One can intellectualize and critically analyze the court's thinking, but one should also not lose sight of the fact these folks are ordinary citizens like you and me who simply have a pretty good understanding of American Law. They are voting their conscience, no matter what you think. Robert's knows he has to do the right thing from now on beset on all sides by the likes of Thomas, Alito, and the two unwelcomes. Roberts did the right thing with the Affordable Care Act and he will continue to "do the right thing", in my opinion.
6
Chief Justice Roberts may yet emerge as one of the great Supreme Court leaders with his commitment to a fair reading of the Constitution and wise adherence to Court tradition.
Chief Justice Roberts knows that rights once extended cannot and must not be rescinded without risking a deep tear in the fabric of judicial and social progress.
The issue isn't about babies or the "sanctity of life". The issue is religious tyranny when freedom of religion becomes license to deny freedom from religion.
This is a time of oceans in tumult and seas unsettled by waves of rage that batter passing ships, sinking all that sway about imbalanced and helmed by fools who mistake hysteria as a path to dominance.
Great heroes rise to the great challenges before us. Let's hope John Roberts becomes the hero we need.
16
I speculate that if we had universal healthcare that included abortions, the then-diluted stress of keeping a baby alive to adulthood would naturally lower the amount of abortion operations over time. It’s a simple fact that a one-time abortion fee is more economical than 18 years of merit-worthy care.
6
On the off chance one of the four doctors takes a vacation, or dies, must this SC case be brought back again? If one of the admitted four doctors loses his license for not paying his taxes must this SC case be brought again? And again?
It's time the SC reaffirmed Casey and stated enough already with the state abortion restrictions covertly designed to stop this medical procedure. It's too clever by half, and also makes lawyers look like weasels, and I'm a lawyer.
10
I am a New Yorker, despite my current address.
I urge my fellow New Yorkers (that's you, Andrew Cuomo) to make it possible to buy Mifepristone and Misoprostol over the counter. There is no real reason why this should not be possible.
Please. Now is the time.
10
Kathy and Anine,
Your comments are similar in content so I thought I would respond to both of you at once.
I have volunteered at the New York Foundling, a Catholic organization, which cares for abused and abandoned children. I have also volunteered with women ex offenders many who have children. I have also worked with the homeless. Living in New York the need is great and I feel that those who have been blessed must give back to society.
My parents taught me the importance of volunteering. They were lucky in life and wanted to show their appreciation by helping the needy and less fortunate. They were my role models.
My parents were also active in the pro life movement. They started volunteering shortly after roe v. Wade and went to one of the first March for Life rallies in Washington. They also worked at centers for unmarried women who decided to keep their babies. They thought that if the women were brave enough to have their babies they needed to reach out to these mothers and assist them in any way they could.
I am again following in their footsteps and want to help these pregnant women any way I can. It is true that we must not only help them before birth but also once the babies are born and beyond. There are many of us who help these needy women and some dedicate their lives to these mothers and babies. The Sisters of Life are such women who are the most dedicated women you will ever meet. They are kind, caring and never judge. They are role models
4
Can we go a bit easy on touting the virtues of CJ Roberts? Have we forgotten Ciizens United so soon?
6
This is an amazing debate! I just read Sarah Smarsch's Homeland where she describes the dysfunctionalism that early and unwanted pregnancies cause. They lead to grinding poverty and violence that continue generation after generation. And the most horrible fact that comes out of this book is that the mothers grow to hate the very children that they are obliged to raise. Their lives and those of the children are ruined and of course, the father is normally not around.
Until pro-lifers are ready to start facing the real issues that are behind all of this they can only come across as profoundly hypocritical. (anti-gun laws etc.) Their position is really about controlling others and has nothing to do with saving lives. Christ would have truly hated these people.
11
THANK YOU Justice Roberts for steadying the ship, and to the three women and one other man on the Bench who genuinely care about the credibility, health, longevity, and impact of the Court AND of the vast majority of the American people.
But shame on the other side for their obvious (unconstitutional) Christocentrism, obvious not only in their approach to abortion, but also in their affirmation of religious discrimination by state prisons as they administer the death penalty. Apparently, for some, freedom of religious expression and relief from legislative requirements on the grounds of strongly-held religious beliefs apply only to adherents to a limited number of Christian sects. And that narrowness most certainly was not what the founders of our nation contemplated when they wrote the Constitution and accepted the contemporaneous aid of Jewish (and likely people of other faith) compatriots in the fight for Independence.
6
Let's all take a moment to congratulate Justice Roberts on at least briefly obeying the Constitution and respecting the decades of American Tradition upholding the Constitution.
2
A few years ago, Ohio passed a similar law, requiring that either the MDs performing abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, or that two local MDs who do have admitting privileges agree to cover. This law was passed at the insistence of Ohio pro-life movement, who claimed that they were motivated by their deep concern for women's health.
A few months after this law passed, I drove past a local hospital. This hospital has a large maternity ward and has the region's only high-risk fetal-maternal medicine program in the area; they treat pregnant women with serious medical conditions: pre-eclampsia, auto-immune disorders, thyroid conidtions, etc. These are the people who truly do save babies.
To my shock, a group of pro-life protesters were picketing the high-risk maternity hospital. Some were holding giant giant photos of dead babies, and a panel truck, with more giant photos of dead babies and the names, phone numbers, and photographs of two MDs plastered on both sides, blaring pro-life messages from loudspeakers.
Why were they protesting? Were these MDs doing abortions at the hospital? At a local clinic? No. All they had done was to agree to share their admitting privileges with the local abortion clinic.
Picketing a high-risk maternity hospital. Waving photos where families who've literally just lost a baby are forced to see them. I don't know what motivates people like that, but it sure isn't concern for women, or babies, for that matter.
32
Don't get all excited. It was just a temporary stay. Mr. Roberts is very shrewd. He'll wait until the heat is off then attack Roe v Wade every way he can short of overturning it.
It is his catholic/corporate duty to his paymasters.
10
@njgle
If you say so, why did Roberts voted for the Obamacare? If Roberts is so loyal to his so-called corporate duty, how could he withstand the Republican and helped Obama push forward to healthcare reform? I wish people to learn from Obama's bipartisan leadership. Roberts acknowledged Obama's bipartisan leadership when he voted for the Obamacare.
2
I don’t think Roberts’ views have changed. But in the era of Trump, he seems keen to maintain the reputation of the judiciary as an independent branch of government and so goes against the grain sometimes. He is still a pro-big business social conservative, but he doesn’t want to be just a rubber stamp for Trump or McConnell or whoever. It’s easy to be snarky and say “ha ha too late,” and rage about his part in the Citizens United decision. But it can get a lot worse when all sense of restraint and self-perception of impartiality is gone from the judicial branch.
9
@citybumpki
Don't be so partisan. He is the one who saved Obama's presidency. If Roberts had not voted for the Obamacare, Obama could not have won the battle against Republicans. I don't think it is only the Republican politicians who are so partisan: many voters are, too. But if we people do not change and thereby adopt more bipartisan attitudes, politicians would not change. When someone did a good job, then we should give a credit to her
(him) regardless of her(his) background.
And why is it that the only medications not covered in my Medicare Part D insurance plan are estrogens, something I need for vaginal dryness after menopause? One tube of Premarin would cost me full price at $350. All of my other medications were included in the plan.
I later found that I could purchase the exact same product in Mexico for $30 without a prescription..(it wasn't just the peso/dollar exchange rate either.)
This is violence against women in monetary terms
25
please stop this nonsense!!!
this should not be a war between liberals and conservatives!
if roberts voted "differently"i believe its because he thought it was the best decision; not because he wanted to balance the cosmos of the liberals and the conservatives.
all this jibber jabber about liberals and conservatives is a bunch of poo. until people start thinking about being better citizens instead of promoting the liberal vs conservative agenda we will be on a bumper car trajectory.
talk about self-destructing...
3
If men could get pregnant, there would be an abortion clinic on every corner, and they would be fully covered by insurance. Keep your laws off my body.
35
Far right conservatives want the evil creeping government starved from every protective corner of domestic life.
Reduce the left’s onerous regulations on the air, water, land, public health and finance! Get the horrible government out of the way!
Unless it’s somebody else’s uterus. Then these same righties want the government to climb up in there and call every shot.
29
Personally, I'm all for letting states strangle themselves. Let these hard-right bastions make themselves more and more miserable; they'll either wisen up, or send themselves into an economic slump they'll never recover from. Either way, they'll stop bothering us.
10
Thank you Chief Justice Roberts. I may not always agree with your decisions but I respect you. That is all I can ask of a Judge.
10
I don't trust Roberts at all. This vote may be just another way for the Chief Justice to appear to be moderate before he casts the vote that counts -- to gut or end Roe v Wade altogether.
Roberts has been playing what appears to be a carefully orchestrated plan to both protect his "legacy" and simultaneously continue to push his highly partisan right wing agenda. On the big votes -- e.g., Citizens United and gutting the Voting Rights Act -- Roberts came down on the side of the agenda.
The big difference between Roberts and the more nakedly partisan justices like Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, and Kavanaugh is that Roberts knows that as Chief Justice he will bear the historical judgment of every decision. It's the Roberts Court, not the Thomas Court, or the Gorsuch Court. On the other hand, I don't doubt that if the right wing zealot Gorsuch were Chief, he wouldn't care about historians at all. Just like he doesn't care about the US Constitution at all. He cares about Neil Gorsuch's constitution. That's the one that allows racist Republicans to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters, that welcomes the death of mothers to protect the unborn about whom Gorsuch won't care at all once they are born, and that sees human beings as inferior to corporations. Roberts prefers that constitution too, it's just that he's worried about his legacy, too.
11
Roberts will fold soon and America will go back to dark ages. We need a progressive revolution to move forward because dark forces have gathered too much strength because we have been playing nice.
11
It's about time to stop referring to the justices as Liberal or Conservative, besides being reductive and narrow minded negates the possibility that some of them reach his/her decisions based on their unbiased understanding of the law.
4
Thank you to the attorneys at Center for Reproductive Rights and similar organizations fighting for women's right to choose. It is a daunting task now, and your efforts have never been more important.
19
Abortion may be the single issue most closely linked to politics in the USA. If you read enough supreme court decisions you will find they are all well written and the proof that reasons are cheap. Perspectives or beliefs are very dear. I wish I could say that abortion is an important issue. But I am old enough to know when abortion was an important issue. Nowadays relatively few women will be subject to a choice they do not want.
The current issue that is not politically tenable is climate chaos. That is the biggest problem which will effect the entire world. It will make the rich richer. The poor poorer. And it is off the radar map of politics. Relative to abortion it probably has a 10% pull at the voting booth.
4
Apparently "conservative justices" are incapable of setting aside their political biases "for the institution" after all. One would have thought that they'd have sided with the potential victims and stayed with precedence rather than side with POLITICAL dogma.
If 2016 proved that elections have consequences, 2018 showed that consequences have elections ... to be continued in 2020 and beyond.
3
To this Catholic-packed court (and as a woman raised Catholic) I offer the old canard: If men could become pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
I really can't picture any of these men making these pronouncements as being tough enough to withstand the menstrual cramps I've been having 25% of my month for the past 43 years. Not to mention going to work with stabbing pain and migraines. Not to mention 36 hours of labor and giving birth.
Guys, we'll make the decisions about our bodies and our health ... or maybe you'd like us to start making decisions about yours?
44
Of course they blocked this law it is the same as the Texas law that they decided was not acceptable some time ago. A simple solution is to require all surgery centers to have such associations with a hospital, that would pass muster.
2
@vulcanalex
They don’t need associations with hospitals all they have to do is pick up the phone and dial 911, the same thing doctors with admitting privileges do if they perform surgery in an out patient facility. Once a patient is admitted to the ER the ER doctor takes over. If the patient is admitted to the hospital the Hospitalist takes over.
6
Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted fetus to term, particularly in a country like the United States which is the ONLY first world country in which maternal death rates are climbing, is to use the law to punish and oppress one of the two people responsible for conception.
Gender-specific application of the law, forcing only women to bear consequences, is illegal.
As DNA testing will establish exactly who the father of a gestating fetus is, any man who is equally responsible for conception should be equally liable to punishment.
Mandatory vasectomies for all such men, and mandatory support in money and caregiving until the unwanted child is 21.
28
@Shar...You are advocating closing the barn door after the mare has escaped. A more effective strategy would be castration of all male babies that aren't aborted - although aborting all male fetuses would be even better. In effect, no unwanted pregnancies, no forced abortions, no unwanted children. No more legal oppression and punishment, either.
4
Has anyone heard a comment yet from Senator Collins of Maine, the Senator who convinced herself to trust Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh's private promise/commitment/vague assurance to her about defending access to abortion and then voted to confirm him as a Justice? Perhaps someone misunderstood?
37
I just called her office to tell her this is why I was against him. Everyone that I know who voted for her will not in 2020.
32
Would it have been more accurate for the headline to read, “Supreme Court Pauses Louisiana Abortion Law”?Someone reading the headline wouldn’t know it’s a temporary stay.
Also, when is the appeal expected to be heard?
9
If humans didn't have the instinct to copulate none of this would be an issue. People act and there are results, and it will always be thus. It is ridiculous to decide that our laws should decide that the consequence that results from two peoples' desires is an entire life to be cared for for a life-time by the two desirous actors.
If religious people think abortions are immoral, then they need to separate their politics of non-government intervention from their views on abortion. If you want every pregnancy that can to result in a birth, then it will take our government, and our giant village, to pay and care for those babies that will not have a home after they take their first breath.
The arguments are getting less sophisticated on both sides, and with zero discussions across belief systems, we are absolutely stuck. The only beneficiaries of this non-progress are the rich republicans who want to have a base to vote them in so they can make laws that support their rich donors. Anyone on the right who actually cared would seek dialogue.
8
For everybody praising Roberts for going against the right-wing hacks on the Supreme Court: read the article carefully. The case itself has not been decided, and we have not heard the last of it. I like to think that Roberts really wants a legacy of serving the Law rather than a Party or ideology, but it's too soon to tell. Watch what happens when push comes to shove.
13
You mean he broke away from the ridiculous Know-Nothing party's objective of over-reach and denying a woman her right to have this decision between her doctor and herself.
Funny how those same right-to-lifers won't interfere - not even with someone from National Security when it comes to Trump's meeting with his boss Putin.
But they want to practically be sitting there in the doctor's office administering an ultrasound while telling the woman's doctor to shut up.
7
I am pro life. Pregnancy terminations are an inevitable part of life. Men often are very insistent about getting their act of "love"-specifically their coitus and the associated sensual gratification; often however they don't stick around to live with the results. It's a much more significant problem for the woman, especially in a country with unusually poor social security health safety nets.
Thus abortion is a gender power issue where women are the losers.
That's why women resent men making the decision for them, perhaps especially powerful friends of the president who unlike the president, have had problems with excessive drinking and self control issues (public hysterics when their male integrity is questioned).
Given that I am pro life and that terminations are inevitable, more lives will be preserved when women terminate in proper, legally sanctioned health facilities then when they seek illegal informal abortions from unregulated practioners. The only reason Trump is interested in the issue at all is to shore up his base. Do evangelicals really think he cares about anything but himself? Coitus without a condom is likely to result in pregnancy. Not to use a prophylactic condom is dangerous on a number of levels, especially with promiscuous partners; especially while you have a wife at home and yet another (known) mistress. Suddenly Mr Trump is a concerned citizen weighing in on the morality of countless women
16
I thought that border security was the most important issue facing our nation today. I am now having second thoughts. Now I feel that the abortion/pro life issue takes precedence over that. Too many have been lost to the evil of abortion. Still we must emphasize border security too.
We have seen 60 million fetuses/babies lost to abortion and we do not need to lose any more of these victims to this horrendous act. The unborn are defenseless and someone must speak up for the injustices they are experiencing today. We must not be content to remain silent while they are facing death within the womb. This is unconscionable and if we allow this to continue we have lost our humanity. Thank goodness there are still people who are not afraid to say this is immoral and are taking steps to remedy this travesty. If we sit back and do nothing, more deaths will occur. There are many people who will do every thing possible to not let this occur. They are courageous.
1
@WPLMMT What are you doing to help existing children? Every abused and neglected child suffers, day in and day out, and we have millions right here. If you care so very much about the unborn, then surely once they are here, they're even more deserving of your attention and concern. You could be posting about parenting classes, child abuse prevention, action against climate change, etc.
17
@WPLLMT I had an abortion. I've never regretted the decision. It was a life or death decision I made with a doctor and as a result I was able to have two healthy children later. You have no right to force your ideology on me and my American sisters by creating government interference between a woman and her doctor. If you're so concerned about innocent children suffering, why don't you march down to the border and get those kids out of jail.
24
@Anine
Thank you for your important message.
I also was thinking to myself that, for all the original commentator knows, each
of those x-million abortions saved a female's life or physical/mental health, thus not only saving a life, but possibly saving more than one life if carrying the pregnancy to term would have gravely strained the family resources and/or if the woman was later able to birth children.
It's good you were able to get the safe and (hopefully) affordable and locally-provided medical services you needed and that you survived your ordeal. Blessings to you and your family.
5
Reality Check real cause for abortions goes unchecked . People need to use birth control so dont bring unwanted children to their death. Should be law those who want abortions should be steralized end of problem,
@jerry lee So because I had an abortion to save my life, I didn't deserve the two children I have now? Or the three grandchildren? Really?
15
I am all for no abortions if.
1 There is a national data base of all male DNA.
2. You father a child - you support that person until 18 or even 21. If not you go to jail.
17
Finally someone has said I have thought for years. Thank you.
5
@APO - The notion of ANY parent being legally obligated to support a grown adult of 18, 19, 20, or 21 years of age if, of course, nonsense. Can we stop making infants out of adults?
Married women get abortions too.
10
What I find very interesting is the number of men commenting and whose comments have been chosen as New York Times picks. It is also interesting that most support abortion. If these same men supported the pro life side, they would be told to mind their own business. They would also be told that as men they had no say in the matter. This is such a biased attitude and I say men who are pro life and they do exist are just as entitled to express their opinions. I also want to hear from them as all opinions matter on this very important topic. Let them have their say.
2
@WPLLMT Men who are pro-choice realize they are not in a position to tell women what to do with their own bodies. Men who are anti-choice want to decide for woman what is good for them, even those they don't know. The former is more reasonable than the latter, as well as the majority opinion.
15
The Vatican reports their priests sexually abused nuns, some of whom became pregnant. Then they were forced to abort the fetus. All in the name of gawd.
The catholic church supports the anti-choice movement in the US and abroad, all while forcing women into unwanted abortions. Their priests have sexually abused boys, girls and women for centuries. Until they clean their own house, they should shut up and allow women to make their own decisions.
18
Thanks Susan Collins for getting that clown Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. I’m sure Tobin, PJ and Squi are very pleased
22
Right on time Times.
Another week another fluff piece desperately trying, and again failing, to paint "5-4" roberts as a fair jurist.
2
This ruling demonstrates just how precarious abortion rights are in America. The phony laws created in republican-controlled states meant to limit access to abortions, and nothing more, are one vote away from essentially overturning Roe v Wade in those States. Republican trickery is very much on the rise and thier goal is to bend America to thier far-right, faux religious, ideology. We won the House in the Midterms. Now we must use that power as Republicans have, very recently, used it. Go after that lying, thieving, treasonous loudmouth Donald Trump!! Find the money trail we know exist and put him in an orange jumpsuit.
8
This is the way our Democracy dies...not with a bang but a wimp like roberts.
5
Without commenting on the actual merits of the case, this stay was the correct response. As the case has not yet worked its way to resolution, enforcing the law would be both premature and potentially harmful if it is overturned.
3
I admire and respect Chief jutice Roberts. He practices bipartisanship which is essential for the fairness of law. When he voted for the Obamacare, he showed the hope of bipartisanship. He did it again. I truly admire Roberts.
5
If the doctors had ben able to obtain admitting privileges to hospitals, they already would have them and this would not have been an issue. Kavanaugh is an idiot.
12
@ExPatMX
There are unreconciled issues about alleged imposing on women that are swirling around two of the conservative justices. Ask Anita and Christine. Utterly unresolved issues raised by two highly credible professional women who never themselves imposed on a human being with an attitude pf proprietary entitlement.
3
Roberts is doing his job, Kavanaugh is just sucking up to his political fellow travelers. People should consider that the consistent principle of Anglo-American legal systems has been that the same case decided in any two courts should result in the same decision. The law changes as new factors must be considered but when the law simply follows the political preferences of the judges, then decisions will cease being the same for identical cases tried in different courts. Then the legal system becomes unreliable and arbitrary, and the trust in the laws ends.
8
@Casual Observer...What is Justice Kavanaugh's motive for sucking up? Is he running for re-confirmation to SCOTUS?
1
@Albert Edmud: He is a professional suck-up and a loathsome creature if ever I saw one. Don't forget how he acted at his confirmation hearing. Remember his hysteria over the Clintons and the Democrats who were out to get him.
7
How does Maine Senator Jabba the Collins live with herself?
What a vile human being she is.
12
1) Those without a uterus and ovaries must sit this discussion out. They will never experience the excruciating wonder of science that is gestating a fetus and therefore shouldn't be able to voice an opinion that carries any weight. The fact that people without the aforementioned organs care about what those that have them do with them is ridiculous. There aren't regulations to govern testicles.
1a) If your argument contains the logic that, "I helped create this fetus and I am, therefore, entitled to an opinion since it could be my child," then I say to you this: "Why now, why this sperm?" -Elle Woods - Legally Blonde, 2001. If you have ever masturbated then you can't claim any special distinction over this sperm.
1b) Also, if you want a child that badly, go adopt one. Don't force a woman to be your incubation tank, it is dehumanizing.
2) Access to safe and legal abortion has become a constitutional right, and it is a right that you will literally not be impacted by unless you are a person seeking an abortion or are a person caring for someone who is either seeking or has had one. I ask you, are you impacted because your neighbor, we can call her Jane, had an abortion? No.
3) To the conservative: just as you have made your choice to hold steadfast to your beliefs, so too have I. Your beliefs aren't mine, and that is okay. Kindly step back and evaluate why you are trying to shove yours down my throat.
4) Can we agree to be nicer to women and let them own themselves?
198
Thank you! Well said!
32
@Thomas...Make you a deal, Tom. I won't force my beliefs down your throat, if you won't try to force your beliefs down my throat. Deal?
3
@Thomas
Thank you. So. Much.
16
These laws are aimed at restricting access which is ultimately about CONTROL and COMPLIANCE. The pro lifers would do better to stop trying to control people and instead turn to convincing people. Telling a woman she can't do something with her own body is not going to win her to your side of the argument. However advocating for paid family leave, for better healthcare, for resources, for support, she might come to your way of thinking. All these laws do is push women to more lenient states, ironically which often means later abortions and more suffering.
