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Roe -V- Wade......Back at it again (finally?)


swordfish

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In light of todays "leak" from SCOTUS - here is a story from 2021.......

BTW - anyone thinking today's leak was an accident is not smart enough to keep reading this post.

No matter which side anyone falls on Roe -V- Wade, pro or anti it has (IMHO) always been a bad "law".  This issue should have been left up to the states and (IMHO) there is no way the constitution "guarantees" abortion rights.  Any state has the authority to allow or deny medical practices (such as abortions) according to the legislatorial whims within those states.  This should not be a Federal issue.

The argument is not "abortion is evil", it's about "it's a bad law" and that is what the court should be considering here.  Of course that's not how it will be presented to the American people.  "We can't restrict a woman's right to choose" is what we will be hearing in the coming days and weeks.....

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/yes-overturn-roe/

Of course the Supreme Court should take the first opportunity to throw out Roe v. Wade. It is an indefensible decision and always has been.

JOHN MCCORMACK

Throwing out Roe would not mean banning abortion. It would not even necessarily mean restricting abortion. Roe is a bad legal decision not because of any moral question related to abortion but because it is bad law. The Constitution does not say anything about abortion one way or the other, and it does not contain any provision that could reasonably be interpreted as mandating abortion rights or prohibiting abortion. The Constitution has no more to say about abortion than it does quantum physics. And the Founding Fathers knew where babies come from — if they had wanted to put something in the national charter relating to pregnancy, they could have done so.

A situation in which abortion is prohibited absolutely and everywhere in these United States would be entirely consistent with the Constitution. So would a situation in which there are no restrictions on abortion at all. This is a matter for legislators, not a matter for judges

The question of precedent should not give the justices too much anxiety. Roe is bad law, a political preference imposed for political reasons through a flimsy constitutional rationale made up out of whole cloth. This is obvious to many honest-minded people, including some pro-choice constitutional scholars. An honest person can simultaneously believe: (1) that the right to abortion should be legally guaranteed and (2) that the Constitution says nothing about this. Precedents that are obviously pretextual deserve no deference. In fact, the Supreme Court’s duty is precisely the opposite in cases such as these. The actual law should always take precedence over the fictitious law, even if the fiction was authored by a gentleman in a black robe.

Because the Constitution is silent on abortion, a post-Roe order would be established legislatively. Put another way: Post-Roe, the law would be made by the lawmakers. That would probably mean that Oklahoma and Utah will end up with abortion laws that are very different from those of California and New Jersey. As a constitutional matter, that is appropriate — it is, in fact, how things are supposed to be: We have 50 different states for a reason.

Black ceremonial robes notwithstanding, the Supreme Court is not supposed to function as an Iranian-style guardian council keeping the state and society within certain moral guardrails. The Supreme Court is there to interpret the law — which is written down for a reason. We write the law down so that we don’t have to renegotiate the rules from scratch every time there is a disagreement and so that powerful people cannot simply dictate to the less powerful what is permitted and what is not. If the abortion-rights advocates want to have a constitutional right to abortion inserted into the Bill of Rights, we have a constitutional-amendment process for such purposes. Get to work.

Overturning Roe would not be a lasting victory for the pro-life side or a lasting defeat for the pro-abortion side. It is entirely possible that Roe could be overturned and that in 20 years we have even more permissive abortion laws than we have today. I wouldn’t put it past us. No-fault divorce wasn’t forced on the American public by left-wing activists — it was enacted by popular demand to popular acclaim.

Most Americans support access to abortion early in pregnancy and support restrictions late in pregnancy. Democracy is an unpredictable thing, but it is likely that a democratic settlement on abortion — something that the United States has not had in five decades — would to some considerable extent reflect those preferences.

The case against Roe is not that abortion is a great evil. The case against Roe is that it is bad law. That is all the Supreme Court is bound to consider.

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15 minutes ago, swordfish said:

In light of todays "leak" from SCOTUS - here is a story from 2021.......

