment is.
Such an interesting lack of self-awareness you have.