13
This is the perfect example of why (as Professor Segall argues in his book) the Supreme Court is not a court and its Justices are not judges. The fact that 4 "judges" on the Court are blatantly trying to strike down a 3 year old precedent (Whole Women's Health) is stunning. This law is identical to the law struck down in WWH and follows the clear precedent set out in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Chief Justice Roberts is clearly in damage control mode because he knows the reputation of the Supreme Court will be destroyed by this type of activist vote by the "conservatives".
11
The problem that both sides need to face is that we have no way of knowing exactly when a clump of cells should qualify as a life. Somewhere between all the eggs and sperm that don't take that journey, all the many miscarriages that happen before 12 weeks, something that human emerges from a clump of growing tissue. Even as a newborn a baby has only the most basic attributes of a human being as humans birth children that are far less fully developed than most other mammals.
So the point is we do not know. When fetuses develop sufficiently enough to be viable as outside the womb as an infant many jurisdictions have criminal statues of harm in some circumstances. If we are to restrict individual rights further the justification and burden of proof has to be on the pro-life movement, just as the burden of proof falls on the plaintiff or prosecution in other areas of law. A personal belief based on faith is not sufficient in a nation of secular law.
8
@Thomas Wright...There is a great deal of scientific evidence that our species continues to develop anatomically, physiologically, mentally, sexually and morally well into the second decade post natal. So, when do the individuals rights of this developing life form supersede the individual rights of the birth giver? When the life form is deemed fully developed enough to procreate? To obtain a driver's license? To join the Marine Corps? To vote? Nature and our secular laws don't appear to provide a clear cut answer. Until these problems are resolved, these vulnerable quasi-humans are left in limbo.
Chief Justice Earl Warren disappointed Pres. Eisenhower who appointed Warren.
Could John Roberts be Trump’s Earl Warren?
No matter what you think of either President or either Justice, we should remember that our government was set up to have three independent branches.
Now if we can have more House or Senate votes where a significant number do not vote the “party” line, no matter the party.
6
Unlikely as Roberts was George W Bush’s appointment.
3
Abortion is a medical procedure ending a pregnancy. It resolves the well known risks of pregnancy and child birth. Today a child raised in this country costs a family $250,000 each. For families already raised undernourished children, the effects on those children can be life long deficits in their health, and less chance of escaping poverty themselves. Raising a child conceived during rape can produce a person who has been raised without love and with propensities to commit rape themselves. Children born of incest often suffer from ailments that result from too similar DNA. The list of circumstances which determine if abortions are performed is very long. The decision to have one is not easy because it does end a potential life but it is a decision which the pregnant women has the responsibility to make.
Make no mistake, few if any pro-life advocates feel any empathy for others, they demand that others obey their ideas about right and wrong and feel no obligations beyond that. Roe v Wade does not cause people to have abortions, it lets them decide. For pro-lifers the right to decide is no right, it’s just wrong.
19
Whatever disingenuous hoops they want to jump through (in this case needing admitting privileges) it is all motivated by the same thing: A lack of trust of women. The belief that women can't or won't make the right decisions.
Anti-abortion laws would be unnecessary if these people trusted women. But these laws are the ultimate expressions of mansplaining to women. Even if women are part of it.
9
I really want to know if "5-4" roberts waits until the other bought and paid for conservative judges hand down their opinions before he hands down his own.
If he waits to see what the other conservative hacks do before he does his job, because he's afraid of how it will appear to us clean evolved Americans, then he is not a judge!
He's a Junior High School student.
1
Should the Democrats win the Oval Office and control of the Senate in 2020, then they can set about adding two justices to the SCOTUS, as well as seats to various other critical federal courts, and fill them with high-caliber actual jurists who hold the Constitution as a living document, are likely to serve for at least twenty years, treat their religious beliefs (whatever they may be) as the deeply personal matter that they should be in this secular republic, are firmly grounded in evidence-based reality (with at least a basic comprehension of general science) — and broadly represent the overall views of the solid majority of us Americans (again, within the framework of an understanding of the Constitution as a living document).
Of course, should the Democrats end-up holding enough seats in Congress, then they can simply impeach and remove each and every member of the federal bench that was appointed by the "president" that lost the popular vote by THE largest margin in the nation's history — every one of which selected by the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation (with the imprimatur of such so-called "Christian" organizations as the Family Research Council and Focus On the Family — formally designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, amongst other civil rights advocates, along with the likes of Franklin Graham, Jerry Fallwell, Jr. and Ralph Reed).
7
Perhaps the anti-abortion folks could redirect some of their energies toward actual living children in the US. Twenty % are dealing with hunger issues; Fifteen % have a serious developmental disability; one out of thirty are homeless. These are more pressing problems, than trying to manipulate women's rights, as well as their economic, professional, and social futures
14
The fake concern of the conservatives is just so insulting. I'm glad that at least some justices could see through the ruse. Excessive and burdensome requirements on the doctors that perform abortions are not for the safety of the mother - it's already a very safe procedure with a good record - they're to try to ban abortion.
Legal judgments should be based on that question - is it legal to ban abortion? Nope? OK then.
12
These punitive efforts to criminlize abortion & the women who choose them happen in the poorest states such as Louisiana. What is it these states expect to happen as a result? More children born into poverty? More women on food stamps & welfare? More back alley botched abortions? Do the Republicans believe that having unwanted children improve their state? I'm sure they are all waiting patiently to answer these questions, or not. They would rather blather on about "sanctitiy" and the Bible.
13
Who is surprised that Brett Kavanaugh will never vote for anything that allows women the right to choose? Senator Susan Collins of Maine stated he assured her he would not overturn precedence, hardly an "open minded" policy. She wanted to feel good about her vote for him, paving the way for the fight that's surely to come. She loves to sound unconvinced when all along she's just looking for a way around the obvious lies.
Notice how silent she is now that she's been proven a total fool trying to have it both ways. Or does she even care? She allowed the shame of Brett Kavanaugh on our highest court.
15
Susan Collins is a liar. Hope the people of Maine vote her out of office!
8
Roberts is trying to save his Court from both present and historic disgrace as the most partisan, unfair Court in modern times.
10
And it looks to be a losing battle.
5
Pro choice women tell men to stop commenting about the abortion issue until they actually support the pro abortion cause. Then their opinion is celebrated. It is only pro life men who are silenced for having an opinion. As a pro life women, I want to hear from men who are against abortion. They have every right to be heard. Pro life men do not be afraid to speak up. We pro life women support you.
1
If the anti-abortion crowd is so concerned about the life and well being of the child, why does their concern evaporate once the child is born. Childcare, healthcare and nutrition are not priorities for this crowd.
Their hypocrisy and cruelty are evident.
12
Religion has no place in government or politics period! Therein lies the problem.
10
Justice Kavanaugh's position, which sounds reasonable, would still impose a burden on women who need an abortion NOW, right away. But in all these opinions we see a bunch of men making medical decisions for women. If the same restrictions were placed on men's medical decisions, the justices would NEVER seek to interpose themselves. And most of this angst would not be required if birth control and sex education were actively promoted at all levels of society.
127
While I agree with his argument, I do not agree with his conclusion. I wonder too, how many women in Louisiana do not live within 30 miles of a secular hospital?
5
@graygrandma
Kavanaugh attempted to use this same convoluted “logic” when he wrote the dissent in the case of the undocumented teen who wanted an early term abortion. He claimed he wanted to make sure a guardian was available to help her through the process. All he was doing was attempting to stall until she was forced to deliver at term. He also promised at his confirmation tantrum that there would be payback for allowing Christine Blasey Ford to testify. We’re seeing his and the Federalist Society’s agenda beginning to unfold.
11
@BMUS
I agree and as Maine resident I can see that Kavanaugh's pre-confirmation promises (to not nibble away at Roe v Wade) made to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine are actually worthless. No surprise there.
6
This line says it all: "The court’s brief order gave no reasons, and its action — a temporary stay — did not end the case."
Seems like the Supreme Court keeps pushing off cases, refusing to hear them, and letting lower course verdicts stand.
That said, could it be that the conservative justices are happy to wait for the next justice appointment, and hear them once they get a majority?
I feel saddened by what appears to be happening to the rule of law in the U. S. of A.
I used to think freedom of speech was key to upholding democracy. That was before I observed the increasingly politicised US court system. I now see how an independent judiciary is key to good government.
9
I just want to point out that Kavanaugh's dissent is not about the substantive merits of the law, but about the effect of the stay. He's saying that had the law been allowed to go into effect, the three non-admitted abortion doctors would have a chance to test the law, by applying for admitting privileges, and if they were denied, they could come back to court, now armed with a strong argument that the law indeed imposes an undue burden. It's noteworthy that the other three dissenters did not join Kavanaugh, because his argument could ultimately undermine the law, which other three don't want to see happen.
5
It is terrifying that Roberts is the swing vote on such a critical matter as healthcare privacy. Come 2020, if Trump's judicial picks do not do the right thing and resign, then it may come down to impeachment hearings for Kavanaugh and Gorsuch — or even adding justices to the court, in order to offset the corruption installed by an agent of a foreign state.
12
@Alex Seriously, the current state of affairs, and the "political" players responsible, are wholly despicable and vile. I was shocked at first, but now it's become expected. Moral and rational judgement has eroded and all hell has broken loose!
3
If Donald is proven to have committed crimes before and during his presidency, the 28th Amendment can allow Congress to impeach Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
1
Well, now we know what we already guessed: how Kavanaugh really feels about abortion. Susan Collins now deserves a public spanking, whether or not she makes a public apology. It really is hard to believe almost anyone in the American political system, isn't it?
16
@harvey perr,
You believed Jabba the Collins?
Oh come on.
1
Instead of just one clinic, they’ll now have three! Sounds like they’re going to try to wipe out the youngster population of Louisiana with all them “abortion clinic death-houses” (For all the people that take things too literally, I am being very cynical, and IRONIC at the same time.... it’s part of my nasty post Obama personality)
10
Where is crocodile face Susan Collins..
She is responsible for anti-female Kavanaugh..
Owen up.. and resign from senate for your speech.
13
Earlier this week The New York Times published an article about nuns raped by priests. When they got pregnant, many got abortions. This is nuns, people. Nuns who are supposed to accept anything that happens to them as "god's will". Nuns who are supposed to view abortion as the vilest of vile sins - a crime that will make you burn in hell. So what does this tell us? It tells us that no woman - not even the most religious - will accept a pregnancy she does not want. It tells us that abortion will never be abolished. Best that we all accept this reality, no matter which side of the aisle we sit on.
27
@C
Many of those nuns were forced to have abortions paid for by their priests and bishops. They had their orders closed while the priests continued as though nothing had happened. The male patriarchy of the RCC will protect it’s own at all cost. Hypocrites to the core.
9
@BMUS - even better - MEN (religious ones at that!) want abortions to happen too. It's not just a women's thing.
3
I am pro-choice but I'm not sure about this particular Louisiana law.
Doctors who do procedures should have hospital privileges. If there's a complication it is detrimental to the patient to not take care of a complication. Sending bleeding patients to the ER and having to hand care to a doctor who has never seen the patient is risky.
Usually to get privileges you need 1) to pass the boards, 2) a reasonably clean malpractice history, and 3) a few hundred dollars. Since the cost pales in comparison to the cost of litigation is there a problem with abortion providers' board qualifications or malpractice history?
Otherwise, why would Planned Parenthood or NARAL allow Louisiana to have only 1 abortion provider? Certainly they could raise the money for hospital fees and hire a licensing agency to do the paperwork?
It's in the interest of the women who get care at abortion providers that their doctors have hospital privileges. The health of women is the whole reason these organizations exist. Why would they allow thousands of women to lose access to abortion over hospital privileges?
Maybe it isn't the privileges but the whole idea of restrictions? Maybe they're more concerned about the aura of being persecuted than the the health of the women? Maybe abortion providers become abortion providers because they can't pass the boards or have been sued too much?
Suggestions are welcome. I honestly don't understand the problem here
2
You’re solving the problem by having someone else pay for the doctors admitting privileges. Absent that mythical funding, what if the doctor can’t/won’t pay? The clinic closes and women lose access
2
@jkemp I think you missed a crucial part of the article:
"...the Federal District Court in Baton Rouge struck down the law, saying that such doctors were often unable to obtain admitting privileges for reasons unrelated to their competence..."
The doctors were DENIED admitting privileges. The Louisiana law had nothing to do with women's safety and everything to do with further--and most importantly, unduly--restricting a woman's right to access abortion services.
7
@jkemp Read the article more carefully and research the lam. If you're pro-choice, as you claim, then this law should disgust you wholly!
4
Roberts in both an institutionalist and an incrementalist.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's criticism of Roe (while voting to uphold it) was 'too far, too fast.'
This law fits that description, in the other direction.
Nuanced, incremental, or, better yet, 'boring' laws may be received more favorably by the Roberts Court.
In case anyone is wondering, I am pro-choice, but anti-Roe.
I think there are about 9 or 10 other people in the country that agree with me!
1
@DennisG
This is the case Bader-Ginsberg wanted to argue before the court. She believed it would have survived any challenges to it because it argued for abortion and pregnancy rights based upon equal protection under the law. Roe was decided upon the right to privacy, a much weaker position.
“Struck v. Secretary of Defense, a case that was on the Supreme Court’s calendar during the same term that Roe was decided. Susan Struck was an Air Force Captain who got pregnant while serving in Vietnam and sued the Air Force after it said she would have to either get an abortion at the base hospital or leave if she wanted to have the child.”
time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/
2
@BMUS
I think you're right.
I am pro-choice, and one way (but by no means the only way) to settle this would be a Constitutional Amendment on privacy.
The word 'privacy' appears nowhere in the Constitution - it needs to make an appearance.
There are a LOT of other issues other than abortion (sexual privacy, financial privacy, family privacy, online privacy, etc.) that need protection that is firmly grounded in the text of the Constitution, not dependent on 'emanations' from 'penumbras.'
Imagine that......we're having a civil discussion?!?! LOL!
1
@DennisG
I’m also pro choice and pro Roe because it’s all we have. And all we may ever have. I think the abortion issue is also the reason the equal rights amendment hasn’t been ratified. If the ERA becomes an amendment to the Constitution then all arguments against abortion become moot. No one could continue to deny women access to abortion since we’d be entitled to equal protection under the law.
3
Women's reproductive services shouldn't be jettisoned because they're antithetical to a particular religious or political viewpoint. This is still a free society, abet one currently challenged at every opportunity, and women are not second-class citizens. Intelligence, fairness, and respect for rights should reign over ideology. Women are half of our population and should be treated as equals, not afterthoughts.
9
The right-to-life movement is not about the right to life. It is about keeping women subordinate to men. That’s why it arouses so much passion on the right. These same right-to-lifers care not about life when they oppose common-sense gun control legislation. So, don’t let yourself get dragged into an argument about life. This is not about life; it’s about women’s rights. Stick to that point.
28
@Ron Cohen Yes Ron! I'll split the cost with you, so your post can be plastered up on a few billboards in DC.
1
@Ron Cohen
Exactly right Ron. Its a gender power issue where men hold all the cards. Men constitute the gender that is more persistent about pursuing sensual gratification and more insistent in pursuing the act of coitus, often pressuring women into participating. Given the credible questions about Kavanaugh and Thomas, it is understandable that women who have to do all the suffering, heavy lifting, bearing the life style impacts and financial consequences etc, get angry when men insist on intruding on female health decisions; the same men who aggressively pursue coitus. It's a power issue.
5
Thank you Justice Roberts, for having a brain, free will and a just mind. Regarding this partisan hack that was nominated by an invalid illegal president, he is doing EXACTLY what he was nominated for. Voting among partisan lines and attempting to set the table to over turn Roe vs Wade. But hey, he seems to have no problem drinking beer and laughing as women are in jeopardy of losing their lives.
If Jesus is god's only son why do we need such laws? Can't they just pray for thy lord and creator to fix it? See if he'l repair our crumbling infrastructure and class inequality while your at it. Perhaps he can free some of the brown children you've put in cages and kidnapped too.
5
@Devin Greco
Yes the president is relevant here (or paradoxically irrelevant). It amazes me that many evangelicals can't see that he is only using them to maintain his base; a base he desperately needs because as soon as he loses power, there are a number of aggrieved women who will pursue legal justice. I agree that the hypocrisy of jailing brown children whose ancestors have been in the Americas for millennia does not concern them much. Apparently the lives of kids in internment camps don't matter so much. Trump and his base don't seem so pro life if the lives are Hispanic/Indigenous children's lives
3
Justice Kavanaugh blew it big time. He had an opportunity to take a step toward redemption by siding with the majority in a stand against mysogeny. Once a frat boy always a frat boy.
15
I was adopted as an infant at birth and delivered from the hospital to my adoptive parents. After over 70 years now, I am most thankful for the adoptive parents. However, I still believe the birth mother needs to decide what to do with the fetus. I would not want to be raised as a burden where I could not be loved and cared for completely. And the birth mother should not place herself in a dangerous situation seeking an abortion without proper medical care. I consider myself an open minded conservative who wants to use common sense and logic.
161
@Bob
Thank you for sharing this. My husband and I adopted an infant over 30 years ago in an international adoption. Abortion wasn't legal in his birth mother's country at the time, and single parenthood was close to impossible. Placing the child in her own country would also have been very difficult. She had no real choice in her pregnancy or in what happened to the infant she delivered. I have always wished she had had a true choice, even if that choice had been abortion and the child would not have existed to be placed with us. Adoption, like abortion, should be freely chosen and not coerced or required.
I also never felt that it was the responsibility of another woman to have a child from me. The fact that we had trouble conceiving and desperately wanted a child did not mean that reproductive choice should be removed from other women.
None of this means that we do not love our now adult child with the same intensity that all parents do, and we are not glad that he is here.
19
Interesting... My sister, also form Oklahoma, adopted during world war II, presumably from an out-of-wedlock mother, is one of the most ardent pro-choice advocates I know, and found the male-dominated, in-your-face pompous religiosity of the anti-abortion forces there unbearable and is one of the reasons she too is an exile from the state.
21
@Bob Thank you for sharing this very respectful comment. The fact that you state that you're conservative is especially significant because you're not just "open minded," you're also willing to consider that what suited your birth mother may not suit others.
Deciding to have an abortion is seldom easy. The option to have one is vital.
8
This was one of the most heart-warming articles I have seen in ages, not because of the legal implications of the decision, but because it shows there is a least one person in Washington with the courage and integrity to use his own judgment rather than pander to the views of his gang. Thank God this man is perhaps the most powerful man in the country; may he long maintain his independence and self-esteem.
3
@JCW
If "5-4" roberts had any integrity usurper gorsuch* and deviant kavanaugh would not be on the bench.
He is a disgrace and will go down in history as the man who destroyed the Supreme Court.
1
@Victorious Yankee
Maybe he destroyed it, maybe he can save it. I would say the entire Republican Party seriously endangered it and the hard fact is that Roberts is the sole individual in a position to save it, and perhaps our country, and perhaps the world. Give credit where credit is due and pay respect to this step in the right direction.
Roberts did not join "liberals" in this vote. He joined the four actual judges. The ones who are qualified to be judges, who behave like judges, who apply law and Constitution like judges.
He stepped away (temporarily) from four partisan extremist hacks in robes to act like a justice of the Supreme Court for a change
16
The abortion controversy has been going on my whole adult life. It was legalized in 1973, the year I turned 18. In ‘72, it was illegal in NJ but legal in NY. If you asked about a girlfriend, “What’s she doing this weekend?” and the answer was, “She’s going to NY,” everybody knew what that meant. Looking into the future from that time, I would never have thought it would still be an issue in the 2000s. But I’ve often secretly wished it would be outlawed. That’s the only thing that would teach politically disengaged females who vote the way their husbands tell them (and I believe there are very many, witness Trump) not to vote Republican. If and when it’s made illegal, you could see more Democrats come into office.
2
Giving the mother all the rights and the baby none of the rights is an extreme position and is not fair to the rights of the baby.
Why stop there. Why not bring this out to its preposterous conclusion and go beyond baby and foetus to embryo, to egg, to cell. Why aren't cells protected under the constitution? Why does anyone have the right to abort their cells?
2
@Moehoward,
Ten cells does not a baby make.
Question: you've adopted how many of those precious unwanted gifts from your Bronze Age blood god?
Typical.
1
Chief Justice Roberts is taking us all on an interesting ride, and today we know a little more about the route if not the end destination. He has shown unwillingness for now to defy precedent over his recent stance on Texas. That is small pause for celebration for abortion rights activists - with enough time and opportunities there is no reason to expect the court not to radically reduce abortion access. Democrats still need to act with urgency to develop plans for how we might reform the court for 2020 and beyond.
4
For all of the folks who voted for Trump based on one issue alone - that he would appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court - here is just a warning shot. When a person is appointed to the Court they feel obligated to the Constitution, not the President. The job is for life and they vote that way. If I were you folks I’d look more holistically at the candidates in the future. Life may begin at conception for you, it continues till death.
3
It seems to me that Kavanaugh wanted to test the law by letting it go into effect and then seeing if the doctors were denied admitting privileges, then allowing them to sue for an injunction if that happened. He's either very smart or very naive; I can't decide which. He seems to have ignored that the doctors did apply for privileges and were met with a lot of stalling or denials, but the state had argued that the law was not intended to close any clinics. If that's a false argument, then the hidden agenda of the law would have been exposed, but to me this seems sneaky and cynical.
4
Given that many (most?) abortions are induced with medication these days, why you even need a doctor involved is beyond me. You can take the pills completely unsupervised at home.
What these sorts of laws actually do is make it more dangerous for women because they will instead turn to black market internet pharmacies that sell the pills - often with no instructions on how to take them and with no way to guarantee that the pills are actually what they say they are.
If Louisiana is truly concerned about women's safety and health, they would make it cheaper and easier to get legitimate abortions from real doctors. If that means granting the doctors admitting privileges to a hospital, then the state of Louisiana should have a program to make that process easy and quick - and only enact laws such as this AFTER all current doctors have such privileges.
BUT, let's not kid ourselves. This isn't about women's safety - it is about denying women abortions, plain and simple.
167
@Mr. Adams
For accuracy, emergency contraception does not "abort" a fetus. It's contraception - there is no conception in the first place.
This highlights why this issue is too complex to politicize.
10
@Studioroom I understood Mr. Adams to be referring to medications like RU-486 and its equivalents. RU-486 acts on the fertilized and implanted embryo.
3
Although I have been on this planet for some time, I still fail to understand what business politicos have in legislating what goes on inside a woman's body. Until a fetus is fully viable, abortion or to term pregnancy should be the decision of the woman in conjunction with her doctor(s) and perhaps but only perhaps her partner and her God.