BTW - anyone thinking today's leak was an accident is not smart enough to keep reading this post.

No matter which side anyone falls on Roe -V- Wade, pro or anti it has (IMHO) always been a bad "law".  This issue should have been left up to the states and (IMHO) there is no way the constitution "guarantees" abortion rights.  Any state has the authority to allow or deny medical practices (such as abortions) according to the legislatorial whims within those states.  This should not be a Federal issue.

The argument is not "abortion is evil", it's about "it's a bad law" and that is what the court should be considering here.  Of course that's not how it will be presented to the American people.  "We can't restrict a woman's right to choose" is what we will be hearing in the coming days and weeks.....

 

Agreed, SW. 

Another take:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/on-roe-thank-you-donald-trump/

Quote

...

Who leaked it? My guess is that a clerk for one of the liberal justices did so. If true, there ought to be a merciless internal investigation, and if the leaker is found — whether he or she works for a conservative or a liberal justice — that person should be fired and made to suffer professionally. We cannot have the inner workings of the Supreme Court turned into a partisan football. If I am correct to guess that this leak emerged from the Court’s left flank, then this is probably another example of how the Left believes that when its core interests are threatened, it has no obligation to play by settled rules. You might recall that a liberal journalist told me last year that the election in 2016 of Donald Trump was such a shocking event to the media class that they concluded they had no obligation to strive to live by the standard rules of professional fairness in reporting. We see this everywhere that wokeness has come to power: old-fashioned liberal rules of fair play, free speech, and the like are construed as nothing more than a cover for evil people to impose their power on the oppressed.

More:

A person familiar with the court’s deliberations said that four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices after hearing oral arguments in December, and that line-up remains unchanged as of this week.

It is as yet unclear how Chief Justice John Roberts will vote, according to the story.

Three of the five in the reported majority were appointed by Donald Trump. No Trump, no Roe overturned. If this draft ruling becomes law, then I hereby publicly repudiate myself for having withheld my presidential vote in 2016. I was wrong, and never have I been happier to be wrong.

Here is a link to the full text of the draft ruling. Justice Samuel Alito wrote it — and somewhere in lawyer heaven, Justice Scalia is puffing on his pipe and smiling. Alito’s prose is very clear, and his argument against the Roe decision is powerful. If you have never read anything critical of Roe‘s shaky reasoning, Alito’s crisp analysis will open your eyes. The 1973 decision was nothing more than an example of “raw judicial power,” as a 1973 SCOTUS dissenting justice put it. Notice this paragraph citing leading liberal legal lights, critical of Roe‘s reasoning. Law professors Tribe and Tushnet, in particular, are strongly on the legal left:

Screen-Shot-2022-05-03-at-4.40.42-AM.png

 

This is a hugely important distinction, one that Roe supporters consistently elide: the “right to privacy” upon which Roe is based is not the same thing when applied to other matters, e.g., consenting sexual partners. Only abortion has to do with the life or death of an unborn human person:

Screen-Shot-2022-05-03-at-4.36.01-AM.png

You may not believe that an unborn human is fully a person under the law, but no one can deny that the growing biological entity that exists inside the womb of a woman after conception is of our species — and is a unique phenomenon.

Justice Alito goes on to say, contra the 1992 Casey ruling, that it doesn’t matter what the public thinks about this or any other SCOTUS ruling. Justices have to do their jobs as well as they can, based on their analysis of the law. In fact, I bet that if the eventual ruling of the Court on abortion affirms what we see here in the leaked document, it will redound to the short-term political benefit of Democrats. Still, it will have been the right thing to have done.

It is important to say what overturning Roe would not do: ban abortion nationwide. All it would do is return the issue to state legislatures. New York, California, and other liberal states would remain havens of baby-killing. Other states, like Louisiana, where I live, and Texas, would be more humane. Everybody should know, however, that the United States has one of the world’s most liberal abortion legal regimes. Just last week, when I was in the Netherlands — that is to say, that secular progressive welfare-state utopia — a Dutch friend was telling me that the law requires a five day “think it over” waiting period between the time a pregnant woman presents herself for abortion, and the time the doctor performs it. Most European countries allow abortion, but restrict it to the first trimester, absent certain exceptions that have to be approved by more than one doctor. No European country is as liberal as the US is on abortion. If SCOTUS overturns Roe, then the US will become like Europe in this respect: abortion restriction will depend on the state.

As Politico notes, SCOTUS drafts can change before being announced, so this leak is not the law. Nevertheless, if it does prove to be the case, then the pro-life movement can rightly take pride in the tireless work of fifty years. I will be grateful to them. And I will be grateful to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg for refusing to retire during the Obama presidency. And I will be grateful to Justices Alito, Thomas, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, for finally rectifying an egregious injustice. Since Roe became the law of the land, an estimated 63 million unborn children have died in their mother’s wombs, at the hands of abortionists. The current president, only the second Catholic chief executive in US history, supports the continuation of this abomination. Donald Trump, a non-churchgoing Presbyterian who is almost nobody’s idea of a model Christian, was the first sitting president in the history of this country to have addressed in person the March For Life (he did in 2020), and acted decisively to bring this holocaust of the unborn to an end. God writes straight with crooked lines.

Here is Trump’s 2020 speech to the March For Life. Though he appointed Justice Alito, George W. Bush did not go there to talk to the faithful. Neither did George H.W. Bush, who appointed Justice Thomas. Donald Trump did. Again, I never have been so pleased to have been wrong about a politician. On the right to life, he delivered.

....

 

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If this does come to pass, the ensuing sh*tstorm will be of truly epic proportions. I am very interested to watch the various states try to put the genie back in the bottle. And in situations like this, keep in mind the most important law of all: The Law of Unintended Consequences.

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1 hour ago, Bobref said:

If this does come to pass, the ensuing sh*tstorm will be of truly epic proportions. I am very interested to watch the various states try to put the genie back in the bottle. And in situations like this, keep in mind the most important law of all: The Law of Unintended Consequences.

Sounds like Indiana lawmakers are chomping at the bit to exert their control over a women's body:    https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/03/what-leaked-scotus-draft-roe-v-wade-opinion-means-indiana/9628268002/

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A majority of Indiana lawmakers are eager to further restrict abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns longstanding protections, as a leaked draft of an opinion suggests it might. 

...

Twenty-two states have pre-existing laws or so-called "trigger bans" that would prohibit or severely limit abortion access if Roe v. Wade is struck down, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights

 

Indiana does not have such a trigger, but state lawmakers want to act quickly if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade. The legislature has enacted dozens of less severe restrictions over the past decade.

Republican lawmakers, who hold a supermajority in the Indiana General Assembly, are pushing Gov. Eric Holcomb to call them back to the Statehouse as soon as possible if the court strikes down abortion rights in whole or in part. 

One hundred Republican state lawmakers, including leaders of the House and Senate, signed onto a March 8 letter to Holcomb seeking a special legislative session "at the earliest date practical" if a court ruling expands "Indiana's ability to protect unborn children."

The signatories represent a majority of both chambers. Only 10 Republicans did not sign the letter.

The General Assembly isn't scheduled to meet again until November and only the governor can call them back to the Statehouse for a special session.

....

A ban in Indiana would leave thousands of pregnant people each year without access to nearby safe and legal abortion services. A total of 7,756 pregnancies were terminated in Indiana in 2020, according to an annual report from the Indiana Department of Health. 

If the Supreme Court overturns abortion rights, Illinois would likely become the next closest place for Hoosiers to receive legal abortion services. Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky all have existing laws or triggers that would ban all or nearly all abortions without the protections currently afforded under Roe v. Wade.

A "War on Abortions" will ultimately fail.  Just like the doomed War on Drugs did.