7
"But Chief Justice Roberts joined the court’s four conservative members on Thursday night in a 5-to-4 ruling allowing the execution of a Muslim inmate in Alabama whose request for his imam to be present was denied by prison officials."
This is a highly misleading statement to the point of being inaccurate on its face. The title of the article reporting more fully on this topic has the same problem. The issue at hand was not whether a man about to be executed was denied access to his imam for final prayers. He was not. The imam was there just before the execution took place and presumably just outside the execution room while the sentence was carried out. The actual issue at hand was that the prison chaplain, himself a member of the execution team???, was a Christian not Muslim. He was ultimately absented from this execution out of respect for the inmates faith practice. One wonders how a chaplain's presence is allowed inside the execution chamber for any state sanctioned killing. Such would not be possible for a firing squad or gas chamber execution. Only the peculiarly cruel execution by lethal drugs allows for such a practice and seemingly the chaplain's presence is designed to make state sanctioned killing seem more humane.
Over the years Presidents and Senators have tried to stack the court with people they thought would subsequently support their ideology. Time and again, they appear to get very disappointed when the issue is The LAW vs Politics. The LAW usually wins out
To reduce abortions I strongly recommend support of Planned Parenthood, for their birth control advice significantly reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and the many abortions which result.
11
I believe that the Chief Justice saw through the ploy of admitting privileges for doctors to deny abortions in Louisiana now that its obvious that the conservative bloc may be voting based on their religious objections as well as their so-called strict constructionist phantasies.
I do hope Roberts feels the severe decline in credibility this court now suffers in the people's eyes. I also hope he understands how often they are out of touch with majority public opinion.
The survival of any perception of fairness and decency in this institution of government appears to be in his hands for the time being.
2
Trump is going to start bad mouthing judges again. Like his own morality hasn’t been in question.
Oh come on Louisianna, you don't care about the health and welfare of women seeking abortion. This is all about controlling women.
And if it is based on your moral beliefs, it still has nothing to do with allowing a woman's right to choose, because your beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with me.
4
The State of Louisiana should worry about Big Oil with whom they have gotten in bed and who runs everything in the state, instead of telling women what to do.
2
"Brett M. Kavanaugh said he would have denied the stay" ... ok ... we are on notice ... darkness descends on "justice".
1
There is no other circumstance under which a person can be compelled >by law< to use his or her body to sustain the life of another ... only pregnant women would have such an obligation if the anti-choice minority get their way.
Not even the father of the unborn fetus can be compelled to give just a pint of blood to sustain the life of a non-viable fetus! In fact, he can't be compelled to give such life-sustaining help even AFTER birth!
I simply do not understand. How is it rational to be able to legally demand this of any woman?
9
Maybe Justice Roberts could be replaced. Another possibility is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will retire and President Trump will be able to place another conservative on the bench. Or maybe one of the liberal justices will decide to leave for whatever reason and we will finally get a conservative justice as has been promised by President Trump. He has has kept his promise so far.
1
In other words, the heck with the law and the Constitution. Just throw out whoever sees things differently, stick right-wing activists in there, and get me what I want.
9
@WPLMMT-NO to all of that. While I respect the views of those against choice, they do not reflect the views of the majority of the country. And I resent the hypocrisy of the so called conservatives
8
Nope! Roberts is Chief Justice for life and is a healthy, fairly young man. When Bush appointed him, conservatives gloated that he would be on the court for fifty years. Now the naked lawlessness of Trump is pushing him away from conservatism. So sit back and take it.
6
Abortion is not something that any legislature or court should have any jurisdiction over. How a woman and her doctor decide to treat that woman's body should be a decision only for the woman herself. A fetus is no more a living person than the egg or the sperm that created that fetus. The rest is religion and government under our constitution should make no laws concerning religion. A fetus is not a person until it is born. All laws concerning abortion are a travesty of justice and usurpation of women's rights by government.
24
How are all these lawyers making decisions about medical issues?
Why is that even allowed?
26
Thank you, Justice Roberts, for this and for Affordable Health Care.
6
Here's the problem with Kavanaugh's dissent. It is a cover for his anti abortion orthodoxy. The Law in question is a flagrant imposition of arbitrary rules concerning abortion doctors that has absolutely no intent to help women, but serves only to reduce access to medically safe abortions. To require that every stupid regulation a state can think of does not become onerous till it has been enacted and enforced and proven to be onerous is ridiculous. It is easy to predict the effects of this law and it is not just dependent upon the 4 doctors in question but also any future doctors that may wish to practice woman's health care in that sorry State. Justice Kavanaugh willfully puts on blinders and says "I haven't seen any harm yet" This is a blatant call to states , that may wish to enact similar dumb regulations , that they can proceed and nothing will be done till clinics close, illegal and lethal abortions rise and unwanted children are forced on unwilling mothers. The harm will be irreversible.
9
People change and grow. I sometimes wonder if Chief Justice Roberts was as shocked by Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation testimony and his blatant perjury, and complete lack of judicial temperament, as the rest of us were.
16
If Roberts is making legal decisions based on how he feels about other people on the Supreme Court he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court himself. However I'm confident he isn't.
2
I grant your point, and I really wasn't saying that. But context and historical context have undoubtedly influenced the evolution of Supreme Court Justices' interpretation of the Constitution over the centuries.
Roberts actually ruled in the opposite direction in a very similar case a couple of years ago. This is much better explained than I can in an NPR piece this morning:
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692614193/supreme-court-blocks-louisiana-abortion-law.
Also, I've often wondered about Robert's reasoning in the Obamacare case. I certainly was glad that he voted as he did, but even I found his reasoning somewhat contorted.
But thank you for your thoughtful, and correct comment.
I've often wondered how Roberts felt about the blocking of a fair hearing on Merrick Garland.
4
@John - You got it. With Kavanaugh on the bench now, Justice Roberts must see that every decision going forward will have a cloud over it. It will affect his legacy.
1
Abortion always has been, and always will be available to those with the price of an airline ticket, time, and adequate resources.
The Right's obsession about this is nothing more than as a hot-button political issue, at the expense of the most vulnerable, most isolated, and poorest women in our country, for whom they couldn't care less.
People change and grow. I sometimes wonder if Roberts was as shocked by Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation testimony and his blatant perjury, and complete lack of judicial temperament, as the rest of us were.
228
@John Politicians who aren't prepared to be innovative, thoughtful leaders enjoy distracting us with issues they have no business mucking around with. Sadly, they are shameless.
40% of the American people who could have voted didn't participate in the 2016 election. In 2020, we need their participation.
5
Although Roberts sided with the liberals in this instance, let's not get ahead of ourselves by lauding him as the new Anthony Kennedy. Roberts' jurisprudence convictions are steeped in conservatism, not as radical as his current conservative brethren, but far more conservative than moderate. Roe v Wade is still in jeopardy.
4
Justice Roberts has reached the inescapable conclusion that, in order for the Supreme Court to retain its legitimacy in this era of shattering of trust, he must become a Liberal Justice in order to save the America he loves.
2
If the Supreme Court really meant to interpret the Constitution as intended by the framers thereof, then all members of the Supreme Court would vote to abolish all laws concerning abortion. Abortion is a medical procedure. Laws made to restrict abortion are ALL based on religious grounds and not on medical grounds. According to the Constitution (Government) should make no laws concerning religion. Therefore the Court has no Constitutional grounds for allowing any laws concerning abortion other than those that protect the safety of women. PERIOD!
10
@RLW
Exactly. How many other medical procedures are subject to this much hypocritical attempted oversight? By individuals who have no medical background.
6
I believe that women have the right to decide, and the right to access a clinic/doctor if they do decide to terminate a pregnancy. That was decided decades ago. However, I do not believe that government should pay for abortions. Happy to give (and do) to planned parenthood and other organizations that assist women, but this 'right' to have what you want just because you were born and have made decisions, or mistakes, doesn't entitle you to 'free.' Of course those on Medicaid should be able to get assistance under their healthcare benefits. But we need to look at that as well; Medicaid provides extensive coverage that citizens to not get when they buy healthcare. Medicaid should never be better than Cadillac coverage; today it is.
2
How do you feel about tax dollars paying for lung cancer treatment for smokers or any other of the many lifestyle diseases, of which most are preventable?
11
@Ma:
“All ideologies lead to nihilism”
Conceptually you are coherent.
How does that work on in a practical sense?
Back in 2001 when I was in law school a Dutch student told me Holland had the lowest abortion rate even though it was largely free and largely legal & the country w/ the highest abortion rate was Brazil where it was illegal. She said the Dutch are eminently practical (ie-cheap, they tend to do what’s cheapest regardless as to ideology- so we said).
According to GOP market based Adam-Smith based theory, if something is free & legal it should have infinite demand. It turns out morality is a middle class characteristic. People generally see abortion as an evil. So even though its free & legal they don’t have them because of values, education & economic status of being middle class.
Holland has a broad middle class & broad sex education.
So if we go with your conceptual model, the poor & undereducated people will likely be the ones with unwanted pregnancies. If they can’t afford abortions, they will be forced to go to term & then some how find a way to raise their children in poverty & ignorance w/ a strong likelihood that their children will repeat the pattern.
So its time to acknowledge pragmatism @ the expense of ideology. Vote progressive. Shift bargaining power back to the masses & wealth will follow; vote for more affordable quality education (including sex ed) & provide reasonable services.
Let’s be pragmatic & avoid the tragedies born on ideology.
7
Excellent point. And to anyone who thinks medicaid is the best insurance out there with the best of coverage...you must have never been in the position where you needed it...or worked in healthcare where your trying to get people on it what they need.
Proving once again that john "5-4" roberts is not a judge, he's just a P.R. guy.
1
I don't understand the whole thing about admitting privileges.
If a woman needs hospital care you put her in a ambulance and she goes to the ER or for that matter walks in many of us have done. Once in the hospital, the hospital MDs provide the care.
9
@jeff
Continuity of care and familiarity with the particulars of the condition which needed hospitalization.
@jeff
Exactly.
Anti choicers who pass these laws have convinced people that if a doctor doesn't have "admitting privileges" at a hospital, then his patients cannot be treated there. This is a fundamental characterization of what admitting privileges are. Admitting privileges allow a doctor to treat HER patients at a hospital. Not only is it unnecessary for the woman to be treated by the physician who performs the abortion if complications arise, it's nonsensical. If it was an emergency or surgical issue, she'd need to be treated by an emergency physician or a surgeon. Duh.
They also have convinced people that if a doctor can't get privileges, then he is a dangerous hack doctor. This is also false. There are a number of considerations that go into whether a doctor seeks or obtains privileges. Most doctors don't even have them.
2
@jeff
Admitting privileges are a deeply disingenuous and hypocritical attempt at so-called "safe care" for women. The fact is that it is nothing more than yet one more try to prevent women from making their own medical decisions.
2
Another Republican appointed judge supports abortion. What a surprise. Gotta keep holding my nose and pulling the lever for Trump though! The next appointee is sure to be the one that kills Roe.
@T. Warren
Funny, I thought San Francisco was a sophisticated and progressive place.
2
Regardless of one's views on abortion, its heartening (at least to me) to see Roberts and Kavanaugh actually ruling based on their view of the law, as opposed to blindly lining up on one side or the other of a hot partisan issue. If you're of the liberal persuasion, that should give you some hope. And if of the conservative mindset, the same--that's good for the country, good for the court, and good for the legitimacy of the rule of law.
1
Here’s how absurd abortion politics are:
Morality/Ethics/Values/etc are a middle class characteristic: the rich don’t need’em & the poor can’t afford’em.
When I was in law school a Dutch xfer student pointed out that the country with the consistently highest abortion rate was Brazil where abortion is illegal & the country with the lowest abortion rate was Netherlands where it was largely free & legal.
The reason? Wealth is highly concentrated in Brazil but broadly distributed in Netherlands-as is sex education. Holland is a middle class country.
The GOP has one prime directive: the ever greater concentration of wealth & power on behalf of the wealthy & powerful.
To succeed they need to get elected & then xfer money to the wealthy. To get middle class people to vote for them they say they are protectors of middle class values. Then they get elected.
Since their prime directive is to concentrate wealth & since the poor don’t have wealth they have to take if from the middle class.
In 2014 it was announced that the middle class shrank below 50% for the first time in decades.
So in the name of values & abortion the middle class have been electing Repubicans who then proceed to undermine both the middle class economic security & morality. That’s quite a switcholla of a con.
If you want to reduce abortion, you should vote to expand the middle class in both directions: a redistribution of bargaining power (which determines where wealth flows). That means voting progressive.
13
So true but people elected Republicans working against their own interest. Every democracy gets the government it deserves, simple as that.
2
That both Roberts and Kavanaugh make reference to the Texas decision is moderately encouraging. It may be that these two justices respect judicial precedence and truly do consider abortion rights to be settled law, as opposed to whatever their personal feelings (or prejudices) may be.
1
It’s a good thing when the Court sees through lies intended to undo the law. Roberts does put the law, first.
Unfortunately, Kavanaugh appears to be determined to undo the law to serve the far right wing who want the country to operate according to their religious dogmas. His melodrama during the hearings was a warning that he cannot behave impartially on the bench. We seem to have another man in the mold of Roger B. Taney, only a religious zealot instead of a white supremacist.
6
Good!
2
Abortion is about autonomy. As long as women are held hostage to the biological reality that only women become pregnant, we as a society disadvantage them intentionally. No matter how you try to dress up that reality with religion or any other picture, this is the truth. Women have to have complete control over whether they carry a pregnancy to term. Outlawing or preventing this procedure because you don't like what might happen in some hypothetical extreme consequence is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We would outlaw war and nuclear weapons if we put the loss of innocent lives (actual born people) over every other consideration. Obviously we do not. So why outlaw or prohibit or inhibit abortion? Only to manipulate people politically.
212
@James Trans men can also become pregnant, and some women-identified people can't become pregnant. Your statement excludes them.
@James Well said!
3
@James Because abortion is murder. Full stop. Q.E.D.
2
Don't worry, Roberts will change his vote when it really counts. To a republican extremist judge - and he is just as extreme as the rest of them, settled law is only settled if they like the law.
2
@steve Concur-Strict constructionism is make believe. The founders were cosmopolitan and in the vanguard in their day they would laugh at these reactionaries alleging that the Constitution must be interpreted their way.
It is immoral for a society to value economic independence and then create laws that block the path to it.
6
Pro-choice supporters best not get too excited about John Roberts joining their side.
This was a narrowly crafted case that had a lot of holes in it.
There are a dozen other cases in the courts that are much much better suited for a ruling by SCOTUS that would find Roberts joining in the majority with the conservative justices.
Some of these original court cases are lacking any seriopus intellectual basis or understanding of what the SCOTUS will eventually rule on as a Constitutional basis.
3
Hallelujah!
Thank you Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer.
May you live long and well, and have the option of a well-deserved retirement, once we have a sane, decent person as President to name your replacements.
Abortion always has been, and always will be available to those with the price of an airline ticket, time, and adequate resources.
The Right's obsession about this is nothing more than using it as hot-button political issue at the expense of the most vulnerable women in our country, for whom they couldn't care less.
124
@John
Thank you John. Well stated.
The Republicans are not "pro life", but "pro birth" ! Without the well funded necessary medical care system to serve all Americans we are at the whim a substandard over priced medical care which is the laughing stock of Canadians and Europeans.
It's amazing we can't a way out of our medical system mess and create soemthing that works for all of us.
7
@John Sorry John, but can't agree with you on this one. Anything that is conceived has a place on this earth so long as it's viable outside the womb. Just because we can abort it doesn't mean we should. We need to go back to the immemorial ideal that if you have sex you must be prepared for the consequences. If, then for what ever reasons, a fetus is aborted (on it's own) that's the way it is (obviously). Until that time those involved must be held accountable. Otherwise there is simply NO accountability. Men, keep your trousers zipped and ladies keep your legs closed. It's really that simple. Since Rowe v Wade (a 7-2 decision that was tied to the 14th amendment) we have undermined the family unit and that alone is hardly excusable. Keeping one's chastity is a small price to pay, for both.
@Dr. Mike Reeder: Just curious, doctor. What if you are like a woman I know whose husband would take her birth control and hide it? He wanted to unzip his trousers as you quaintly put it and he wanted to have 12 children, until he decided he wanted a younger woman that he could dominate more easily. He went off and left her and his 7 children, didn't contribute financially or otherwise. What then?
6
Kavanaugh should go!
4
@Sandy Agreed There is still more dirt to be dug up!! Let's find it!!!
Thank God for our Chief Justice.
Senator Collins: How does Kavanaugh's promise on abortion look now. He lied to you and you fell for it. Voters in Maine should take notice on your lack of judgment.
14
Right wing Trump supporters have been attacking Pelosi and Schumer over New Yorks abortion laws. They will be in a panic over this. Ray Sipe
3
Hey, Susan Collins, could you please remind us of those reassurances you received from Brett Kavanaugh.
16
All current research on the issue of falling crime rates in the United States attribute this decline to safe and legal access to abortion and easier access to reliable birth control. Yet our "law and order" loving friends on the right never are willing to discuss these inconvenient facts. Furthermore, Republicans and all "right to lifers" who actually wish to positively impact society could fulfill their moral imperative by adopting children in orphanages, becoming foster parents or taking in the victims of sexual violence. Providing homes for children already born, feeding and housing the poor, prison reform--all are worthy Christian pursuits that I do not see right to lifers pursuing. Are they also marching against the death penalty? Why, no, they are not. Are they okay with children being ripped out of their parents' arms, separated, perhaps permanently from their families and caged at our southern border? It appears they are. The hypocrisy of these folks is astounding. I thank John Roberts and 4 other members of our Supreme Court for remembering that we are not a theocracy, and are, even in these ridiculous times, still a nation ruled by law.
5
If this law was about safety, then this law would dictate that anyone performing office based procedures with a risk of complications (ie any procedure) would need admitting privileges. If the law singles out abortion and ignored other procedures, that should be considered to have been passed solely to create an undue burden. There are plenty of other laws with waiting periods, ultrasound requirements, etc which are stupid and terrible, but this type of law is different in that it can’t really be justified as anything other than trying to make abortion legal in name only.
12
A tiny glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak present for so much is this news that Chief Justice Roberts is standing with precedent over abortion rights in spite of the emotional noise over the choice women have fought for in the matter of their reproductive rights for so long. Catholics on one side, it must be noted, male Catholic men representing a point of view that seems so ancient and wrong, perhaps more so w/the continuing news of male priests in the Catholic Church abusing first children, now nuns. Power corrupts, absolute power absolutely. Englishman quote, was it Acton? From Margaret Sanger who was a nurse in the tenements of NYC and saw the tremendous need for women to control their own bodies to our present day when that right is being challenged is a lesson in both the vagaries of justice as well as the gyrations people can go through to avow who has the purest intentions. Most striking is the reality of children separated from their parents at our border with Mexico with what moral justification I ask? Or the many children who are abused, killed, neglected, abandoned by those who in fact bore them? Such moral hyprocrisy sickens.
4
It has been said many times but is worth repeating.
The so called Pro Life community is really just Pro Birth.
11
@Penner
Forced birth
15
This is exhausting.
Here is a fact the holy phonies never mention -
Abortion is at a historic low since Roe.
Why?
-better access to birth control
-better sex ed
-de-stigmatization of out-of-wedlock birth
(Rs would like to undo all 3 of these prongs)
You want even fewer abortions ?
We all do .
Promote all of the above
And keep abortion legal.
19
When will we allow Christians to again sleep at night without their thoughts straying to your bedroom - what you are doing with your body and with whom? How can we, in a free society, all abide by their tenants and restrictions so that they are no longer persecuted by their own minds?
4
By all means possible, bring those fetuses to term! And let the hundreds of thousands of new children born each year be supported from cradle to death by the Republican Party.
"Oh, well, if that's the case, we're Pro Choice."
5
"Dear God, I pray...please keep those so-called evangelical people out of my life, and please, please, whatever you do, when my days on your earthly trails are done, don't send me to the heaven where those self-righteous power- and gun- lusting freedom-fearing people are. P.S. I'd love it if you'd let me in to that kind and peaceful heaven where all my old friend horses and dogs are. Thank you, CM."
14
It is morally wrong that a SINGLE individual (note: in this case, a MAN) can determine whether or not the entire female population of a state can determine, for themselves, what medical procedures they need or don't need. This is unacceptable.
14
"Justice" Kavanaugh's reasoning ignores the reality that the doctors who perform abortions now will not be the doctors who perform abortions forever. The law will deter at least some abortion-providing doctors from starting a practice in Louisiana because of the law's obstacle. And these four doctors obviously will not practice forever. So the law imposes an undue burdern either now or in the future. So Kavaugh's focusing on these facts seems reasonable only for about 1 second. Kavanaugh knows this. So the fact that he would employ this specious reasoning despite its obvious flaws should make us uncomfortable. Here is a Supreme Court justice who is trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. VERY unsettling. But not surprising, given his bizarre reality show-performance in the hearing that preceded his Senate confirmation. This is a man who will say anything to advance his own agenda, regardless of the law.
7
@James Yeah you can take the frat-boy out of the frat house but he doesn't belong on SCOTUS.
1
Thanks Senator Collins, you should have believed Ford but you believed boyish Brett's "stasis" talk instead. Stasis indeed, look at the mess we're in now!
With two seated Justices placed by a President who likely had contemporaneous knowledge of (if not actual participation in) Russian election collusion, and two Justices accused of sexual impropriety, we can look forward to a future of contention and distrust of the highest court of the land.
The only saving grace thus far is Chief Justice Roberts whose votes have thus far attempted to retain a modicum of trust in the integrity of SCOTUS.
9
Every time I see gaggles of folks standing in front of the Supreme Court building waving religious placards and icons, I ask the question; what is the secular argument for banning abortion? If there is one, it is the only constitutional argument for abortion.
75
@HANK-CORRECTION:
...If there is one, it is the only constitutional argument for banning abortion.
5
@HANK There absolutely is a secular argument -- it is that the life of a person does not start at birth, but rather sometime before then. Many anti-abortionists posit that there is a bright line between alive and dead at conception, which would be the first instance of diploid human DNA which can grow into an adult human being. But that itself can be considered arbitrary, as there definitely is no thought, no body, and not even an inkling of an organ. But birth could be considered arbitrary as well, since most fetuses which survive until that point could potentially grow into adulthood with routine (but expert) medical care.
This matters because minors receive protection under the law -- that is, it is against the law to assault or harm them (although some would also argue that a parent has a right to use corporal punishment to an extent greater than that of a stranger).