 

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4 hours ago, swordfish said:

I'm a little concerned if the "leaker" is going to be prosecuted in any way as he/she should be.  It would set a pretty bad precedent if not.  (IMHO)

Not sure what the crime would be. But if it’s one of the Justices’ clerks, I’d be worried about my law license.

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Why Social Issues Dominate

https://mises.org/wire/why-social-issues-dominate

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Inflation in the US is at forty-year highs, while interest rates on ten-year Treasury notes just hit 3 percent—signaling trouble for home buyers. Truck drivers pay more than $1,000 to fill their rigs with $5 per gallon diesel to deliver your increasingly expensive groceries and Amazon packages. Crime and homelessness skyrocket in large cities, exacerbated by virulent opioids like fentanyl and krokodil. And America’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine gives rise to the most serious threats of nuclear strikes against the West since the 1960s.

Yet so-called social issues, from abortion to critical race theory to teaching gender identity in elementary schools, dominate our politics and media. Virtually every voter has a strong opinion on these issues, and pays far more attention to them than, say, the M2 money supply or the next Fed Open Market Committee meeting—though the latter could have a far greater impact on that voter’s life and finances.

Why is this so?

The short answer is the Supreme Court.

Yesterday brought news that a leaked draft opinion allegedly from Supreme Court associate justice Samuel Alito portends the overturning of Roe v. Wade. This brought forth paroxysms of anger and fear across the media spectrum, especially on social platforms like Twitter. Protestors quickly arrived at the newly fenced-off court building, and the commentariat began enumerating the predictable dire threats for the future of women posed by a Trumpian right-wing court.

Again, we don’t see these outbursts when Congress spends $5 trillion on stimulus or when the Fed quadruples its balance sheet, to put it mildly. Or even when gas prices double.

Acting wildly beyond its constitutional parameters, the court has become the de facto superlegislature for all fifty states. The political class pretends otherwise, but the stridency of its denunciations against “conservative” court nominees and its slavish support for progressive nominees demonstrates the irretrievably political nature of granting a handful of justices such power over the lives of 330 million people. In such a top-down, winner-take-all environment, the stakes become needlessly high and politicized in the nastiest ways imaginable. So of course presidential elections, and the resulting makeup of the court, become matters of life and death for the true believers whose sense of identity is rooted in the social issues ruled upon by the court.

This happened for two primary reasons.

First, so-called judicial review created a superpower to determine the constitutionality of any law at any level of government, a superpower nowhere to be found in Article 3 of the Constitution. This effectively grants the court potential jurisdiction over every last state or local law, down to the most minute edicts that ought to be none of the federal government’s business. This is an absurd result and a gross abuse of the Constitution’s shared powers under a federalist system. Even if one argues the court generally does not abuse this power to boss around states, it always could and sometimes does.

Second, specious interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment and the resulting Incorporation Doctrine effectively threw a net of federal laws, rules, and court decisions over all fifty states without their consent. Nobody at the time the amendment passed, especially not the various ratifying state legislators, could have imagined the opaque language of the amendment would cause the high court to issue a series of rulings turning states into glorified federal counties.

Rather than “incorporate” certain provisions of a federal constitution into state law, why not do so expressly? For example, why not simply rewrite the First Amendment to say “Neither Congress, the various states, nor any subdivision of the various states shall make any law respecting…”

We all know why. This kind of express language would have been a complete political nonstarter at the time. Even the Northern states still wanted and demanded far more independence from the federal government during the Reconstruction era.

Thus we are left with a permanent injury to federalism and the Tenth Amendment, an injury that causes social issues to play a vastly outsized role in American politics. This is not to say the Supreme Court had less impact on economic matters before, given, e.g., its perverse interpretations of the Commerce Clause and absurd rulings during the Lochner era. But people don’t flood the steps of the Supreme Court to protest minimum wage laws or scream obscenities at justices over cases of zoning in the city of New London, Connecticut.

In short, there is nothing remotely suggesting a right to abortion in the text of the Constitution under even the most tortured interpretation. Thus it is purely a matter for states, falling under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Overturning Roe does not change a single abortion law in a single state. And it does not prevent any state legislature from loosening abortion restrictions in reaction. It simply revokes jurisdiction over the issue from federal courts. This ought to be an amenable “solution” amenable to everyone.

It’s OK.
We don’t need one abortion rule for all 50 states.

Without the Supreme Court’s invented jurisdiction, progressives in blue states can have unrestricted taxpayer-funded abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy.

And yet progressives never take this deal.

— Jeff Deist (@jeffdeist) May 3, 2022

Mass democracy, under shifting rules often determined by nine politicized judges, is not a prescription for harmony and goodwill among 330 million very diverse Americans. Those millions don't much agree about guns, God, abortion, and plenty more. But they don't have to agree. In a “postliberal” and post-good-faith environment, aggressive federalism and realistic discussions of political secession are the obvious path forward. If you claim to love your fellow American citizens, unyoke them from the federal superstate and demand the same for yourself. The universalist, totalizing impulse, which resulted in the dramatic centralization of state power through the twentieth century, must be reversed in the twenty-first. The other way lies political strife, and worse.

Agreed.  Rack this spot-on commentary from Mr. Deist.

 

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Here's a novel idea - Joy Behar proposes women to have a "sex strike" in opposition to the alleged Roe V Wade overturn.  I guess abstinence WOULD keep the need for abortions at an all-time low .....As well - maybe people would THINK before participating in sex since abortion IS a great form of birth control without using the inconvenient things like the pill or maybe a condom.....IDK.....

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/joy-behar-proposes-a-sex-strike-to-battle-potential-overturn-of-roe-we-have-more-power-than-we-think/

The View co-host Joy Behar has an idea to stop any potential overturning of Roe v. Wade: a sex strike.

This week on The View, Behar floated the idea while mentioning past examples of depriving men of carnal pleasures to back up the case. The suggestion came during a discussion about the opinion draft leak out of the Supreme Court suggesting Roe v. Wade could be overturned soon by the court, of course, as well as the future consequences such a reversal could lead to.

“Women in the world have conducted sex strikes in history,” Behar told her co-hosts. “In 2003, a sex strike helped to end Liberia’s brutal civil war and the woman who started it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2009, Kenyan women enforced a sex ban until police political infighting ceased. Within one week, there was a stable government.”

While the audience laughed at the idea, Behar declared, “We have more power than we think we do and some of it could be in the bedroom.”

Co-host Sara Haines was down for the idea, adding, “And what a perfect weapon and method for the topic we’re talking about.”

Behar earlier in the week suggested Roe v. Wade being overturned after decades could be a slippery slope that leads to things like gay marriage and interracial marriage eventually being threatened or decided at the state level.

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg ended the segment on sex strikes by saying Roe v. Wade being overturned could backfire on men, as well as women.

“I want us all to have the same rights, the right to decide what is right for yourself [and] your family,” she said. “You don’t have to have an abortion. I don’t have to have an abortion. No one does, but if someone needs one, why shouldn’t they be able to get it? And, otherwise, men, this is going to come after you in some weird way too.”

 

I know politicians have the ability to change their own minds over time - but this one from President Biden (once Senator Biden) is pretty much ignored .....and back then (in the 70's and 80's) he was pretty much against Roe V Wade......Guessing a lot of his fans today don't know this about him......

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/04/flip-floppin-joe-biden-once-voted-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/

“I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” he told the Washingtonian in 1974, one year after the court legalized abortion.

“I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far,” he added.

Biden doubled down years later in 1982 when he voted to approve a constitutional amendment that would have allowed abortion to become a state issue instead of a federal one.

Then-Senator Biden “was the only Democrat singled out by the New York Times at the time as supporting the amendment that the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights,'” the New York Post reported.