Another consideration, however, is of course the autonomy of the host, as a zygote-through-fetus is essentially a parasite which cannot survive without its specific host, until viability. Outlawing abortion essentially assigns a duty to rescue to each individual mother until birth. Seeing as this situation can occur unintentionally and sometimes without knowledge from a form of contact which is entirely natural, in line with our bodies' urges at a time of hormonal and mental upheaval, and first hits us at our most vulnerable, of course it's going to happen. Condoms for all.
1
@HANK
There are no secular reasons.
Stanley Fish captures the problem well
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/are-there-secular-reasons/
Data is simply data. To move from data to norms requires either unassailable first principles, natural law, or some truth that transcends mere existential existence.
4
If the Louisiana legislature, responsive to it's citizenry, wants to eliminate abortion within the state, who am I to criticize from here in New York? Who is Congress or the Court to do so? Let Louisiana decide for itself. Let Alabama decide for itself. Let New York and California decide as well.
And before you start comparing this to states rights arguments about slavery, please realize that unlike slavery, in 21st century America reasonable people disagree about this issue. One side should not force the other to its position. States are the laboratories of democracy, right? All power not granted to Congress is reserved for the sovereign states, right? We live in federalist system. Let's act like it.
1
@DRS Great! I do not want NYS Federal Tax $$ going to any of these states!
2
@DRS
And does the state of Louisiana outlaws its citizens to have an abortion in another state? No. So, where is Louisiana logic in its law?
"PLEASE, Justice Ginsburg, stay healthy!"
Justice Ginsburg hasn't been at the Court even once since her surgery last fall and, frankly, I doubt she'll ever return.
Replacing Scalia with Gorsuch was replacing one conservative justice with another conservative justice.
Arguably, replacing Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh was the same thing, if one looks closely at Kennedy's votes, especially those in his last year.
Replacing Ginsburg will be quite another matter.
A great deal of forlorn effort has been expended to re-cast John Roberts as a liberal. He's not, though he does have more "respect" for Supreme Court precedent than other conservative Justices do. For example, Roberts sided with the dissent (which included Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor) in last year's 5-4 Wayfair decision (in contrast, RBG sided with her BFFs Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kennedy) because, Roberts wrote, the decisions overturned by Wayfair should not be overturned, like them or not).
But if the Court jumps through all of the procedural hoops that Roberts insists it must jump through to overturn a precedent, I have almost no doubt that Roberts would side with the conservative Justices.
Even Roe v. Wade COULD be overturned, though I doubt that will happen because Roberts (and possibly other Justices) will insist the Court hasn't jumped through all required procedural hoops. But the Court is likely to uphold state laws that restrict late-term abortions, and Roberts isn't likely to block that.
Bravo Chief Justice Roberts. I find it so ironic that the cries for the rights of an unborn child land on completely deaf ears when that child is born. Those very same people upholding “life” can sit by and watch children being separated from their parents and lost to the files at our border. For the born child, where is this outpouring of support for education access, basic needs of food and shelter, equal opportunity for life? Where is the equity for poor mothers? The wealthy can always “find a way”...but the poor are left stranded. If the right to lifers could honestly make the country a place where bringing a child into it would be met with caring and compassion and support we could have a conversation.
6
The only women affected by laws restricting abortion are those who can't afford to go to another state or country to have one. The rich have always had access to abortion, even when it was illegal. Anti-abortion laws target the poor. I hope and pray the Supreme Court takes no action to reverse Row vs Wade because we can't go back in time. l
7
Roberts has not moved to the center or joined the liberals. It’s a temporary stay. People really need to take a long view and stop getting excited by on slight “win”.
Chief Justice Roberts is the only one of the right wing Republicans on the SCOTUS who is capable of thinking for himself, and evolving in the process. Good for him.
5
Looming behind this Supreme Court move is the handiwork of Sen. McConnell who blocked Merrick Garland and then got rid of the 60 vote threshold. Otherwise neither Gorsuch nor Kanvanaugh would have been confirmed. With that, we will get more Citizen's United which is bad for the country. Add to that all McConnell's obstruction during Obama. And the 2017 Republican tax cut essentially doubling the deficit to above $1 Trillion, an unsustainable budgetary burden. The expected increase in the debt over the next 10 years is $12 Trillion. That is $80,000 per tax payer. Every Republican senator voted for it. Not one Democratic senator voted for it. And that was after 8 years of relentlessly railing against the debt under Obama.
11
When abortion was illegal it did not stop it from happening, but it also killed and maimed lots of innocent women. Abortion should remain legal in all 50 states for health and wellness reasons alone. No one is telling men about restricting or stopping vasectomy operations. Further, who is going to take care of all the unwanted children if abortion is stopped? As we speak thousands of kids are warehoused in foster care around the nation. Total Travesty!
11
Eaten alive by the very institution that made him, to which he has devoted his career, even his love. John Roberts knows full well it is a partisan institution causing it to lose all legitimacy, even recently said it was not partisan indicating that issue is wholly on his mind and now finds himself voting against his core beliefs to keep it from appearing partisan. The tragedy and irony is sublime.
This vote shows that our democracy is in the hands of 9 unelected people and really, just one.
4
We knew this showdown was coming, and it is far from over. Cheif Justice Roberts subtle rebuke to President Trump last fall concerning separation of powers gave me the slightest glimmer of hope reality would prevail. As so many others have stated, if birth control were more readily available and affordable, the need for abortion would drop dramatically. I cannot believe a single woman looks forward to the procedure. This debate was settled decades ago, and yet states continue to look for loopholes to undermine and/or overturn Roe v, Wade. Have NO doubt that if it is, women that can afford to safely have the procedure done will. Wowen in lower socio-ecomic positions will also have it done, but NOT safely. This already painful and emotionally difficult problem will be "solved" in filthy conditions, by quacks with neither the proper training or resources, or worse yet by women home alone. The "Great and beautiful WALL" is a distraction. Roe v. Wade is and will reamain the most divisive issue we face.
4
The United States Supreme Court is nothing more than an extension of the Republican Party. The Supreme Court interprets the Republican agenda and not the law. Kavanaugh said it best in his hearing when he said it was Hilary and the democrats that started this attack on him and it had no truth to it. Judges are all suppose to interpret law but since the United States Supreme Court is political...it will now bend to a religious state with no separation of state and religion.
6
Trump, with all of his baggage, had religious conservatives' support because he promised to appoint anti-choice zealots to the Supreme Court. He has done what he promised to do.
Laws attacking Roe v. Wade are a violation of the Establishment Clause. They are motivated by, and choreographed by, the Catholic Church and evangelical Protestant groups. They have suffered a minor setback but they are going to continue to attempt to shred Roe. They do not approve. When they are not limiting access they are shaming women with things like compulsory ultrasound imaging.
When public policy defies Roe we are allowing the Vatican and hate group leaders like Tony Perkins to effect laws that affect our lives.
6
A reprieve until October of next year. Roe v Wade is still standing.
4
To all you voters who swallowed the Trump pill to get that SCOTUS seat, here is a news flash. There is this little thing called precedent. Women have had rights since 1973 and to overturn so many years of precedent would be unheard of. Next time, vote for a real issue! Like climate change for example. Instead of saving unborn fetuses how about saving the planet we must all live on? How about gun control and making sure real living people aren't getting shot by lunatics. How about healthcare so that we can all thrive? Bigger things...
8
Would all of the people opposing abortion who have adopted a child given up by a woman who gave birth to a child she did not want and chose not to abort, please raise your hand?
6
America, what is happening to you ?
Do not let this wave of medieval thinking takeover the human progresses obtained by many sacrifices in the last 50 years, from civil rights to women’s rights to gay rights to animal rights.
The Christian lobbies wants to bring back back alley deaths and horrible sufferings in the name of an invisible entity who ( until proven otherwise ) doesn’t exist !
Resist the forces of woowoo. Get involved in politics and vote for the forces of good and well being.
Vote Democrat.
8
Remember when Kavanaugh told "pro abortion rights" Sen. Susan Collins, a that he considered Roe vs. Wade to be “settled law” ?
Remember when he tod Sen. Dianne Feinstein, what he meant by “settled law" -- “... that it’s settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court and entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis” ?
Remember when "respect" didn't have an "unless it interferes with something I want" escape clause?
Justice Kavanaugh seems to have "forgotten" all of that.
Hopefully the voters in 2020 won't forget. Especially the ones in Maine.
9
Thankyou Judge Roberts, a surprising breath of momentary sanity in a world gone mad with fundamentalism and neo-fascism.
7
Calling all moderate conservatives/blue dog Democrats that did not vote for Clinton: do you now understand?
4
Roberts is a real disappointment. Although abortion is paramount to Democrats; they’ve let it get out of hand.
1
@Dixon Duval - Democrats support sex education and affordable contraception, two things shown to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
4
Roberts has seen, too late, that the majority of Americans see the Supreme Court as a political body and no longer accept its decisions. When the Presidency and the Senate return to the Democrats, as they will, the Merrick Garland and Brett Kavanaugh affairs will take their toll. If the court remains obstructionist, the people will not object to the packing of the court.
2
If any other evidence were needed to demonstrate the dishonesty of Susan Collins, it is to be found here with Kavanaugh's vote. She assured women that Kavanaugh would be fair minded on the right to choose. Not. She now has received tens of thousands of dollars from Kavanaugh's supporters and the anti-choice crowd, after a condescending, even misogynistic cynical speech on the Senate floor supporting the nomination. She hinted at some vague promises from O'Connell if she were to vote for the repeal of the individual mandate. She didn't get them, and that vote led to a Federal District Court judge in Texas ruling that the act itself was unconstitutional. Collins wants people to believe that she is a thoughtful, down-Maine maverick in the mold of Margaret Chase Smith. She is nothing of the kind. She is a poseur. Someone who Mitch McConnell knows he can control when the chips are down, as he has demonstrated time and time again. Shame on you Susan Collins for abandoning women, the sick and millions of vulnerable Americans. I can only hope that the voters of Maine have finally caught up with your schtick, and that come 2020 they send you packing.
11
Admitting privileges has nothing to do with this matter. That is just another excuse to attempt to deny women the right to an abortion, period. Arguments about whether there might be a shred, a half-ounce, of a possibility that some medical purpose might be served by this restriction are in bad faith. Such arguments could better outlaw highway driving than abortion. Now, that would be for our own good. But it is not the state's place to protect us all from a half-percent of a half-percent of danger at the expense of citizens' rights. No, this argument is all about allowing a religious minority to demand to control women's lives, not just bodies but lives, including of poor women who can't afford a child and of sick women who can't take good care of them, women who have been raped and girls who have been molested. Let the anti-abortion people show a molecule of care for infants and children of the poor, and I will consider the thought that their religious bullying has at least some good faith behind it.
9
We are one autocrat's power grab away from demolishing the reproductive health, safety and economic futures of girls and women. Just one incident grab away.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's sheer force of will and John Roberts' current centrism are protecting us from much of our devastating see Trumpian slide into authoritarianism. They can't do this alone. Democrats need to stop the infighting and band together under a big tent to remove the faux shariah Christians from office who veer between treating women purely as sex objects or calling them "Mother." It doesn't matter how centrist or progressive you are, or how centrist or progressive the ultimate Democratic nominee is-fight for your candidate cleanly through the primary process, and then get behind the Democratic nominee with your vote for President. Trump has to go, or far too many girls' and women's lives will not be recognizable in four years.
12
This is all preliminary procedural stuff. It is titled as if something has been decided. In reading, it is clear that this has a year to go, and Kavanaugh is not at all on one side or the other yet.
1
Northam didn't do himself any favors when he said that an obstetrician would have a "discussion" with a birth-giving mother and her family even AFTER a baby had been born. He was acknowledging the possibility of infanticide, not abortion.
I actually favor abortion, but NOT:
1. Infanticide.
OR
2. Government funding of abortions.
I doubt Roe v. Wade will ever be explicitly overturned. But courts will allow state laws that restrict abortions in the third trimester (not to mention infanticide).
1
I think my views match those of most Americans on abortion:
Leave it up to the woman, but don't use taxpayer dollars to fund it.
Right now, the first is the law of the land, but a taxpayer will be thrown in prison if she refuses to pay her taxes because the government will use her tax dollars to fund abortions.
That's freedom? It sounds like just the opposite to me.
2
The religious right is not right and has no right to overrule my reproductive decisions. My religion allows abortion and I have a right to freedom of religion by the US constitution. Thanks to the Supreme Court for upholding a woman’s constitutional right to freedom of religion and freedom over her body. The religious right is waging a war against women and the religious right has no place in governing in this free country based on out-dated third century ideas.
16
Anti-choice people, isn't Roe the law of the land? Don't you believe everyone, especially would-be immigrants, obey the laws of our land?
With over 1,700 separate restrictions already forced upon Roe since the 1970's, isn't that enough? You DO understand that women aren't going around casually murdering their fetuses, right? Are we all untrustworthy through your religious lens? We women (your daughters and granddaughters) aren't going to just become murderers for fun if we have reproductive privacy. Please, thousands of restrictions are enough! Leave women alone!
11
I hope against hope John Roberts is not just biding his time to drop the hammer.
7
Brett Kavanaugh wanted to know more information on the "precise effect of the law". That's like wanting more information on the precise effect of a guillotine. Anything that makes it more difficult for women to get legal abortions will result in women dying from back-alley, illegal abortions. This is an historical fact. But given what we know about Kavanaugh's words, actions and beliefs, it is not a surprise that he tries to mask anti-abortion laws behind legal weasel words.
He knows women are watching and is signalling "See. I'm not a stereotypical, right-wing, doctrinaire, anti-abortionist." But we know he is and that is why Republicans went to the wall to get him on the Supreme Court. Women are going to die because of this law. But that's OK because the life of a baby is smore important than the life of a mere woman.
7
I'm encouraged by this decision.
1
Don’t Republicans want LESS government involvement in people’s lives? Then WHY are they involved in womens’ reproductive processes????? Our bodies, our choices.
21
Republicans are so concerned about the rights of a child until they are born. After that, they, and the mother, have no help sustaining a reasonable quality of life: no decent wages, no access to healthcare and no help with housing or food because welfare is so "evil." They don't even want women to access free or discounted birth control to avoid these abortions they are so vehemently opposed to. So what, exactly, do Republicans advocate again? Equal rights for 1% already on this earth, I suppose.
10
Reproductive rights are an important issue, and I agree with the Court's decision. We were lucky, for the moment.
But the Supreme Court is a wildcard. In theory, it should function as a neutral arbiter, defending the Constitution. But for the most part, Supreme Court justices are picked to extend the reach of the President who appoints them beyond the expiration of his term. In recent years this has been especially true under Republican presidents. Trump (and Mitch McConnell, a et al.) has made no secret of using his appointments to benefit the right wing of his party, conservative Christians, big business, and the wealthy.
At a later date a President of the left could do the same.
If the Supreme Court is to have the confidence of the people and function as it should, we need a more nonpartisan method of selecting justices. We should also consider a retirement age for justices to avoid having a court that is frozen in time in its understanding of a rapidly changing society. (Much as I love Ruth Bader Ginsburg.)
Four members of the Supreme Court actually attempted to overturn a prior decision by the same court, not with two new members. Didn't these two testify to a Congress that confirmed them that Stare decisis a principle by which judges are obligated to respect the precedent established by prior decisions was their guiding light. Didn't the court strike down a similar law in Texas. Clearly, these two have an agenda and this was pointed out during their confirmation hearing. A woman has a right to chose the medical treatment she wants. The law is clear its a Woman's Choice not four old men to oppress that choice! Or the legislatures in states that have long histories of oppressing not only women but the rights of minorities. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are smart guys with daughters who will be woman one day. They need to think about how their daughters will be treated by others when its their turn to chose.
3
One possibility for the Chief Justice's vote is that he saw it as an institutional matter. The Court of Appeals may have appeared to him to have ignored the Hellerstedt case, which arguably should have controlled the Court of Appeals' decision. In that event, the Chief Justice's vote may simply have been his recognition that the Court of Appeals' judges should not have felt free to disregard a Supreme-Court precedent--a matter of judicial hierarchy and integrity.
If that is so, it says absolutely nothing about the Chief Justice's views on the merits of the case. He dissented in Hellerstedt, so one might expect him to side with Louisiana on the merits. If he does so, there will be nothing inconsistent about his voting to impose the stay first.
The Chief Justice sees a large part of his role as helping to maintain the legitimacy of the federal judiciary. He takes that very seriously, as he should, and he may merely have seen the Court of Appeals' action as incompatible with that trust.
6
@WTig3ner
This is correct. The 5th Circuit, as it is wont to do when it sees a political ideology to chase, butchered appellate procedure here. For that reason along it was wrong.
I am not impressed by Roberts here, and I'm even more disturbed by the remaining justices.
Brett Kavanaugh is telling women what to do.
And women have to listen to him - he's the Law.
I hope young women look at this situation and swear to one day take over this country.
14
"But Chief Justice Roberts joined the court’s four conservative members on Thursday night in a 5-to-4 ruling allowing the execution of a Muslim inmate in Alabama whose request for his imam to be present was denied by prison officials."
This is the triumph of the religious right against any religion but their own. Their belief that every woman should be denied the right to abortion is the extension of their efforts to ensure that their religion is dominant. By denying Muslims the right to exercise their religion and by trying to force women to give up their right to abortion, the right wing of this Court (and I suspect Roberts, when push comes to shove) are not only defying the Constitutional right to exercise freedom of religion (including no religion), but are forcing Americans to obey the dictates of the evangelical right wing. If they do not support the Constitution, they should not be sitting on the Supreme Court.
11
As so many of us hoped he would, Roberts has stepped up to ensure that his Court does not become a weapon of the radical fundamentalist neo-Christians.
7
so much for liberal fear mongering.
The Supreme Court follows Rule of Law, The Constitution and precedent.
4
This move, albeit a stay for now is still a harbinger of things to come from this trump altered supreme court where white male christian bias will prevail over future adjudications. It is a death knell for women's abortion rights, no question, We can thank so-called moderate republican Susan Collins who lost all credibility as such when she voted for Kavanaugh.
7
Womens rights, YES! Men, also. All of us, everybody.
But, some places laws for late late term abortions are going too far.
How about the day before birth?
the morning of the day of birth?
A week before birth?
a month before birth?
At some point it has rights a living being, as a human, as a baby.
1
Roberts joins liberals? I think not. A temporary stay is not a seismic shift. There's no rush here. Take your time and do it right. This is nothing more than a time out for review.
5
It is time we began referring to these people as “pro-birth” as they are obviously not pro-life considering their ongoing lack of support for child nutrition and health programs and their absence from protests against the dark ages like US death penalty.
9
I prefer to call them what they are: pro abortion & antiabortion. Euphemisms are silly, childish, and fool no one. Americans would do well to grow up and use accurate language about all matters pertaining to sex, reproduction, and medical procedures. While they’re at it, they should keep their noses out of other people’s medical & health matters.
1
Is there any other surgical procedure that Republicans have tried to apply this admitting privileges legislation to?
7
We need a national law making abortion a consistent right in all states and defining how it is used. Maybe some day we’ll get it.
2
All of the news lately was about the possibility of the Court overturning Roe v. Wade. This should give that a pause and hopefully start focusing on the eroding danger that has already snuck into this tent. Law by law by law has been passed in various states that resulted in many fewer sites that provide abortions. This is a “clear and present danger” and should not be pushed to the back of the line as it has been for the most part. Realize that abortions will still occur with or without Roe v. Wade. For those with money, they will be performed in hospitals or surgery clinics with a diagnosis such as an incomplete miscarriage. For the poor, they will return to back rooms and basements where we can be assured the maternal death rate will surge along with life threatening complications. I spoke with a young doctor about abortions. He told me the most avid support of Roe v Wade was among the older doctors. They saw and remember what it was like before Roe v Wade.
122
@Ron
It was kitchen tables, in my day. Two of my friends discovered they were both in need of an abortion, so they had them done together (I helped them with hand holding during and afterwards.)
We who were lucky to have a bit more money, flew to Puerto Rico for the procedure. Mine turned out OK, but another friend of mine who went to the same clinic had to scoot off to the emergency room back home in Manhattan bleeding pints all over the place.
So go ahead. Make abortion illegal again. See where that gets you.
19
If the justices were doing their job it should have been unanimous. SCOTUS had already ruled on undue limitations.
7
During their confirmation, now justices Roberts and Alito promised to follow stare decisis. Seems only Roberts is the only one following through on that promise.
5
Close, but not quite:
"If you are opposed to abortion, don't have one. It's as simple as that."
The "not quite" part? The US government's position on abortion is NOT just "leave it up to the woman." Frankly, I agree with that. What I do NOT agree with, though, is government funding of abortions. If someone refuses to pay taxes because her tax dollars are used to fund abortions, she's thrown in prison. That's not "freedom" for someone else -- it's compulsion.
No tax dollars are used for abortions. Ever. There are laws in place prohibiting it. Anything or anyone that tells you different is lying and fear mongering. Research funding to Planned Parenthood, and the services they actually provide to women- besides abortion, which again, is NOT funded by taxes and is an out of pocket expense.
5
@MyThreeCents
And we're thrown into prison if we refuse to pay our tax dollars to support U.S. military. Or to refuse to support the execution of a prisoner on death row.
Or -- my own favorite hate -- to refuse to support the hanging of the signs that state, "In God We Trust," in U.S. courts of law.
5
Call me naive because I have great difficulty understanding why my personal property, my body and its systems, cells, and cellular structure, are the focus of religious doctrine in our justice system. Article II: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Making law that rests with religious doctrine is the establishment of religion in law. And the Fifth Amendment, "that a person may not be deprived of property by the government without “due process of law." So my body and its fetal cells either in early pregnancy or late-term when my life is in danger is my property and a due process of law is not a due process if it is based in the establishment of religion or a specific religious doctrine that would take my property away. So why is my body and all its functions not my property?
10
@Cherri Brown
There is an atheist line of reasoning against abortion that goes something like it takes a social consensus to determine where human rights are extended, and abortion leaves that to be independently determined by individual women. Consequently, you can consider granting that special privilege because of the social utility that women derive from having that choice if you believe this is greater than the loss of social utility from narrowing the scope of the group considered to have human rights conferred on them. Some might estimate that loss to be zero or near zero.
1
@Cherri Brown
Thanks, Cherri. And the same should be said for our right to commit suicide.
4
@Joe Schmoe
One person will always have the right to do what he or she wants with his or her own self. Social utility doesn't apply. There is no "group" in one person. No "them."
Antitheists, such as I, are not concerned with what is or isn't the social consensus; no consensus can order me to follow a group's thinking.
2
This is a real tough one.
Any serious medical procedure should be treated as such. Safety and privacy don't have to be at odds in this case.
3
Actually, they can and in this case they are. Anyway, doctors take an oath to do no harm. When there are risks to a patient with any procedure they are obliged to carry out the procedure where those risks can be addressed. This law was conjured up under the pretense that doctors must be compelled by law to act with due care to make providing abortions exceedingly difficult.