On Tuesday, however, President Biden flip-flopped and supported the Court’s 1973 decision. “Roe has been the law of the land for almost 50 years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned,” he said. “I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental.”

“But even more, equally profound is the rationale used. It would mean that every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question,” Biden claimed.

Biden’s 180-degree change is a result of how radical the Democrat Party has become. In the last 20 years, the Democrat Party has begun championing critical race theory, glorifying abortion, lifting public safety measures through soft-on-crime initiatives, and professing transgenderism to be a protected class.

The Democrat Party was in the early 1900s a workers’ party, geared toward the American family. It has since become deconstructed by ideology into intersectionality. Now the Democrat Party is a “coalition” of marginalized and opposed groups that allegedly form a whole.

“We’re not a cult, we’re a coalition,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) explained in April. “If you’re a cult it’s very easy, you just take orders from the cult leader. … Just bend the knee to the cult leader and fall in line.”

Former President Barack Obama was the first leader of the Democrat Party to successfully wield intersectionality. But under President Joe Biden, the politics of intersectionality has fallen prey to party infighting, such as between Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).

 

 

 

 

 

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image.png.1f95ac49ca80e62bb2ff838a8eaba80a.png

Nothing is as frightening as a left wind mob threatening you and your family.

This is exactly the kind of thing that pushes people,  even those who were supporters of Donald Trump, further to the right. If these people on the left believe that they have the right to treat us, their fellow Americans, with active contempt and threats of violence, then they should not be surprised when relatively moderate people become radicalized.   They politicize everything, and demand compliance. These aren’t liberals anymore. They are soft totalitarians.

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New York Times Apologizes After Wordle of the Day Is 'Fetus': https://gizmodo.com/new-york-times-apologizes-after-wordle-of-the-day-is-fe-1848898991

Quote

Emotions are running high around the word “fetus” after last week’s news about the possible end to Roe V. Wade and women’s right to safe abortion.

F-E-T-U-S is also a five-letter word, so some people were more than a little surprised when it ended up as one of the answers to Monday’s Wordle.

Image

The realization of the more-than-timely puzzle answer led to a midnight panic as the New York Times rushed to change the answer on the platform. Any browser that refreshes the Worlde page should receive the day’s updated puzzle. Those who don’t will still potentially have “Fetus” as one of the two potential answers for the day’s puzzle.

In a statement, the Times wrote “this is a very unusual circumstance,” adding “We’re now busy revamping Wordle’s technology so that everyone always receives the same word. We are committed to ensuring that tens of millions of people have a gratifying and consistent experience, every day.”

...

More lefties choosing to be offended by a simple 5-letter word.  Sad.

 

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3 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Oh, in that the "mob" outside of Kavanaugh's house was on a street, where protests are permitted, and the rioters on 6 January breached a secure facility?

You are right on one commonality, Dante.  They were both mobs.

Would a mob of angry right-wingers standing on the street and sidewalk outside your home chanting foul epithets and holding hateful signs aimed at you and your family frighten you Dante?

 

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3 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Would a mob of angry right-wingers standing on the street and sidewalk outside your home chanting foul epithets and holding hateful signs aimed at you and your family frighten you Dante?

 

My domicile isn't near a public street. 

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8 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

 

My domicile isn't near a public street. 

Nice attempt at dodging the question.  Not everyone choose to live in a walled compound like you apparently do.

 

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On 5/5/2022 at 8:40 AM, swordfish said:

Biden’s 180-degree change is a result of how radical the Democrat Party has become. In the last 20 years, the Democrat Party has begun championing critical race theory, glorifying abortion, lifting public safety measures through soft-on-crime initiatives, and professing transgenderism to be a protected class.

The Democrat Party was in the early 1900s a workers’ party, geared toward the American family. It has since become deconstructed by ideology into intersectionality. Now the Democrat Party is a “coalition” of marginalized and opposed groups that allegedly form a whole.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2008/01/reagans-darkest-hour-paul-kengor-patricia-clark-doerner/

From the article, the only bit that matters-

Quote

On June 14, 1967, Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, after only six months as California governor.