2
Right-wingers must be fulminating right now over Dubya's nomination of turncoat John Roberts to head the Court. It does look as though women's reproductive rights might be safe for the time being. PLEASE, Justice Ginsburg, stay healthy!
17
One factor at work hasn't been mentioned: the apparently ongoing beef between Chief Justice Roberts and Donald Trump.
Trump's partisan grousing about the political orientation of appellate court justices who have undercut some of his initiatives, most especially the Muslim travel ban, led him to grouse about "Democratic judges." Roberts objected, taking up the cause of an independent judiciary. That led to his vote in the defunding of Planned Parenthood case. And now his decision in the Louisiana abortion law case.
If this keeps up, it should be chalked up as yet one more forced error by Donald Trump and a roadblock, however minor, in a redoubled effort by the Republican minority to carry on with a program of what Newt Gingrich called "right-wing social engineering" in the face of a changing electorate.
6
I suspect that Roberts will continue to uphold Roe because the republicans know that if Roe is struck down, the public backlash against the republican party will be enormous. Besides, Roe on the books is an effective wedge issue that I'm sure republican politicians, most of whom I suspect don't care about it, love to have in order to win elections against the democrats. I almost want Roe overturned to wake up complacent democrats who stay home on election day.
Furthermore, democrats don't know how to frame the debate in emotional language that the right uses. Instead of the constant refrain of "reproductive rights", which is an intellectual and abstract argument that most people don't relate to, democrats should frame the debate as a women's health issue, bringing pictures of women dying at the hands of back alley abortionists and self-induced hangar abortions. Desperate women, those without the means to travel to states that will allow abortion after it is overturned, are the ones who will suffer the most, even those who live in red states. Appeal to the emotion and harm that will result, not to cerebral deliberations.
9
I have held out hope since his appointment by President George W. Bush that CJ Roberts would be the sort of jurist who would age well on the high court. He came to the bench as a bedrock conservative, but not in the partisan-charged manner of other members of the conservative majority. His past spoke to a history as a fair, principled person. He is neither a culture nor a partisan warrior. He is a good man, and has a deep commitment to preserving the independence of the Judicial branch and the laws that govern our nation.
He is a man for the times of Trump. He’s never going to be colored as dark red or sky blue. Stay tuned and watch him blossom.
5
From your mouth...
Thank you Chief Justice Roberts for doing the right thing as per law and not voting based on personal religious and political belief, as those 4 others did.
8
"Justice Kavanaugh published a dissent, taking a middle position that acknowledged the key precedent and said he would have preferred more information on the precise effect of the law"
If Justice Kavanaugh lacked information then he should have abstained and left the decision deadlocked at 4 - 4. That would have been the "middle position". Kavanaugh's vote clearly shows he doesn't care about the facts in this case, or settled law. He's already determined the outcome before the court takes up the case.
Roberts is the only hope going forward.
8
Maybe this is an indication we should have more faith in our government.
2
Surprised that Roberts did the right thing, not surprised that Kavanaugh votes for gestation slavery.
Everyone should remember the following facts relevant to abortion rights:
* Gestation and childbirth inherently create intense suffering and even mortality for women. The ability to terminate pregnancy gives women a way to avoid those harms.
* Being born to a woman that didn't want to birth the child creates extra suffering for the child.
* Human overpopulation is an anthropogenic mass extinction event. Every human born is one more nail in the biosphere's coffin. Abortion, contraceptives, and vasectomies should be an easily available part of our toolkit in limiting population growth.
* Body autonomy is the most basic human right. Trump screeches about "coercive socialist government" telling citizens what to do. How ironic that he wants the government to force women into gestation slavery.
12
Thank you, Justice Roberts.
Abortion will never go away. Wealthy women will always have access. and--of made illegal--poor desperate women will attempt to self-abort or go to underground operations that are not safe. Women will die in the process.
If people truly care about 'life', they'd care about the life of the woman and support access to birth control, comprehensive sex ed, holding men equally accountable for preventing unwanted pregnancies and access to early safe legal abortions.
15
Kavanaugh is trying to play cute and is being disingenuous. It is very likely that all of the doctors providing abortions in Louisiana have sought privileges at hospitals and have been turned down or will be turned down. No doctor is going to continue provide abortion services under the law without meeting all its requirements. Kavanaugh knows once the clinics are closed, they are unlikely to reopen.
8
Oh yeah, I would completely trust the State of Louisiana, which seeks to impose medically unnecessary costs and conditions upon women attempting to exercise their Constitutional right to abortion, to make changes "cautiously".
I guess the State's definition of "cautiously" is the instant wrapping of CAUTION - POLICE tape around all but one clinic in the state the day that a stay is lifted.
3
The fact that abortion is still a debate in this country makes me feel as if I am living in a third world back water theocratic country. Abortion should be readily available for many reasons, no reason more definitive than women's health, plain and simple. No man or woman for that matter should have the right to dictate what someone else can do with their bodies.
The benefits abortion far and vastly out weigh the repugnant notions of religious righteousness. Those screaming from the pews and around the steps of the Supreme Court should come to the realization that people yearn to be free and to make their own choices.
Yes, choices... the same choices that people on right claim that we all should have when it comes to bearing arms, school vouchers, etc but yet when it is abortion the religious righties want to have the government slap mandates and deny people free choice.
15
If you are opposed to abortion, don't have one. It's as simple as that. NO ONE, including the government or any religion, has the right to dictate a woman's medical decisions. Every woman has a right to privacy and autonomy over her own body. If these people who are so self-righteously demonstrating against that right would devote their energy to making sure birth control is available and affordable to all women, there would be less need for abortion in the first place. And as for the men who are making these decisions - no woman ever got pregnant by herself.
277
@Elise
By your argument anti-abortion proponents would then be unable to sleep at night for thinking about what you are doing with your body, in your bedroom, and with whom.
15
@Elise
I strongly support a woman's right to have an abortion, for many of the reasons you mention. But I also strongly disagree with your first sentence as the "simple" answer. It's too much like saying, "If you are opposed to bank robbery, don't commit one" as an exoneration of those who do.
Many, probably most, of the people who oppose abortion do so because they believe that it is equivalent to taking a human life. That I may disagree with them is not reason for me to view their feelings and arguments as any less sincere and entitled to respect than my own.
That does not mean that one side or the other is necessarily entitled to prevail. All of us are subject to the law, particularly to the Constitution. Constitutional meanings evolve over time, as the Framers intended they would. That means that people favoring the old status quo--in whatever area--are disappointed when it changes. That does not make the change illegitimate.
I hope the Court does not overrule Roe v. Wade. Precedent is important. But it is not adamantine. If it were, "separate but equal" (Plessy v. Ferguson) would still be the law of the land, and segregationists would rejoice. Brown v. Board of Education could never have happened.
15
@Elise: Well and simply put, Elise. Thank you.
16
Reproductive choice, a woman’s right and need to be able to make choices about her body and health should be a basic human right.
To those who claim rights for “unborn babies ” — before birth, it’s a collection of cells part of a woman’s body; an embryo, then a fetus - a baby only after it is born. Having had three children and one abortion I know the difference. I also know women don’t take the decision to end a pregnancy easily.
It’s a very difficult decision undertaken for many, many reasons that is no one else’s business. Certainly not Donald Trump with his multiple affairs, certainly not the Catholic Church whose clergy have a disgusting record of sexual misdeeds (including rape and abortions), certainly not evangelical ministers who have had issues of their own.
Live your own lives morally. Don’t have abortions if you think it’s wrong. Stay out of other people’s lives.
If you’re Christian, emulate Jesus Christ. He never said anything about abortion, but LOTS about how to treat the poor and children. He wouldn’t be protesting Planned Parenthood (who help poor women with vital health issues) ; he would at the Southern border helping those poor people and protesting separating families and putting children in cages.
311
@Maxie, "before birth" you write its only a collection of cells.
How about the day before birth?
the morning of the day of birth?
A week before birth?
a month before birth?
At some point it has rights a living being, as a human, as a baby.
4
@Maxie
Ironically, your post highlights the issue, namely that abortion on demand requires women to make independent determinations as to whether human rights extend to the fetuses they are carrying, and when. This is purely a philosophical concept that has little scientific basis. While anti-abortion groups believe that this starts at conception, even fervently pro-choice women are divided on when this occurs--there is a sliding time scale.
A social consensus that balances all the views would seem to be logical, but both sides of the issue have taken dogmatic stances--conception versus each individual woman is automatically qualified to be the ultimate arbiter in every individual case, regardless of her general level of knowledge, etc.
2
If opponents to abortion do want to apply the scriptures to the issue - which they believe is fully the inspired Word of God - then they need to read their own book.
Genesis 2:7 - life does not begin until one breathes (God breathes life into one’s nostrils)
Exodus 21:22-25 - while physical injury to a pregnant woman is dealt with as “eye for an eye” retribution, the miscarriage of her fetus is dealt with and categorized as a property loss, not as a murder
And most explicitly in Numbers 5:11-22 - where a husband who believes his wife’s unfaithfulness led to a pregnancy is allowed to go to the Temple and force her to drink a concoction that cause a miscarriage- that is terminates the pregnancy as an Abortion.
Numbers comes after Exodus so this was NOT viewed as a violation of the Commandment given to Moses of Thou Shall not Kill.
So not only does the Bible not explicitly call out abortion as wrong or sinful, it actually ENDORSES abortion under certain circumstances.
34
At least Chief Justice Roberts is the only conservative sitting upon the Supreme Court who is so far acting in a manner that reflects precedence in the law and the majority of the country’s will in Roe v Wade. What is saddening is that this ruling should have been unanimous. The law is clear, and the justices should follow the constitution, the will of the people, and precedence and not any personal beliefs.
Partisan politics have eroded our democracy when all branches of our government are loyal to a party and not the will of the people. The division of power in our government between the branches is gone when party beliefs stand above there intended purpose. All members of congress should hold the president accountable and act as a check and balances as intended. No party has the right to oppose investigations, attempt to push laws or finance anything just because a president of their party wants it.
When it comes to our judicial system, political affiliations have no business in their decisions. Their only job should be to uphold the laws which we as a majority demand and never to rule on their personal opinion.
Whether you are against abortion or in favor of it, the law is clear and reflects the beliefs of the majority of the people of our country and should be respected. I personally do not agree with abortion except under certain circumstances, but my personal beliefs are mine and I should never, under any circumstances, attempt to force them upon another individual.
129
@David Parchert
and the justices should follow the constitution, the will of the people, and precedence
You can NEVER expect hypocritical regressives or hypocritical "conservatives" to follow either the constitution, precedents, or the will of the people.
6
@David Parchert, yes. It’s unfortunate that the headline says Justice Roberts “sides with liberals” when what he did was side with the lefitimacy of the law - unlike those hustices who chose to vote their politics rather than the law.
8
In our society today you are correct. Although that is the job SCOTUS justices are tasked with whether they comply to it or not. Our problem in this country is believing that what we feel or believe is the only thing that counts and even our courts act in that same manner as well. Political beliefs have no business in justice. The judges in our country should be elected officials and federal justices should not be appointed by the president, because in doing so, the justices are biased by default. Our country needs a big change and we must demand it before it is too late.
2
I cannot comprehend the mentality that virulently opposes abortion and in the same breath opposes women’s health, access to birth control, families in need with food and adequate shelter, decent healthcare and adequate wages.
They call themselves ‘Christians’. That is not the Christianity I was raised to believe in. Thank you Justice Roberts.
496
@Roger Dodger
Add to the list that these are the same people who would fight against sex education in the schools, advocating only for teaching of abstinence. While it’s fine to advocate for abstinence, anybody who possesses a body capable of reproduction should have the appropriate training in its operation. One wouldn’t hand the car keys to an adolescent without some sort of instruction beyond “don’t hit anything “.
23
I couldn’t comprehend it either, until one of them said to me, regarding full abortion rights and privacy: “Well then she could get away with it!”
“With what?”
“Sex!”
Ah.
21
@Roger Dodger
Add to that, love war.
4
Desperate women cannot stand idly by while the right to control their own bodies is whittled away by corrupt dishonorable men. Those of us who support this inalienable right must prepare by funding and organizing a new Underground Railway to transport the poor, those facing untold hardship and physical danger, victimized by rape, incest, birth defect and physical condition and provide care of last resort. A living human trumps a collection of cells, and a fetus obtains constitutional personhood and protection when it is issued a birth certificate - and THAT is issued when the fetus gathers oxygen through its lungs. Regardless of the law of the land, abortion will continue as long as there is rape, failed contraception and birth defect. Never again the back alley butcher days of the 50's. We will manufacture, import and distribute Mifepristone and perform safe, antiseptic surgeries, and create a network of safe spaces so women . Doctors, midwives, medical professionals and their allies will do what it takes to serve the many to whom forced reproduction is a slow death sentence. If one woman anywhere is forced into chattel breeding, none of us are free and can call ourselves a democracy. Remembering the thousands who have died alone, bleeding and dying alone, the Handmaid's Tale will remain a fiction, regardless of any law.
271
@Steve Fortuna: good news - planning for an "underground railway" has been underway for some time.
21
A “collection of cells”? Really?
3
@Ann Yes REALLY take a biology class. First one cell divides to two then four. It is exponential. Then cells differentiate.
37
Hospitals have specific criteria for obtaining admitting privileges. Providing abortions alone does not meet admitting privilege criteria. States know this, individuals know this, courts know this.
For a country, that under this administration, tries to decrease Medicaid, food stamps, healthcare insurance as the Affordable Care Act, and undermines CHIPS provisions and Planned Parenthood, it is wondrous how abortion issues are of such importance.
It’s not health concerns, it’s religious and political concerns, isn’t it that keep interfering with all women’s rights? No one forces women to seek abortions. This should not be the decision of the government.
310
@MIMA - Anti-choice voters are highly likely to vote on that single issue. And they will do so even if the other issues you mentioned -- decreased Medicaid, food stamps, ACA -- hurt them personally. Republicans know this and it's a win for them most of the time to keep abortions in the conversation.
8
Making Drs. having an admitting privileges is like all the other efforts to harass people trying to get an abortion. Does the GOP want to return to the days when abortion was illegal? Roberts seems to want to step in to keep the issue from going into free fall and abortion be left to the states with no interest, in women's control of their body, and ultimately none for the children born in their states. These states have high levels of poverty, the worst health care, the worst education, and a terrible imbalance of minority incarceration.
354
@c harris. The GOP would be happy to see young girls and desperate women bleeding out in emergency rooms again. Emergency room nurses? Not so much.Trump would score cheap applause from the sick people at his rallies as he brags about how many women he will jail. This same party will still continue to use child nutrition and health insurance programs and aid as human shields to get more tax cuts for the rich or some stupid wall. This same party will still claim it needs to cut programs that help poor women and children because the deficit only matters to them when this country tries to help the 99%. This is the GOP plan if it can be said to have a plan. Smart decent people fled that shrinking party a while ago. The GOP only cares about it's evangelical white supremacist base. So yes, they do want to go to the back alley days.
59
@c harris
“Does the GOP want to return to the days when abortion was illegal?”
Of course they do!
44
I.e., the Confederacy and its admirers
14
I hope people understand what a treasure John Roberts is. The one justice who can be counted on to evaluate legal arguments rationally without a partisan lens. Although people will rant and rave that they don't agree with him, they can't credibly claim he has ever acted according to an ideological bias.
Perhaps he could be persuaded to step down from the Supreme Court and run for president.
8
@Joe Schmoe I'm not so sure. The cases he has taken a moderate position on would be damaging to the Republican Party politically if he followed the party line. He would be aware that entirely eliminating the ACA would have made the Republicans responsible for a chaotic and unsustainable health care financing system, leading to political losses only suggested by the prominence of the pre-existing condition issue in the last election. If Roe v Wade is overturned, that would energize pro-choice voters who would first be angered, and then highly motivated to participate in politics at the state level, where the issue would remain. Maybe Roberts is calling it as he sees it, but I see a political benefit to the Republican Party for his "liberal" votes, even if superficially they seem non-partisan and contrary to Republican goals.
2
@Joe Schmoe
He has consistently voted conservative. The only reason he is moving to the center is that he is afraid that his court will be labeled partisan and it will stain his legacy.
4
@Joe Schmoe Yes, but one of nine is a rather poor percentage.
I read this other troubling decision further down in the article (denying the presence of the condemned man's Imam at the execution. ) Imagine if a condemned person were denied the presence of a priest at the execution!
I don't know the circumstances around the denial to have the person's Imam present. Maybe he lived too far away. They could have at least contacted a local Imam. I can only speculate.
Maybe this didn't violate a specific law, but this behavior at the prison seems additionally punative and reprehensible. I'm speaking as a former hospital chaplain who was called to be with patients and families hundreds of times at the time of death.
17
Cavanaugh tries to look smart by saying let the Doctors have to face penalties and scramble to receive privileges at hospitals that may philosophically disagree with them on abortion. No inconvenience for Doctor or women seeking legal abortion. It should have played out he says. Let's see if it would have placed a burden on the Doctors to get privileges, totally ignoring the burden it could place on women. He knows it would be easy for one Doctor. Really. And let's just see on others. This guy is a biased illegitimate hack of a Justice. A manchurian plant, brainwashed and protected from a young age to make just this illogical, baseless opinion. The US religious extremists have their man.
12
The NY Times picture shows pro-life protesters. I wonder those who supports pro-life also supports anti-guns which guns can be used to kill people. Don't be double standard on the same "life" issue.
8
@Usok: For that matter, capital punishment.
1
You wanna kill your future son? Do it.
You will not do it? Don’t.
I think that the abortion gives huge possibility of better life to the one who decide to kill the future life, and a bigger respect of the woman’s body.
My opinion is that every one on the earth should decide to do that or to don’t do that.
2
"The three clinics left in Louisiana can stay open while we ask the Supreme Court to hear our case."
Three clinics for a state of 4.684 million people?
.
17
@The Buddy Kentucky has one, for a state of 4.4 million people.
2
So four of the the pope's five justices spoke.
But one looked back over his black- robed shoulder and saw history and the judgement of history approaching in the distance.
13
Doubling down on my prayers for Justice RBG's health and happiness (btw, if you haven't seen On-the-Basis-of-Sex it's a must). And now that Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are confirmed religious right toadies, kudos to Justice Roberts. His Obamacare ruling was stunning and now this. Carry on, Sir.
21
I hope an enterprising NYT journalist has phoned Susan Collins to ask what she thinks about Kavanaugh's vote? I'd be interested to know given her (clearly naive) acceptance of his assurances that he considers Roe v. Wade to be settled law.
31
Trump said that aborted babies are created in the image of God. But so are the 95 Americans killed by bullets every day because he does nothing to protect them. To say nothing of the millions of innocent people killed by the American military. And once these non-aborted babies are born they will have to struggle to survive in a country with a scandalously high infant mortality due to a lack of socialized medicine.
18
@Robert Dole: Trump and God do not belong in the same sentence. And I'm not even religious.
2
Stop using the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative”. Red State/Blue State, Right/Left etc. It is language such as this that has insidiously caused America’s disunion and is utter nonsense. How about just reporting the news. “John Roberts sided with 4 other justices to block…”.
Not so hard.
10
I guess to little surprise we now know for certain where the two new boys on SCOTUS from Georgetown Prep feel about the rights of women. Back to the 1950s...or is it the 1850s?
16
Chief Justice Roberts did a good thing. I don't mind people give up it own right to chose, but I don mind government tells me that I don't have choice on my own body, personal, and healthcare issues.
9
So it appears Kavanaugh lied during his confirmation hearing when he said he believes in precedent.
A job seeker who lied during the interview process. A judge that lied under oath to Congress.
What consequences are written into law for that?
50
The country is in difficult straits if we have to rely on Roberts to be the swing vote between right wing oppressive government and liberty.
30
I find it ironic and hypocritical every time I see political ads in Louisiana with candidates promoting "pro-life and pro-guns" in the same sentence.
37
I am relieved for the women of Louisiana that the court made the right decision in this one case, but disturbed that a man is still deciding in the age of Me Too, what women can or can not do with our own bodies. This is absolutely unacceptable and downright unjust. The states deciding to ban abortions are absolutely uncaring towards the women in these situations. They do not care about saving children. We know this because they are putting them in cages, separating them from their mothers which is it’s own special death sentence, and allowing insane white men to kill them in schools. Shame on these pro-lifers, especially the women, who continue to side with the patriarchy. We will not be free until we make women’s rights human rights in every state of this country, and eventually the world.
24
The Supreme Court really needs to take into account its own legitimacy in circumstances like this; an appointment was highjacked from President Obama by Senate Republicans, and two appointments have been made by a president who does not belong in office and should never have had the power to make decisions of this magnitude on behalf of the nation. Everything this court does is suspect and defies the will of the majority. If the justices proceed to overturn a constitutional right under these circumstances, it will lose any claim to reflect the conscience and sense of justice of the nation as a whole, and will seem only to act on the will of the Church to which the majority belong.
11
Justice Ginsburg was incapacitated during the deliberations on this case. Yet, she voted. So it begs the question, by what process was her vote cast?
2
@Rollo Tomasi
Easy. On the briefs. Which matter much more than oral argument.
2
Simple: she voted...so what about how? You want her to register and show her ID to make sure she's legal so you can surpress her vote due to cancer?
2
@Rollo Tomasi Please provide your proof that RBG didn't deliberate.
2
Still waiting for this "conservative" Supreme Court to topple Roe v. Wade as promised by the nation's far-left alarmists.
2
@Ed L. Much like far-right alarmists (and the President) say that Democrats wants open borders and 75% tax. Seems like hyperbole is a common habit!
1
How do these judges fell about IVF? What do they think is happening after several fertilized eggs are implanted in the womb and now there are 5,6,7,8 viable eggs growing. How do they feel about the decision to have only two or three babies be born? What happened to the other 2,3,4 viable eggs? I believe they are removed. Is that not "abortion" of those eggs??
5
Justice Roberts shows flashes at times of living up to his pledge during his confirmation hearings to, "call balls and strikes" fairly, not adhere blindly to ideology. Or else, he has evolved during his tenure into something less than an ideologue, in much the way justices like Byron White, Lewis Powell, and Robert Jackson evolved in surprising ways. It will be interesting to see if Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch also evolve, in which ways and at what rate.
6
You'd think it wouldn't be necessaire to do it the hard way, but when we Democrats take over the Senate and White House, it will be time to put in a constitutional amendment for women's right to abortion, just as was done to allow them the vote.
7
There is no pro- abortion movement.
There is a pro- female sexual procreative health civil secular choice movement.
And there is a misogynist patriarchal theocratic no choice counter movement.
33
@Blackmamba
Abortions are unhealthy and can be dangerous even in the safest of circumstances.
One can weigh those risks against those of an at-risk pregnancy to determine on net what is the healthier outcome.
To state that abortion is a universal benefit to woman's physical health is inaccurate and dangerous.
You can state that women demand the choice to have an abortion for the utility of it, and that would be accurate.
1
@Joe Schmoe, well, what is of greater benefit to a society, ( A society in which over population is perhaps the most urgent problems )? The birth of a wanted child, that was planned for and hoped for, or an unwanted child, an un planned for and in many cases burden on the family or perhaps just the Mother? Wanted children thrive and are loved, unwanted children are neglected from the beginning of life. If you could choose how to enter this life, which way would you choose?
4
@Joe Schmoe
Abortions aren't "unhealthy." They're medical procedures. That's as ridiculous as saying that a tonsillectomy is "unhealthy."
4
In 2019 why is our legal system and our politics held hostage to this issue? It is not an unimportant issue, but it is hardly the most important issue of our time.
Not trying to be a troll, but there are few reasons to have an abortion for birth control at this point.
6
@David Gregory
Mansplaining. It isn't your body or your choice. You have no idea why a certain woman choses to terminate a pregnancy. It is not a choice that is generally taken easily. Could I do it? No. But I have no right to interfere when it is not my body. Neither do you. I was a student nurse in the 60s and watched the horror of illegal abortions. For anyone to want to return to that is a sin. Women died and left husbands and children without their wives and mothers. The obvious solution is to defund Planned Parenthood so contraception is unavailable. That should work to lower abortion rates. NOT. The war on women must stop!
152
Mansplaining to women about how important the control of their bodies is NOT?
Vote for women. That is the new Straight Ticket ballot paradigm to combat a culture of patriarchy that is the #1 terror reigning down on this nation and other countries.
To wit: a woman in the US is assaulted by a man every nine seconds. Not nine minutes- nine seconds. The leading cause of death of pregnant women in America? Their husbands and boyfriends.
Rebecca Solnit, historian and activist. Author of “Men Explain Things to Me”.
10
You're not a woman,are you? If you were you would probably know from experience that there is still, in 2019, no safe, reliable method of birth control. The pill has some nasty side effects and doesn't work if you take aspirin or an antibiotic. IUDs can cause miserable cramping. Condoms break. And on and on it goes. So, no. Every form of birth control has its own problems and until there is a safe, reliable method of birth control, unfortunately, there will be a need for abortions.
12
I live in Louisiana. The abortion options available here do not provide anesthesia. The laws in place for abortions already restrict access - unnecessary wait times and ultrasounds. All of this is copied legislation from other states and passed by the religious right with BOTH Democrat & GOP consent. It is barbaric. At age 37 I needed a medically-necessary abortion because the fetus developed abnormally and would not be born alive. Obstetricians will not necessarily perform this procedure! They refer you to a clinic!! As I was by a “maternal-health specialist.” The irony. Women should not have third world healthcare because they are women. USA stats on child poverty, maternal-baby health and food security will never be equal with other industrialized nations until we stop religious beliefs from hijacking the most basic of freedoms: agency and autonomy over our own health / future.
80
Thank God. A co-equal branch of government providing some wisdom during these years of National folly.
5
Everyone is anti-abortion. No group holds that descriptor exclusively. These groups are "anti-choice". Language is very powerful and they know it. Notice it is a man kneeling sentimentally? I wonder how many women he's gotten pregnant unknowingly...
16
@RCJCHC
Absolutely false. I'm pro-abortion. I believe that the right of a woman to decide if she will be pregnant or stay pregnant should be guaranteed.
I don't believe human fetuses are sacred.
I also know the fact that whatever (if any) suffering a fetus might feel during abortion, it's nothing to the suffering felt during the birth process by the woman and the fetus, and during the rest of the life of that now-born human.
Especially in cases of rape, incest, extreme poverty or other disadvantageous conditions, abortion is the most compassionate thing possible.
I support abortion, contraceptives, vasectomies...for the sake of women, children, society and the biosphere.
9
@Steve Davies So you have a bumper sticker on your car that reads "Everyone woman should abort her fetus." Just because you think life is suffering and the birth process (which I doubt you've experienced) is suffering, doesn't mean it is bad. Equating all suffering with bad is oversimplification. I would say you're anti-life, not pro-abortion.
1
Nonsense. I am pro-abortion and have no problem saying so.
3
Re: Kavanaugh: "The right solution, he wrote, would have been to deny the stay and let the challengers return to court if the doctors could not obtain privileges."
No. The right solution is to stay the law until it is determined that the doctors could or could not obtain privileges. Right to an abortion is established, so while there is doubt that this new law does not unduly burden that right, it cannot be allowed to go into effect and possibly harm any woman's exercise of her right. Especially with the already established precedent.
It would be as if a new gun control law added a limit to the Second Amendment. Conservatives would be storming the capitol if courts found that their Second Amendment rights could be even slightly abrogated until someone figured out whether that was happening or not. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, and probably the other two hard conservatives on the Court, would strike down that law in a Trumpian minute (~30-40 seconds).
Seems to me that's logical, common sense, and sound legal thinking. But, if you're politically predisposed against abortion, you consciously or subconsciously don't recognize your hypocrisy.
So, we've gotten our first look at the type of legalistic mumbo jumbo we're in for from Kavanaugh as a SCJ. Not that you haven't seen it before, if you were paying attention. (I 'm going to check to see if that teenager he was trying to keep from getting an abortion through procedural delay ever did get one. That was a dirty trick, no lie.)
6
Judge Kavanaugh's 'right solution' is backwards. Rather than waiting to see if any harm is done by allowing the law to take effect, the right solution would be to wait and see if the doctors involved can get admitting privileges before allowing the law to take effect, thereby preventing what may be irreparable harm in the first place.
4
Good for Roberts...religious beliefs need to stay out of government.
16
McConnell thinks that his "greatest" legacy is having influenced the Judicial branch of govt. to shift right. Well, don't count your chickens before they are hatched.
3
We will never know how many womens' lives Roberts has saved now that desperate women in Louisiana are protected by access to safe and legal abortion. Womens' lives matter too.
17
I am really sick and tired of Conservatives always trying to legislate from the bench. If you don't want an abortion, don't have one. But stop trying to take away individual and states rights by expanding big government further into our lives. The United States was founded on individuality and freedom!
16
Chief Justice Roberts has finally come across as a thinking man, not just a knee jerk reactionist. No where in the Constitution does it call for a woman to give up her right to make choices for her own body. Pro or Anti should not even be a question. My body, my call.
Thank you Justice Roberts for at least halting this case until October.
13
@Jean Chief Justice Roberts has always been a thinking man. Remember, that he was the deciding vote several years ago in the SCOTUS decision that held that ObamaCare was a tax, and thereby upholding ObamaCare. Roberts is by far the best justice of the 9 -- he leaves personal politics out of it. The liberal justices (Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, Ginsburg) are hopelessly to the left and the core conservatives (Alito, Thomas, Gosuch, Kav) are hopelessly to the right.
@Aleister - You seem to have missed Citizens United.
@Jean
He has always come across as a thinking man, not just a knee jerk reactionary.
The time is coming when Roe v Wade will be just quaint American legal history. Kavanaugh was put on the court to do the job but so far he hasn't gotten the majority he needs--but he will sooner or later. All those who insisted that Roe was settled law and wouldn't be overturned, your time to be shocked, shocked, I tell you is at hand. When this happens, the evangelical Republicans and the rest of the GOP will have won an egregious victory that will set this country back decades into a dangerous past for women. Once Roe is overturned, the radical Christian right will not be happy until abortion, miscarriage, and birth control are criminalized. Women of child-bearing age need to be thinking about what their strategy for their own reproductive life will be as this era approaches. Women will have to take care of themselves--the Republican Party, the evangelicals, and the pro-birth movement have already shown that the life of the mother is not what is important.
27
@Meg
JUST SAY NO? If women stopped having sex unless they wanted a pregnancy, these men might change their tunes really fast. It takes two to tango but only one has to face the consequences. Not realistic but an interesting concept none the less.
The problem with this and every other abortion law is that no one knows when the fetus is a human being. Some laws actually allow for aborting a fetus as late as seven months. I was born at seven months, and I know healthy children born as early as 26 weeks. We need to place this in the hands of the medical community and demand an answer to when the new child is actually a child. We have laws in place that allow a woman to abort a child that directly contradict other laws that can charge someone with murder if that same child is killed during a crime. These contradictions should never exist in law.
2
@Ratwrangler
I appreciate the complexity you bring to your view.
I think the key to this is what you say about the medical community. I have never heard anything to suggest that late-term abortion is used as a form of lackadaisical birth control—it's a medical decision made because of serious and even extreme complications.
Over the years, I've come to believe that "a woman's right to choose" was the wrong way to frame this issue. A woman does not have some special gendered right; the right in question is the autonomy of the body that is the difference between enslavement and full human rights. The government does not have the right to enslave me by forcing me to bear children, just as it would not have the right to enslave a man and force him to procreate. I marvel that the pro-lifers aren't campaigning to end vasectomies, for instance.
The horrors of late-term abortion are used to muddy the emotions, but in fact many medical procedures and surgeries are grotesque, fear-inducing, or the stuff of horror if you look at them unblinkingly. Women will vary in the decisions they make, just as some people continue with therapies when there's next to no hope and others decide to terminate treatment. You should not confuse your own gratitude for existence and your fetal viability with the traumatic options surrounding a late-term abortion when a child was very much wanted. The "choice" is medical, and it does not feel like a choice at all to women who go through it.
2
Let’s look at this issue in a legal and moral context. No one can force a person to save another person’s life. Period. You cannot be forced to donate blood or a kidney or a stem cell. It does not matter how simple the procedure would be or how harmless it is for the donor.
Yet women are forced to “save the life” of a fetus, even when it may cost them their own lives. Even when the fetus is not viable. Even when the pregnancy is due to rape or incest.
As a legal matter, abortion restrictions present an unconstitutional, illegal requirement, which causes great harm to women. It robs women of a fundamental right - that of the ability to resist a forced tissue and blood donation, without due process.
It is no coincidence that many men are avid supporter of limitations on abortion. It costs them nothing and gives them a faux “moral” sheen. They would not be so eager to support laws which forced them to donate organs, blood and tissue, no matter how worthy the recipient.
6
The admitting privilege requirement is nothing more than a disingenuous cudgel for abortion foes. The vast majority of women with post delivery or post abortion complications end up being seen and admitted through an emergency department. Even if their primary care physician has admitting privileges, the call to the clinic would be the same: “Go to the emergency room” the majority of the time.
8
Federal government protection of abortion rights is going to be overturned during the trump presidency.
Still saying there’s no difference between Trump and Clinton?
5
The Supreme court faces a significant constitutional crisis. Justice Roberts recognizes it and he is attempting to thread a needle.
The crisis stems from a variety of factors:
1. Selection of the recent Supreme Court Judges--the Kavanaugh hearings, the Kavanaugh admission of bias, the nuclear option to pass both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the dismissal of the Kavanaugh complaints for lack of jurisdiction..
2. Justice Department Bias--It is clear that the Justice Department and State AG's are selectively choosing their judges to move cases to the court. Furthermore, Sessions would selectively choose which laws to defend and create novel interpretations of law violating years of precedent and overruling the DOJ's experts.
3. Swing Votes--The massive increase in 5-4 voting for major issues is demonstrating to the world that Justice is merely the whim of nine people. The supreme court to be more needs to make major decisions with the authority of unanimity or close to it.
His vote to stay the Louisiana law was strategic. It merely postpones the crisis.
It is still unclear whether or not he wants to prevent the crisis or further his concept of a conservative agenda.
1
@Erik H.: There has been a religious test for nomination to this court since the Roe v. Wade ruling. Abortion politics has aborted liberty.
4
How is it possible that not one of the 4 dissenting members and apparently Justice Roberts as well, since he wanted more information on how the law allowing only one open space in an entire state, understands "undue burden" when there are so many choices to choose from, time, pay, distance, travel expenses, emotional devastation, medical bills, worsening healthconditions, etc.?
Why is there such a gap between a law and access to the law?
2
The term, "Liberal", seems misapplied when describing the vast majority that acknowledge a woman's right to choose.
5
If the current Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade they will have to contend with the fury of women who insist on having sovereignty over their own bodies. I think the "conservative" justices have no idea how deeply angry most women will be if denied this right for themselves, their daughters and their sisters. We won't go back. Abortion should be safe and rare, and the decision made by the woman, her partner, and her doctor. The GOP has politicized this right to self-determination in a cyncial and dishonest way that will continue to erode their support among women and fair-minded men.
13
Clinton’s “safe & rare” quote was a sop to anti abortion people. It was politically necessary for her to say that. It should not be safe & rare. It should be safe & no one else’s business, like any other medical procedure. Religious nonsense should have no bearing on other people’s decisions. This is a secular country.
Rare implies a judgment that abortion is bad when it is no such thing. Women do not need anyone else’s judgment about personal medical decisions.
Having said that, it is rare in countries with sensible birth control policies, such as Norway, and common in countries without, such as Brazil.
1
The majority of comments on reproductive rights articles fall within two categories:
Women have a right to control their own bodies/healthcare. -OR-
How can Republicans, who oppose gun control, social/educational programs that benefit children, access to birth control/clean water/health care, be for limiting family planning?
It's exhausting. I am firmly in support of reproductive rights and every measure to make healthcare accessible socio-economically-geographically. -BUT- I also have no problem understanding how individuals are committed to limiting terminations, nor is it hard to understand how they square that with other political viewpoints.
The incredulous dems who constantly clutch their pearls over how anyone could be so hypocritical, miss so much about human experience. It is not some neat and tidy exercise. Very simply, the fact that life is full of unspeakable suffering, illness, pain... death, does not provide a contradiction to wanting to protect the option of life (right to life). Yes, when the babies are born they will face poverty, unregulated guns etc. in the US- in other countries they will face famine, widespread disease- pervasive violence. It turns out that even if Republicans passed all the social support and gun control measures- babies would still face these horrors! Yet here we are.
They have answers, you just don't like them.
1
@Maria thank you for your intelligent response. I am also tired of reading comments consisting of nothing but regurgitated cliches on both sides. Suffering has nothing to do with abortion. If we were concerned with eliminating suffering, then having children would be a crime because every human being is doomed to pain and death. But the issue, of course, is not pain but personhood. Fetuses are not persons because they have no neurological capacity for self-awareness. Women are. If we declare that potential persons have human rights, we necessarily diminish the rights of actual people. Contraception could become a crime because it kills those potential children who could have been born had I not taken the pill. There are many on the fringes of the anti-abortion movement who feel this way, and once this view percolates into the mainstream, not only contraception but also biological research, IVF, and other medical techniques will be affected.
1
Justices nominated by the Republican presidents in the last 30 years -- except for Roberts and Kennedy, have been more and more ideologically inflexible and close minded. Roberts' latest move may be his signal that he intends to preserve the Supreme Court as an institution that protects the most important American value -- open mindedness.
5
Why are they requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges. Is every other doctor at an outpatient clinic required to get admitting privileges? Such as clinics that provide Botox, Lasix surgery, etc?
This requirement to have admitting privileges seems like an absurd state run monopoly meant to allow hospitals to exert unnecessary control over doctors in that state.
If a woman had complications due to a self-induced abortion she would be allowed in through the emergency room. Is Louisiana saying that they would not allow a woman with complications from an abortion at a clinic to go to a hospital?
This is an absurd situation based on some absurd requirements by the state of Louisiana.
15
I wish you'd stop calling the moderate judges liberal. They are moderate but the other judges are so far to the right that they make those moderate judges look liberal by comparison.
5
Although Chief Justice Roberts was appointed by GWB, he has turned out to be one of the best appointments ever to the Court.
1
It is a grievous misfortune that judges, among the better educated and better off among us, refuse to use their advantages to use common sense and the law, and instead use prejudice and hauteur to decide cases.
4
I am so glad to live in a country where these discussions are way down in the priority list of both liberal and conservative governments and where the majority of the population supports the right of women to decide about their pregnancies.
7
What we are seeing here is the slow creep of regressive Republican policy. These so-called "admitting privileges" requirements for doctors to perform abortions are no different than restrictive voter ID laws that purport to safeguard against voter fraud. Both impose solutions to problems that don't exist.
There's little comfort in seeing John Roberts become the centrist on SCOTUS. Kavanaugh is using the same tap dancing talent he used during his confirmation hearing to justify what, in the end, was a predictable vote to support abortion suppression; Gorsuch, at least, does not equivocate in his ultra-conservative bona fides. Thomas and Alito have always been a known quantity.
The dishonesty in these thinly veiled efforts to impose religious values on abortion access and race-based limitations on voting rights is a marker of the Republican approach; dishonesty has become the hallmark of the Trump administration and the Republican Party.
8
In the Texas case, which is virtually identical to this one, Robers voted to deny the stay sought by women. In the Louisiana case, he has done a 180. What Roberts Is doing is not technical and legalistic. Pure and simple, he is making rulings that change those of the past. He is deliberately turning his back on fellow conservatives and aligning himself with the liberals. He is not doing this regularly, but he is doing it in the Court’s most important cases. What Roberts is doing is extraordinary. And, because he doesn’t tell us, we don’t know why he is taking this course. Many think he is protecting the Court’s perceived legitimacy. I like to think that he was offended by McConnell and that he’s giving us some of what Garland would have given.
5
Senator Susan Collins assured her constituents that Brett Kavanaugh promised her not to undo Roe v Wade. It is now clear that either she was played or she played the voters. Time to vote her out of office, people of the great state of Maine. 2019 should be her last year in the Senate.
17
It’s interesting that Chief Justice Roberts seems to have changed his thinking since he voted with the minority in the Texas case. As has been noted previously, he has replaced Justice Kennedy as the swing vote on the court. Let’s hope that he has moderated his position on other issues as well. Pray for RBG every night and vote Democrat in 2020!
2
Part of Senator Susan Collins defense and reason for voting for Judge Kavanaugh was rooted in her belief, after speaking with him, that he would protect women reproductive rights based on precedent.
"To my knowledge, Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article III of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent “is not just a judicial policy … it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent.” In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration; it is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances."
Senator Collins lacks the basic judgement to be on the Judiciary committee. Women's rights have been developed slowly over time and they can be crushed in a second. Senator Collins should be ashamed of herself for selling out years of hard work on a con job.
12
Even Supreme Court justices are allowed to change and grow as human beings. More flexibility and empathy determining how their thought processes develop. There’s still hope for republicans .
Republican presidents, compared to Democrat presidents, don't have a good track record for nominating good justices on the Supreme Court. Tell me when has any of the liberal justices have ever voted for anything considered conservative? I can't think of any. They're pretty consistent. Then you look at the other side.
Regarding Roe v. Wade, Harry Andrew Blackmun, who, according to Wikipedia, "ultimately became one of the most liberal justices on the Court," being "best known as the author of the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade," was nominated by Richard M. Nixon. And now Roberts, nominated by George W. Bush, bolstered the unconstitutional foundation of Roe v. Wade.
Why are Republicans so bad at this?
1
How is it that a liberal justice appointed by a Democrat president NEVER drifts to the center?
They remain firmly entrenched in their left-wing ideology, even after decades on the bench. Never wavering.
1
Some politicians - yes, federal judges are politicians - realize the momentousness of serving the republic and in so doing, rise to the dignity of their office.
And some wallow in the muck of corruption, lies, immorality and tyranny.
We know Trump and the so-called "Freedom" Caucus represent the latter. Here's hoping Roberts represents the former and that others will join him.
There are so, so many children suffering in this country and all over the world; many are homeless, in shelters or abandoned, many are sickly, handicapped or disabled, many are abused both mentally and physician, many are gun down by gun violence, the list goes on. Where are the hypocritical right to lifers when it comes to these children?
A woman’s body is sacred and no one or any law can change that. A woman has the right to make her own decisions pertaining to her body. If a woman decides to have an abortion, it’s between her and her maker and not the ‘right to lifers’.
2
So this article is more about the politics of the Supreme Court, than actually explaining what the law was really concerning. As I was reading, I was so hungry for Mr. Liptak to actually explain
1. Why would the state mandate doctors to have admitting privileges to nearby hospitals? How is this in the best interest of women having abortions by said Dr.? (purpose of the law)
2. Why might it be difficult for these doctors to gain admitting privileges?(understanding how/why the privilege is granted or denied)
I can only assume, that if a Christian/Catholic hospital is nearby, then the abortion Dr. would absolutely NOT be granted privilege... but I don't live in LA, nor do I have any knowledge of admitting privileges... I understand what was implied, but key information, which could have been provided in 1 or 2 sentences, was denied me, the reader. I am all for a woman's right to an abortion, but I would rather cheer, "yay!" knowing the key facts, not simply cheering with the tide. (and yes I am grateful for and have read the supplemental material provided as links within the article)
@CharTenClark
Don't assume. Doing pregnancy terminations at one facility does not block your admitting privileges at a hospital .Being able to clean up a complication is on the surgeon. Catholic hospitals never turn away abortion complications although that might disturb your world view.
1
The abortion issue would be a lot easier to handle if the churches weren't involved. In fact, most of the world's problems could be settled if it were not for religion. If we are to survive as a species, there must be a paradigm shift in human thought worldwide.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a linguistic "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
"We, as Americans, must understand there will always be divisiveness around abortion - we must respect each others opinions. "
Pro-choicers are not trying to force pro-lifers to have abortions. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, want to impose their beliefs on pro-lifers. That's one-way respect. Moreover, pro-lifers, being generally Republican, claim to be philosophically opposed to the state interfering in individuals' private lives. That's hypocrisy.
5
This is not a liberal issue, this is the LAW, right now. And the newest judge said he'd UPHOLD the law.
3
I knew that the faith I found during the confirmation hearings in this mans genius was not misplaced.
In Louisiana, as in almost all states, so called out patient surgery centers are subject to state regulation. Endoscopy centers are classified as surgery centers, that is, a colonoscopy is considered a surgical procedure. The state regulations require physicians performing procedures at surgery centers to have admitting privileges at a near by hospital. This is for safety reasons. The logic of this decision is that an abortion is not a surgical procedure, like a colonoscopy, or that there is a special political exemption for the regulation of abortions. Interesting question.
1
Both political parties, in Congress, have made this a wedge issue since 1973. Instead of doing their job legislating laws, they let the courts rule and decide.
In this case, Justice Roberts acted correctly, as Roe v. Wade is a previous Supreme Court decision, which allowed abortion. My personal views, on abortion, notwithstanding, do not come into play here.
I will say, thanks to the GOP, and Democrats, not doing their job, they set into motion division in this country, that eventually put Trump into office. Mainly, because, both parties figured out that divide and conquer allows a party to gain power.