Looks like St Ronnie is a n*gger-hater and a baby-killer, although you could just call him a Republican and save the keystrokes. 

I really miss @absenceofempathy at times like this. Maybe @McGoo45 could "teach" us some "history" about St Ronnie. 

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An interesting slant on the debate, The author contends that, to date, the abortion debate has largely ignored important economic issues.

https://michaelleppert.com/the-economics-of-roe-arent-being-discussed-enough/

THE ECONOMICS OF ROE AREN’T BEING DISCUSSED ENOUGH

by Michael Leppert | May 13, 2022 | Politics/Government, Pop/Life

I regularly tell my students these days, just like I used to regularly tell my clients, if you have an idea for a policy change in America, be prepared to successfully make your case purely on economic terms. In other words, trying to convince policy makers the change that is being proposed is simply the right thing to do usually won’t get the effort very far. Proponents for change need to show them the money.

When government and politics in America get disconnected from this unwritten virtue, bad decisions are often made. We love to talk about our loyalty to freedom, the flag and the Constitution, but when it comes to change, real change, the dollar is king. This is how it should be. It is this component of public policy debates that make most issues, and virtually every newsworthy one, relevant to all of us.

The abortion debate should be no different. There is plenty of data. It is easy to understand. But the loudness of the passions have prevented a rational economic dialogue from having the prominence it deserves. Oh, and one other big thing is keeping this discussion on the back burner: the court doesn’t care.

Sheelah Kohatkar succinctly wrote about it on Wednesday in the New Yorker. “Whether and under what circumstances to become a mother is the single most economically important decision most women will make in their lifetimes,” says Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, widely recognized as a leading scholar on this issue. But during oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court last December in the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the discussion of the economic impact was cut off by Chief Justice John Roberts so he could discuss the fifteen-week deadline for an abortion, in which he seems so interested.

The State of Mississippi makes the argument that the Roe v. Wade decision and the subsequent decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood are no longer relevant. It argues that access to contraception, availability of child care, and the existence of family leave laws are the things that make the economics of the issue different today than they were fifty years ago. Myers and 153 other economists filed a brief in the case obliterating that shallow perspective.

On contraception, in a 2019 report, the Guttmacher Institute reports that 45% of all pregnancies in America are unintended. This is in an era of great available and advanced contraception to which Mississippi refers. Most of those pregnancies were “wanted later,” while only 18% were unwanted. 42% of those pregnancies end in abortion. I’m sorry Justice Roberts and Mississippi, but that is “relevant.”

The moral debate on the issue leaves few Americans without an opinion on the matter. But what parent is oblivious to the cost of their children? When 49% of abortions today are being performed on women at or below the poverty level, and an additional 26% being just above that line, the cost of those children to all of us is obvious and beyond debate. But the economic impact of and outlook on those women is the thing rarely discussed.

Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, explained it in simple terms this week. Emily Peck reports for Axios that Yellen said eliminating a woman’s right to seek an abortion would have “very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.”

The proponents of these extreme bans in many of the states, including Indiana, lose the economic argument. They have had much of their success because the intensity of the moral debate has provided their vacuous economic one an inordinate amount of cover. The court is a great venue for this void–the court often doesn’t do economics. As much as we think politicians generally, and legislative bodies specifically, ignore the broad implications of their policies, they are designed to account for these things. The public often fails to hold them to account, but that’s just one of many failings for which we have no one else to blame.

What the leaked opinion that was written by Justice Samuel Alito was predictably light on was the impact of his proposed decision. I’m betting that if pressed about it, the five justices who apparently support the overturning of Roe and Casey would give an answer that could easily be interpreted as “it’s not our responsibility.”

It is a near-perfect storm of devastating consequences being made on behalf of the moral and political whims of the minority of Americans. It appears those who think it doesn’t matter to them are going to have to suffer until it does.

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