The GOP took the position of "pro life". Fine, but once that bay is born it can be denied health care, it can live in poverty, it can end up with life long student debt, it may live on Social Security income below minimum wage, it could end up in substandard housing, it could end up being killed in wars, it could be shot just because they went to school, store or a movie and it could die because it cannot afford a decent diet.
As for Democrats, they claim they will do all for that baby, that the GOP can't. But, their solution is to just not have the baby; problem solved.
Apparently, for 46 years voters have accepted the GOP as the humane party and Democrats as the inhumane party. Completely opposite, of what they stand for, but this is the state of American politics; lies work. They work so well, you have one as president.
17
@Nick Metrowsky: You say "As for Democrats, they claim they will do all for that baby, that the GOP can't. But, their solution is to just not have the baby; problem solved."
Democrats passed health care legislation that benefit families. They fight anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation introduced/passed by Republicans. They pass legislation to include contraception in women's health care which are opposed by the GOP and their allies in the courts. Dems stand firm with Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Saying that the parties are the same or similar on this issue is a false equivalency.
7
@Sara G.
You mean they passed health care legislation to keep the private health care industrial complex in business. Again, neither party cares about the people, just power and 1%. Just look at the hypocrisy of the State of the Union Address. Democrats even cheered the idiot they helped put there.
2
@Nick Metrowsky: while that may be true - it wasn't perfect - it still provided health care to people who could previously not afford it. That's a very big deal yet heartless, cruel Republicans eviscerated it. That is a huge difference.
1
As a public service to provide fuller information about the current state of the abortion debate in this country, the Times should should collect and disseminate information about prominent politicians who publicly oppose abortions, but who have had them, paid for them or helped other people to obtain them.
A good place to start might be with President Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/02/donald-trump-marueen-dowd-interview-abortion-past-partners
14
... the Times should collect ....
1
This article's on-line headline is misleading: "Supreme Court Blocks Louisiana Abortion Law."
This action is a temporary stay, not a Supreme Court ruling.
4
@Ro Ma The headline is completely accurate. "The application for a stay ...is granted, and the mandate of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit ... is stayed pending the timely
filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari." The Order blocks enforcement of the Louisiana law.
1
Please note that Virginia Governor Northam, now embattled due to blackface/hood photos, only a few days ago defended late-term abortion, and was in turn defended by none other than the NYT's opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg. For those who missed it, here is what Governor Northam (also an M.D.) had to say about late term (and mid-birth) abortion:
“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” the governor went on. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
In other words, the baby would be born and then the mother and doctors could decide whether or not to let it live.
Wow. In most civilized countries that would be considered infanticide.
2
@Ro Ma
You and the media, including democrats, omitted the most significant part of the interview: this is ONLY in the case of severe fetal abnormality or when the fetus will not be viable:
From http://www.nbc29.com/story/39887303/governor-northam-defends-comments-on-late-term-abortions
From: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690468965/failed-virginia-bill-sparks-national-debate-about-abortion
"And he said third-trimester abortions are complicated and often occur when it would be impossible for a baby to survive outside a woman's body."
On Wednesday during a radio interview, Northam defended efforts to loosen abortion restrictions. Northam described a hypothetical situation where a severely deformed newborn infant could be left to die. Northam said that if a woman were to desire an abortion as she is going into labor, the baby would be “resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired.” Northam said third trimester abortions are rare and only performed in cases of severe abnormalities.
16
@Ro Ma
You are leaving out the background information here: they are are referring to a terminally damaged baby as a result of birth defects. In what way is it uncivilized?Northam refers to "resuscitation" def: the action or process of reviving someone from unconsciousness or apparent death. This doesn't sound like infanticide to me.
18
@Ro Ma
You are either lying or spreading lies.
First - you omit the beginning and context of the Governor’s quote.
He was talking about the birth of a baby that was in extreme distress and who was going to live. As a doctor, he’s saying, in THOSE situations, the baby is made comfortable and in as little pain as possible. The parents and doctors discuss the viability of the child and the parents decide whether extreme measures would be undertaken. It sounds very sad, very human and exactly correct. If you have a medical directive you have done the same for yourself.
A viable child is not ‘executed’. You and and everyone who is spreading these falsehoods for political gain are disgusting.
37
So Senator Collins, what do you think of Cavanaugh’s promise to uphold “established law” now?
18
“Settled law”, Susan Collins? Maine will remember in 2020.
27
John Roberts won't be the swing vote once Trump replaces RBG...
6
@Richard trump won't be appointing anyone once he's impeached.
1
Not when he’s been impeached for all the corruption
1
@Richard RBG will outlive Trump
2
The evil committed by John Roberts in institutionalizing plutocracy in America through Citizens United can not be forgiven or forgotten. He single handedly destroyed American democracy and gave us Trump. May God never rest his soul.
7
So corporations like the NY Times, Planned Parenthood or the Sierra Club should not have any First Amendment righrs?
1
Clarence Thomas’ wife just petitioned the President to overturn Roe v. Wade. Is it any wonder which way he was going to be voting? Tainted court.
14
No single clause in the Constition flies higher over the heads of the fools on the Supreme Court than “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. It should slam the door on laws that invade people’s bodies.
12
In Psalm 139 of the Bible, it says God knit us together in our mothers womb. No right given to a woman by man, allows her to dismember the new life that God has created in her without consequences.
The Justices will also one day stand in judgment for the decisions they make, as will the mass murderers who perform abortions.
@Daniel: This is a faith-based belief that cannot be respected by law.
6
@Daniel we the people of the US are not ruled by your ancient text.
6
@Daniel
You interpret that biblical quote as prohibiting abortion but it really isn’t clear, not nearly as clear and straightforward as Leviticus 11 which very CLEARLY and SPECIFICALLY lays out what is and isn’t allowed to be eaten. Hope you don’t eat any meat from a pig or shellfish or swordfish, etc., etc., They are ALL specifically forbidden.
Hope you don’t wear clothing of missed fabric - a clear no, no according to the Bible.
Hope you follow Leviticus in this as well “You shall not cut the hair on the sides of your heads, neither shall you clip off the edge of your beard”.
You might have problems at that final judgement too.
Finally, don’t quote the Bible in a country that is founded on the separation of ‘Church and State’. If you want to live in a theocracy, go live in Saudi Arabia. They are big on using their religious texts to control women’s lives. You’ll feel right a home.
4
Let me see . . . Brett, Clarence, Samuel, Neil, Jerry . . . are the judges who don't see draconian restrictions on abortion rights as a problem.
Not for you, boys, not for you.
8
Please, Justice Ginsburg, stay healthy.
15
The great legal mind of Brett K claims he needs more information?
Dear God,
Please let Ruth Bader Ginsburg live two more years.
13
The first thing that must be said is that choosing an abortion is a terrible, really bad choice to have to decide. The second thing I have to say is that it should -be- a choice, a choice between the woman, the man if he is involved, and the woman's medical professionals. Ultimately the choice -must- be the woman's. There are lots of choices in life that are 'bad choices'... but we still make those decisions available to people. The recent spate of anti-abortion laws are continually trying to make it a sham 'choice' - reducing availability, increasing costs, adding onerous peripheral "requirements" that have no medical importance. I wonder how the NRA would react if states and Congress enacted similar laws against gun sales? "Sure, you can buy a gun. But there's only one store in the state, it only has one authorized sales clerk, and he only works 4 days a week for 6 hours. Oh, and you have to watch anti-gun-violence videos, and wait 48 hours to place your order." The Court has established a Constitutional 'right to privacy' that encompasses abortion, so it is no less "a Constitutional right" than the 2nd Amendment 'right to own tools of mayhem and death'. Surely anyone "pro-life" would also be against the cause of 30,000+ deaths a year in this country? Surely!
102
@Jim Brokaw So what happens when the woman says she wants an abortion and the father of the fetus, not her husband, says he doesn't want her to abort it. Technically, the child-to-be belongs to both of them. Why should her choice be more important than his? Or to the contrary, why should he have any decision in the matter at all, since it is not a child yet?
@Ratwrangler
If you give a man veto power over a woman’s choice to have an abortion in cases where he is willing to pay for and care for the child, then you'd have to give him the right to demand an abortion if he doesn't as well because it's still "belongs to both of them". That wouldn't fly.
The baby is part of the mother - an inseparable part of her body. That makes her choice "more important" than his. Don't forget, women have to undergo the procedure as well which can be emotionally and physically scarring. Until men can have babies and have to deal with carrying, birthing, or aborting a child then we don't get to have an equal share in the choice.
10
@Bill I disagree. As long as abortion is a legal issue, the man should have equal rights. I do not believe he should have the right to demand an abortion, but if they are not married, he should not automatically have the responsibility for the child should it be born. That puts the choice back on her, and eliminates the gold-digger potential. In any case, he should legally have a say as to whether or not the child is born, assuming he is willing to accept total responsibility for it if the mother does not want it.
It is gratifying to see Chief Justice Roberts do the right thing. Appointed as a conservative justice, he consistently displays a fairness of judgement, understanding of the constitution, and a genuine respect for the court and his place in its history. We need protection in the current political climate from the worst impulses of self interested politicians. John Roberts is the last person I would have thought would be our sword and shield, but I’m happy to have him as the right man in the right place, at the right time.
22
Justice Cavanaugh, what happened to your position that Roe v. Wade is settled law and why is your position in this case at odds with Roe?
54
It is important to note that while this stops the law from going into practice, it does not strike it down. That might be a bridge too far for Mr. Roberts to cross when it comes time to hand down that ruling.
15
The Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Texas law was logical, consistent, and thoughtful. It respected prior case law. It is a model of how we must make laws that are consistent, fair, and logical towards securing the individual rights of all. We must respect that many have opinions about abortion. However, abortion is one of those areas wherein individual rights must be respected as it pertains to a woman's body regardless of what others may think. Just as we allow individual rights relative to gun although guns kill 40,000 persons a year, we should focus on individual rights as it pertains to abortion, mo matter our personal or religious preferences.
I am hope Chief Justice Roberts has and will continue to acknowledge we need consistency of laws that uphold the constitution and the individual rights it guarantees.
The court made the right, consistent, logical decision this time. Let's hope that if or when the matter comes back before the Supreme Court, that we have more logical, consistent, fair justices focused on guaranteeing individual rights granted by the Constitution rather than illogical, inconsistent, culture warriors who are seem to think individual gun rights is constitutionally protected while they think individual rights of women should be left to their personal or religious whims or interpretations.
42
@Truth Today: Here in the US, what the law is usually depends on where one is. The Supreme Court is the only judicial authority in the US that establishes law for all of it.
3
It is really pro life groups who have made a difference in reducing abortion and persuading women that abortion is the taking of innocent human. They just have to work a little bit harder. Abortion clinics have closed and in their place have been pregnancy centers which provide care and the wellbeing for mother and child. All services are provided except abortion.
I remember a few years ago that I attended a rally where a woman spoke and said it did not matter who was in political office. It was the pro life folks who would be responsible for seeing fewer abortions taking place and instead women keeping their babies. And this is what they have been accomplishing. They have made a difference but their work is not done. They must keep repeating that life has meaning and all life is precious. It cannot be said enough and they will continue this important mission.
5
@WPLMMT Free and easy access to birth control for ALL women, regardless of income, will drastically reduce the need for abortions.
7
@WPLMMT I wish pro life folks would continue their work in making abortion rare by promoting sex education, availability of no cost contraception, making sure programs that support prenatal care are available, fighting for funding for programs to support infants and mothers, for childcare, for family leave, and more. I also think they should take a long hard look at the fact that electing one party on this single issue is not accomplishing their goal.
7
All life is precious, so let's get rid of guns, weapons trade, stop the war in Yemen, treat children at the border with respect, guarantee universal access to health care, reduce maternal mortality of minority groups, preserve the planet. Women can make the right decision regarding abortion without restrictive laws.
6
Louisiana has a higher birth rate and lower income than most states. Imagine all the money spent on salaries and expenses for the anti abortion organizations, lobbying and lawsuits. Maybe money would be better spent working for better funded schools, easier access to birth control, pregnancy avoidance education, better and more accessible medical care, and better jobs and wages. A real pro-life stance, not just a pro birth one.
With all the pressing issues on immigration, infrastructure and education for instance, advancing the quality of life for those already alive would seem to me to be a better use of time and money. So much focus on a Supreme nominations abortion stance makes so much more left unsaid.
40
While we can discuss the merits/demerits of abortion and Justice Roberts vote on this case, I would like to remind everyone that Senator Susan Collins of Maine went through this whole charade about Judge Kavanaugh "respecting precendence of Roe" and similar. She knew all along and the media played along with her on this faux centrist position. Its no surprise that she received "dark money" from Kavanaugh backers from out-of-state - the very issue she bemoaned, when it was grass-roots support against her. Time to vote her out.
73
@newton This x infinity.
4
This decision illustrates in bold relief the Conservative Republican attitudes toward abortion. It is a perfect issue for them. It costs them nothing to espouse measures to restrict availability and garners them votes at zero cost.
There is only one problem. They are required to show their complete disregard for the health and well-being of the mother. Roberts is simply illustrating the widely held views of Americans with a conscience: Abortion should be legal, safe, available and rare.
22
@Brian Barrett Rape isn't rare. Poverty isn't rare. Birth defects aren't rare. Miscarriages aren't rare. Illnesses aren't rare. Drug use isn't rare. ALL of these things contribute to the need for abortions. Yet you claim that abortion should be rare. Shame on you.
3
In the end, this issue gets down to something basic: no one should be able to force their religious or philosophical beliefs on someone else. Individuals who favor the right for women to choose whether or not to have an abortion would never force someone against abortion to undergo the procedure. Nevertheless, individuals who oppose the right for women to choose to decide to undergo an abortion insist on eliminating the freedom of others to decide for themselves. This issue is too personal to be political. It is the single issue that had exposed the hypocrisy of the religious right wing who, in spite of their religious beliefs continue to support inarguably the most amoral individual ever elected. Focus on the single issue of abortion has blinded too many on other serious issues that are diminishing the quality of life in the US and all over the world.
37
I agree with you totally, except for your use of the word "amoral."
Immoral better describes our current president.
Let us remember, this is not a victory!
This is merely a face saving measure for Roberts who wants to bring as little attention and disdain for an already tarnished Supreme Court.
The true damage will be in years from now when the court can truly flex their deeply conservative jurisprudence.
The only path to victory is securing the democratic presidency and senate in 2020 so RBG may peacefully retire and then hold power until Clarence Thomas retires.
The courts must become a true blue issue.
10
The goal you’re describing as victory is suppression. This type of suppression is exactly the reason for the mess we are in today. Justice Roberts is a conservative but he’s modeling the way in which conservative views don’t need to be in continual alignment with the formal partisan dogma of the right wing that only contributes to further polarization. Frankly, as a liberal, I increasingly find the left can and must learn from such examples.
@James
A few moderate Justices would fill the bill and represent the majority of Americans better. Having 4/5 splits on votes do not give me confidence that the Constitution is being upheld as much as that the beliefs of the jurists are their primary measuring stick.
Overturning Roe V Wade? We do that, and REPUBLICANS lose all leverage over the average person. Wont happen, until after 'the next election', whether tat is 2020, 2024, on an on. On a personal note, the best way to decrease abortions is life long, local, affordable, shame free, women's health care.
20
Outstanding points.
I do not understand why people have not taken to the streets yet against the destructive GOP reign of destruction. Perhaps Roberts realized overturning Roe might be the last straw because it hits IN the home and women have had enough. It could break the country. Kavanaugh is too much a Jesuit preppy, privileged bubble boy to see the outcome. Actually, we know Kavanaugh doesn't understand when women say "enough".
16
It's interesting that Chief Justice Roberts has become the "swing" vote in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).
It's horrible that newly appointed Judge Kavanaugh lied to Congress when he said he would respect stare decisis (SCOTUS precedent).
Federal judges can be, and have been, impeached. Kavanaugh may be eligible for impeachment for lying to Congress about respecting stare decisis. I hope Roberts had him write the dissenting opinion so America can see how needlessly ideological Kavanaugh truly is and why he was and is unqualified for sitting on SCOTUS.
America watched Kavanaugh's Congressional hearing and assumed would not be appointed after he yelled at sitting Senators. Sadly it seems seating ideological judges is the end game for today's GOP.
14
Let’s make this crystal clear: Requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges is NOT medically necessary by any stretch and it’s not meant to protect women.
This is nothing more than a roadblock to impede a woman’s ability to access safe abortion and allowing politicians to abuse their position by pushing their personal beliefs onto others through laws/legislation.
In my years as an ob/gyn, I have seen a handful of women with complications due to legal abortion, none of which would need a visit to the hospital. Only three of those were serious. This is compared to the hundreds of women I’ve seen with very serious complications from either self abortion, or a botched back ally abortion performed by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.
This line of thinking that restricting abortion rights and closing clinics will prevent abortions is ridiculous at best. The only thing this will achieve is opening the floodgates and establish a black market ripe with people waiting to pounce on desperate women they can take advantage of. This puts a women’s life and well being in serious jeopardy.
You can’t say you want admitting privileges because you want a women to be safe...while simultaneously taking safe abortion away.
These people aren’t pro life. They are pro pregnancy and view a woman as nothing more than a container for a fetus
A woman is more than capable of knowing what is in their best interest...NOT me, NOT you, and certainly NOT the government.
38
@Jade Dean
As a nurse, I too saw the results of illegal abortions. It was a true horror. It robbed families of their wives and mothers. For some women, it robbed them of the possibility of a future wanted pregnancy. It caused terrible damage to the woman. To go back to that is a crime. As you said, "A woman is more than capable of knowing what is in their best interest...NOT me, NOT you, and certainly NOT the government."
2
Once again a Republican appointed judged shows the ability of independent thought and was willing to switch sides for the sake of the constitution. I can think of many such cases involving gay rights, Obama-care and Texas vs Fisher. Name several cases where a liberal judged switched sides. Heck...name one.
It's clear, Republican appointed judges are strict constitutionalists, not extreme partisan idealists like the Democrats.
3
The pro abortion folks are ecstatic about this Louisiana bill but this is not the last of the pro life/pro abortion debate. Those in the pro life corner will not give up the most important human rights issue of our time. And that is the defense of the unborn. We will continue speaking out that abortion is immoral and that we have already lost 60 million lives to this devastation. We cannot repeat this number enough. The lives in the womb must be protected and respected.
1
@WPLMMT: It’s a good thing that the Earth doesn’t have to sustain 69 million more Americans and their offspring, given the large ecological footprint of Americans and the fact we have already way too many people world wide. I assume you are against rational sex education in high school and easy to obtain contraception for everybody who wants it as well. And I don’t hear you about the lives of the owners of the womb, so pregnant women are no more than wombs to you I suppose.
5
@WPLMMT - Please note that pro-choice people are not “pro abortion.” That is an insidious use of false semantics to try to gain the moral high ground for those of you who are anti-choice.
5
@WPLMMT How about the lives that are really alive
here and now. If you protect the fetuses in the womb, why not continue the protection throughout their lives?
And, you still haven't answered my question: How many unwanted babies have you adopted?
2
Let it be known that this has been supported by and attempted to become law in Louisiana because of a democratic governor who continues to capitalise on women’s bodies, pay, and health for his own political agenda. He will not sign a law that will help women have equal pay, but he says he supports women. John Bel Edwards expanded Medicare in the state, but refuses to understand, in a state that has some of the highest poverty rates and maternal mortality rates ( particularly amongst African Americans) that access to affordable, non judgemental women’s health clinics is good for families and the economy. He and the other Republicans in this state believe women are not smart enough to have agency of their own bodies. Their actions are subversively racist, outwardly hostile towards women, and patronising to the poor. A NYC transplanted, I have lived in New Orleans for over 12 years. Planned Parenthood was the only actual women’s health clinic that would help me with a major cancer related women’s health issues. Once I tried getting a refill on my birth control prescription at a Parish clinic and after my check up, that dr forgetting which patient I was, said thankfully I was not the irresponsible patient trying to get her birth control filled. Yes that’s a true story, and not the only one I have trying to have command of my body as a woman in southern strategy forward state. It is on the micro level this state continues to fail women.
5
No more conservative Catholic men on the Supreme Court, please! They are imposing their religious beliefs upon us and do not seem to have any concept of the separation between church and state. I don't care how religious you are in your private life. That is your business, not mine. But your religion becomes my business when you start dictating that your religious views take precedence over my right to medical privacy.
29
Allison,
There is no religious test when it comes to choosing a Supreme Court justice. Or at least there should not be. Of course, Senator Diane Feinstein questioned Amy Coney Barrett's Catholic faith as a possible liability to her serving on the Supreme Court. Would she have questioned people of other faiths in this fashion?
Are you aware that Justice Sotomayor is a Catholic. I guess you approve of her because she agrees with your progressive views. Justice Roberts is also Catholic but you like him now because he approved this abortion bill. Did you know that Justice William Brennan who voted for roe v, Wade was a Catholic. I guess you would probably like him too because he voted the way you like. If these conservative Catholics had voted in a way in which you had approved, you would have given them glowing reviews.
Don't worry. These conservative Supreme Court justices will have another opportunity to vote on a pro life/abortion bill and the outcome will be different. It will be the pro life folks who will be celebrating a win. We have lots of time and truth is on our side.
1
Fortunately, Roberts takes his job on the Court seriously, but we cannot afford another conservative Justice who will put politics above what is best for the US and the law.
Everyone told Senator Collins that Kavanaugh would undermine Court precedent and work to deny women the right to an abortion. Now, we have been proven correct. Shame on her. I look forward to supporting her opponent.
20
@BMD: Yet another lie that Kavanaugh told the Senate. Add "professional liar" to Kavanaugh's list of embarrassing and immature behaviors.
5
Me too!
2
Imagine America if we as nation we felt the same about voting, education, healthcare, environment, equality
4
Too bad benevolence won...
We need this to be over-turned... we need more Trump-conservative madness...
Between his aides hiding memos... and banks and local businesses helping out furloughed federal workers... and the supreme court piddlefooting around an issue you know they want to send packing...
We're being protected daily from the full madness that is the current republican-Trump agenda and as a result, too many are thinking this is OK... it looks bad, but it will be OK... it looks bad, but institutions are handling the bad...
No, it won't be OK. Nothing's OK.
None of the current political topics of discussion should even be discussed... that's how far we've fallen. But people aren't going to really feel that when everyone is dampening the effects... at least they won't feel it until it's too late.
2
I don’t know his reasoning, but women thank you, Justice Roberts.
8
If a decent candidate runs against Senator Collins (of Maine), I have my checkbook ready. It won't be a grand sum - two or three hundred dollars - but with others like me, it will be more than enough. Beto O'Rourke raised $38 million dollars for his Senate run with help from many people like me. A good candidate in Maine running against Collins can do the same, I'm sure.
9
Roberts is doing his Chief Justice-y thing with apolitical aplomb.
4
Is it possible that John Roberts had a "Road to Damascus" like Owen J Roberts in 1936 and realized his radicalism was on the wrong side of history, our laws, and our Constitution, and would irrevocably damage the legitimacy of the Supreme Court if he continued to vote Republican instead of Constitution?
Time will tell
As expected the two stolen seats, Neil Gorsuch and "Boof" Kavanaugh voted radical.
5
Without attempting to parse judicial prerogatives that my thinking skills have never measured up to, I’ll just continue to support a comment that so eloquently, at least to me, described the majestic thinking of republicans and their support for life.... “ life begins at conception... and ends at birth.”
3
It's clear that the far right has plans to erode women's rights. It prefers to see women as cattle, chattle, etc.
Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are illegitimate and should be impeached along with Thomas.
At least Roberts is showing some leadership.
9
So maybe Roberts is signaling here how he may yet save the republic from tyranny. “trump” is surely not happy.
6
The impregnating males should be sterilized or castrated if they refuse to support the mother and the child they helped create, whether they intended to or not. It is associated with the concept of contributory negligence.
2
I've said this before in these pages, and I'll say it again. Through the long lens of the Supreme Court, in this era Kennedy and Roberts are the only two justices who actually belong/ed on the Court. The others on both sides consistently reveal themselves as mere partisans... or at best advocates.
3
I understand that this is a bit of a tangent, but the process of getting admitting privileges at a hospital is a long, arduous and byzantine process, and one that is regulated by the individual choices of often privately owned and religiously affiliated hospitals. These privilege requests often requite reams of document requests that can take over 100 hours of a physician's time. And at the end of that, many hospitals have moved to a "hospitalist-based" model, where either A) outside physicians may have treatment privileges but not admitting privileges, or B) no privileges of any kind are granted.
So even if, as Justice Kavanaugh argues, all 4 Louisiana doctors could get admitting privileges at a hospital, there is no guarantee that the hospitals can't arbitrarily decide at any point to withdraw it. This leaves access to a safe and legal medical procedure tenuous at best, and is certainly an undue burden.
9
I read the article twice - the legal language is very difficult for me to comprehend. The precedents and arguments offered above are complex legal questions regarding constitutional law. It goes even deeper trying to determine if regulations are pertinent, or a barrier.
At the end of the day, I'm glad for the outcome. Abortion is still a lightening rod in America and a large number of Americans still are opposed to abortion.
I have a good friend, who's vehemently opposed because of his religious conviction - I respect his beliefs even though I believe in a woman's right to choose.
We, as Americans, must understand there will always be divisiveness around abortion - we must respect each others opinions.
I believe most Americans believe in abortion - and while some states will always make it more difficult for a woman to have the procedure, the Supreme Court will never be able to restrict the procedure.
6
Only 37% of Americans believe abortion should not be legal in all or most cases while
58% believe it should. America continues to be hounded by a tyrannical minority. If Justice Roberts is now crossing the line, the minority has certainly crossed the line.
http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
You can respect your friend’s opinion but does he respect yours? Religious fundamentalists have proven over and over again they have no respect for the majority of Americans or they’d have quit this singe-minded, myopic, repetitive, and now over the line to fully crazed obsession with restricting my right to exercise the single best, I repeat, The Single Best decision of my life to obtain an abortion at 18.
Why is it that states with the worst economies and biggest social issues are also the most obsessed with abortion? It has nothing to do with respect for women’s values guiding their own lives and all about willing to take whole states hostage by wasting an exorbitant amount of time, money, and legislative energy on chaining women to medieval theology while the more pressing needs of their citizens languish.
Respect goes both ways. No one is forced into an abortion if they are against it. Their opinion is respected and allowed to stand for them personality. Similarly, no one has the right to block my access to abortion. You can have opinions but if it includes legislating away my opinion, respect for yours is not only unwarranted but totally denied.
4
There's something poignant and telling when a man of dignity like John Roberts stands in the way of a stampede towards the extremes. It provides institutional and societal benefit when thoughtful people make concessions to fellow citizens (and standing law) even though they may disagree.
17
Don't put undue weight on what Roberts did.
He only maintained the space for a decision either way. "No stay" would have changed facts on the ground in ways that prevent a real option. It is what is called "irreparable harm" in the law of stays, TRO's, and preliminary injunctions.
It does not at all mean that Roberts accepts the argument, only that he wants his Court to have the power on this issue to decide it next year.
4
I am surprised to find America has such an archaic attitude to abortion and the rights of humans.
Your reports on this matter appear to show a fundamentalist christian movement, akin to the monotheistic dogmatism of the Taliban, dominating in extremis women and childbirth.
Kavanaughs pontification further muddies the water of how your hard right christians are denying the evidence of science and social attitudes.
I am surprised you have not revoked the Darwinian theory of evolution in favour of creationism across the confederate states.
Is this the twelfth century or today?
I feel similar disbelief with our Irish attitudes on the subject although there are now changes as education improves.
24
@Richard Bradley, You don't understand our fundamental Right to decide on whether or not we kill children? Why am I not surprised.
2
Abortion has nothing to do with science. Science cannot tell you when a fetus becomes a human being. Do you think a fetus is a baby when it's two days away from being born? if yes why? if not would you permit it to be killed at this point? These issues are far more complex than your self-righteous rant portrays them.
1
I also can’t believe that most Europeans could be so ‘scientifically illiterate’ that they support abortion on demand at any stage of the gestation, to include the final trimester. Isn’t it state sanctioned ‘infanticide’?
All of Europe rightfully opposes the death penalty. Why is it then okay for you people to kill a human being in utero, even when medically viable? What an oxymoron.
2
“Chief Justice Roberts has voted to sustain other laws restricting abortion. And his vote to grant a stay on Thursday, in other words, does not mean he will vote to strike down the Louisiana law when the case returns to the court.”
This paragraph is opinion, not factual reporting, and has no place in this article. I know the Times is in a lather over the possibility that there may be restrictions on abortion, but in articles like this, please remember Joe Friday, and give us “just the facts.”
2
@ERT Please take no offense ERT, but isn't the first sentence was proved with evidence in the article? And the second sentence does not give an opinion. It just mentions a possibility.
2
What a shame. Protecting murder.
3
@Todd If you had your way women would not be able to have an abortion under any circumstance. The majority of women who seek an abortion don't do it because they are cold and heartless. And very few women get late term abortions. No doctor would perform one on a healthy baby just because the mother requested it. I hope you're never in a situation where you have to choose between the life of your partner or your baby.
2
@Todd Keep it in your pocket.
3
@Todd
What law governs the male body?
When there is a fertilized egg, naked to the human eye, inside of a woman’s body, does she lose the right to her body?
I terminated a pregnancy at 7 weeks. It was like having a heavy period. There was nothing in the blood that came out of my body that resembled a baby. Just a lot of blood.
I should not be forced to grow a baby inside of me just because a sperm met my egg. I would never force you to grow a baby either.
3
Susan Collins now understands what Kavanaugh meant by “settled law”. Similar to his view that “no” actually means “yes” .
13
John Roberts the chief Justice...statesmen...or political animal.
it's a choose your own adventure with this guy.
what motivates him?
1
@pditty
I think Roberts actually respects the Constitution and rule of law. He respects precedent unlike Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas.
2
The headline should read “Supreme Court Blocks Abortion Law as Robert Joins the 21st Century”
4
Congrats to Chief Justice Roberts for at least temporarily stopping this extreme anti Roe measure.
The left does it on the other end with Cuomo passing an over kill pro abortion kill bill(pun intended) pretty much coming close to legalizing infanticide against the spirit of Roe.
This is the problem in this country, the extremes get the squeaky wheel oiled while the moderates on both side either don't or get suckered in to one extreme or another.
Lincoln faced the same, albeit more dire dilemma with radical republicans vs. southern slaver owners.
Unfortunately no Lincoln has yet emerged yet for 2020. You have identity obsessed, social engineering, east coast type liberals mainly on the left and lackey republicans who hold on to Trump because they think he could still win in 2020 and/or afraid for their jobs.
6
Sorry, the facts are otherwise. All NY State did was adopt the governing standard of Roe v. Wade. There, abortion after the fetus is viable (could survive outside the womb) may occur at any time if the life or health of the mother is at risk. This is the federal law we have been living under for nearly 50 years. The suggestion that this is new is just anti-women hysteria.
2
@Paul one needs to read more into what Lincoln planned on doing once slavery was abolished. He did not hold the belief that all men were equal, especially those of a different color. We have him on a pedestal he does not deserve. As for women, during that time they were still merely chattel.
@Incorporeal Being-Thank you for your reply. You did not disappoint me ie using bait and switch ax grind tactics in your last sentence. I did not mention anything re anti women, I say left, maybe better I should have said extreme left.
Also, NY State is generally known for having one of the most liberal abortion laws if not the most liberal law. "Overkilling" it not only brings up the issue of infanticide but also gives extreme right wingers ammo.
You better believe Trumpites and other republicans will use it successfully to put a nail in any of Cuomo's presidential bids.
And again, the extremes on both sides are damaging this country. If you go on right wing web sites, the language they use is almost identical to the extreme left with a few words changed.
1
Can we please, please make birth-control free and more accessible to all.
45
Question:
Does john "5-4" roberts wait until the other koch-owned conservative justices render their decisions before handing down his own?
What a weak little man john "5-4" roberts is.
2
@Victorious Yankee
Good question. As to your final point, the only thing worse than a weak, waffling conservative than a strong, unyielding conservative.
1
@RickyDick
...*is* a strong, unyielding conservative.
The First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." What the conservative right is trying to do first through the states then through SCOTUS is to force a set of religious beliefs on this country by way of changing established laws. This is not freedom of religion, it is the direct opposite and in my opinion prohibited by the Constitution. The First Amendment is not just about religious freedom it’s also about freedom from religious persecution. Which means that the government cannot side with any particular religious beliefs above all others. The Constitution is not the bible, but a set of beliefs that our country was founded on.
41
@VMG, No dog in this fight, but how is it different? Do we not punish murderers and thieves?
1
In a highly divided Supreme Court, the critical role of providing balance and sanity by, Chief Justice John Roberts is really praiseworthy and crucial to restore faith in the highest judiciary, of late losing its sheen and nonpartisan image due to Trump's constant efforts to politicise it.
18
Looking forward to Susan Collins being questioned about Brett Kavanaghs vote.
48
Looking forward to Susan Collins being unseated because of her vote on “I Like Beer’ Kavanaugh, in which she betrayed all women.
8
2019 and the U.S.A. cannot agree on a woman’s right to terminate unwanted, even unsafe abortion. Shameful.
23
Senator Susan Collins, a self-proclaimed pro- choice advocate, told us that Brett Kavanaugh reassured her about Roe v. Wade. Sure he did, Senator, just like he assured us that Dr. Ford was not his sexual assault victim.
Sen. Collins wasn’t duped - she needed an excuse to vote for Kavanaugh and he gave her one. Both conspired together to dupe the public.
Thankfully, Chief Justice Roberts has affirmed the rule of law AND that he holds no truck with the immoral likes of Brett Kavanaugh being on his SCOTUS.
39
@Robert
Exactly, The Whole Woman's Health decision-- to which Kavanaugh pays lip service-- was based on science-- the science of what is and is not helpful to protecting women's health; it was not based on how many providers would or would not be left were the law to be enforced. Moreover letting the law be enforced first and then seeing whether, until when, and to what extent the number of providers would be to risk women's constitutionally protected right in the interim. Kavanaugh is an ideologically transparent political hack--nominated by a fraudulent president.
6
The rights of the women have been upheld and babies rights been denied. I guess they must not like babies very much. Very sad.
5
They’re not babies. As such, they don’t have rights.
8
Nonsense. The Constitutional right of women to be full citizens, able to chart the course of their lives without undue government interference — secured by Roe for nearly fifty years — grounded this ruling.
3
@WPLMMT
whether a non-sentient very early embryo is a "baby" is a matter of religious opinion which should not be enforced against everyone who does not share that religion
keep in mind that not even Augustine or Aquinas thought that a very early embryo is a humanly ensouled being; the current Church doctrine goes back to 1869
3
Slap-in-the-face to read the names of the four men who denied the stay. Thomas and Kavanaugh, official predators-on-the-bench, are now in charge of dictating women's rights, when in fact no man should have a say in the matter whatsoever. What lofty, entitled fools they are, to think that they have any right to do so.
35
@Xing
Yet you have no problem with Roe v. Wade, decided by 9 men.
Misogyny was slowed down for the moment.
However in the long run misogyny in all its insidious manifestations, must be eliminated from the face of our planet.
17
@Eli, Oh please . . .
@Ryan
Ok not everyone hates misogyny but it will be eliminated from the face of our planet anyway, in all its insidious manifestations.
That includes forbidding women to decide whether to have an abortion or not based on her own religious beliefs.
2
@Eli, I betting they/it won't.
Such a joke, the football of abortion rights. How is it that we pretend to not know how laws like this affect women? Common sense will tell you this would impact poor women the most.
32
@Mary Corder
I'd say it would impact the unborn the most.
2
@Byron Kelly Well, I guess we can disagree. The unborn are oblivious. I'm sorry that this probably doesn't suit your view of the world, but what a woman does in terms of deciding to stay pregnant is really no one's business. We have plenty of laws regulating it already.
2
@Mary Corder The actual harm may be mostly to poor women but all women would be affected. The implicit assumptionin anti-abortionist point of view is that’s women are just vessels and that our identities, plans, desires and dreams are not as important as our biological capacity to give birth. I remember how angry I was when a teacher in my son’s kindergarten addressed me as “mother of...” I told her it was demeaning and disrespectful and afterwards she took care to address me by my name. I am not my uterus. As for the impact on the unborn: the same as contraception has on the un-conceived which is none. You cannot affect what does not exist.
1
Under the law, a stay is granted to a party if it is likely to prevail on the merits. Roberts’ vote means that he believes that the Louisiana clinics will win if and when the merits of this case are decided. Moreover, Kavanaugh explicitly stated that the Court’s Texas decision is binding precedent.
The odds are strong that Roe v Wade will be upheld 6-3, with Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the liberals. Things appear to be defying expectations, portending very good news for pro-choice advocates.
5
@michjas
if you are right about Kavanaugh then he didn't lie to Susan Collins; but his dissent here suggests that he is looking for any way he can to weaken Roe v Wade even further
There is zero chance that Kavanaugh would vote to uphold. Denying women their rights is a major motivating driver in his life, and his religion.
2
@Iain/ak. Kavanaugh has also cast a vote protecting Planned Parenthood against defunding. The Times has noted that Kavanaugh was following Roberts’ lead in breaking from the conservatives.
1
The First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
What the conservative right is trying to do first through the states first then through SCOTUS is to force a set of religious beliefs on the country by way of changing established laws. This is not freedom of religion, it is the direct opposite and in my opinion prohibited by the Constitution.
The First Amendment is not just about religious freedom and also about freedom from religious persecution. Which means that the government cannot side with any particular religious beliefs above all others. The Constitution is not the bible, but a set of beliefs that our country was founded on.
12
@VMG, . . . and I don't remember abortion as being a founding principal.
@Ryan
You missed my point entirely. The Conservative Right is against abortion based on religious principal. The First Amendment provides protection from imposing any specific religious beliefs on the citizens of this country.
Roe V. Wade does not mandate abortion it only allows for woman to have a choice. No one is forcing anyone to have an abortion.
2
someone can be pro-choice and anti-abortion?
I am. I think abortion is heinous; but denying a woman a choice of how she controls her body is just as heinous.
I believe there are many like me.
Why does media outlets like the NYT continue to make those two notions mutually exclusive?
13
@Nycoolbreez
Agree completely. It's not my job to tell any woman how to handle her body, her pregnancy or her conscience. These are personal issues, not matters of governmental control.
1
@Nycoolbreez
Yes people can be both. One can be personally against abortion and simultaneously still support the rights of all women to decide if abortion is best for her.
The term pro-choice is specific. It simply means we think women are entitled to make any and all decisions regarding our lives and reproductive health.
Pro-choice supporters don’t force any woman to have an abortion. Unlike the anti-choice folks who think they are entitled to subject women to their personal religious beliefs.
2
@Nycoolbreez for the same reason when I ask how the pro-life movement, who holds the belief that a fetus is a human no matter what, could dispose of lab created ones used for stem cell research and not consider themselves the same murderers they call people who are pro-choice.
1
It's ridiculous that this is still an issue. If you are against abortions then don't have one and understand other people have a right to make their own decision.
If men had to give birth there would be abortion clinics on every block and morning after pills would be handed out with their bar tabs.
88
@Hellen I'm against theft and murder. That's why I don't steal and kill.
Should I also understand other people have a right to make their own decision regarding stealing and killing?
@Hellen
No,Hellen, you couldn't be more wrong....
If men had to give birth, by now, it would be a completely out-of-body experience-- done in a laboratory-- on demand--and no down time or effects on a man's body or ability to work. Yep, I firmly believe that the first time a male scientist even menstruated, research would have begun to "laboratize" the experience lol!
5
@TN Tuxedo. Theft and murder involves taking from someone else. By opposing abortions you are also attempting to take from someone the right to make their choice. You have zero knowledge of their health or circumstances but somehow think you can usurp their decision.
13
Well it looks as though Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are "Trump Judges" Justice Roberts but thank you for your open mindedness in this case.
10
the head of the male-dominated Supreme Court, stopped Roe from being overturned. Think about that.
I'm sending a check to Planned Parenthood today.
11
This issue means nothing to the Republicans other than a way to garner votes. They have no problem sending young men and women off to die if oil or other money making resources are involved. They look down their noses with disgust at poor and minorities and criticize their families, denying them aid and medical care. They only value life when it is in the womb. After that, you're on your own.
529
@Me
I am a social/fiscal conservative, a military spouse to a combat vet, a sister to two combat vets, a daughter to a combat vet, & a mother to 5, including the second set of unexpected twins that I currently carry. Your blanket statement is wrong. No compassion for minorities? Where, after all, are the majority of abortion services located? In minority neighborhoods, which is to say the future (the unborn) of these communities are threatened & unprotected. Is it only the unborn children of white people that matter? Is it only black lives that have survived the womb that matter? Or does all human life, regardless of color/socioeconomic status, deserve the distinction of personhood? One need only to read Margaret Sanger’s views on eugenics/birth control to see the tangled roots of abortion/racial & economic discrimination. No, it’s not “Republicans” who “don’t care” about minority groups. Purely political for Republicans? I need only to see the feet & knees jostling each other in my own belly to know that I have fellow unborn Americans who have no one to protect their right to live. I find it extremely personal.
At the end of the day, though, I gather that your main point of contention is why Republicans seemingly care only about life in the womb & not the lives after it. We problems that our nation and people need to make right. You are right. But does that mean we shouldn’t also protect the unborn? Should we not be concerned about all human dignity, whether out or in?
6
In Louisiana abortion restrictions are under Democrat rule - Democrat governor (with veto power)!!! Evangelicals, African-American evangelicals and Catholics make a coalition for legislative votes with no public input.
6
@Me -- There seems to be no interest in Republicans to control gun violence either. Surely anyone "pro-life" will be against gun violence. Why aren't the same state legislatures so eager to rein in abortion applying their same legal creativity to anti-gun-violence laws? Recalling that the one core principle (as much as they can be said to have -any- principles) of Republicans is 'hypocrisy' I'm not surprised that there are no new Louisiana anti-gun laws up for consideration. Not surprised at all.
59
"The Louisiana law, enacted in 2014, requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Since such doctors were often unable to obtain admitting privileges for reasons unrelated to their competence and that the law created an undue burden on women’s constitutional right to abortion." It would seem that law should be modified to say that if the Doctor could not get admitting privileges to a local hospital due to competency issues only that they should not be allowed to perform abortions. That should enhance the safety to woman who wish to have legal abortions. I am not for or against abortion per se, it is not off interest to me and no big deal, but I am not sure where in our Constitution there is wording that supports the right to elect to have an abortion.
2
Do some independent research. Abortion rights have been established law for 45 years.
3
@NYChap it rarely has anything to do with a doctor's competency. There is no statistical evidence that requirements like this make anyone safer.
2
Well, let's see. Why don't we phrase your remark like this: "I am not against freedom of speech per se, it is if no interest to me and I am not for or against it."
Or, "I am not against segregation and Jim Crow laws per se, I am not interested in them personally, they are of no interest to me, and I am not personally for or against them."
The right to terminate a pregnancy is the right of a female to decide whether a procedure is medically right for her, given the enormous burden of carrying a non-viable or even an unwanted fetus to term. It is a civil right.
Claiming lack of interest is odd when a free, secular United States is at stake.
3
It appears that Roberts has chosen to subordinate his partisan politics for the good of the Supreme Court itself. In key cases, his decisions do not reflect his conservative bent, apparently because his moe cocerned with promoting the legitimacy of the Court. This is extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented. He is sacrificing long-held beliefs to promote truth, justice and the American way. Some might call him a surprising swing vote. I’m with anyone who suspects that he is a superhero and that history will treat him very kindly.
15
@michjas So, legitimacy is shown by SCOTUS when they agree with your view.
3
@Robert Avant I refer to Robers’ view of legitimacy, not mine.
@michjas I agree that Roberts is destined to become the new moderate on the Court, at least with regard to some issues. I strongly feel that if Trump were to try to declare a national emergency over his border wall, that Roberts would vote with the liberals and find that there is no "emergency."
"Only Justice Kavanaugh published a dissent, taking a middle position that acknowledged the key precedent and said he would have preferred more information on the precise effect of the law."
The effect of the law would be that his daughters would have no problem if they made a mistake in high school, because his wealth would allow them to leave the state or even the country for an abortion. It would, however, for the working class and the poor force them to have only one choice. A choice that, unlike the wealthy, could keep them from pursuing college degrees, etc etc.
This is a class issue.
86
This is a temporary ruling and should not be considered definitive. We'll see what happens further on.
4
In this highly partisan world, Roberts has the difficult job of keeping the Court independent. Therefore, when he can safely tact left on a case, he will. Roberts also has disdain for our current partisan environment and he will not be burdened with the guilt of the extreme right.
8
"Susan Collins says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh won’t end abortion rights in the US"
-October, 2018
Susan Collins is wrong. Kavanaugh is in, and he will follow the lead of the other conservative justices. This decision helps to understand where he stands on abortion rights.
27
So much for “settled law”. The frat boy and Gorsuch join Alito and Thomas in sustaining a Louisiana law identical to the Texas version already stricken down by the Court. Both laws’ clear intent is to reduce a woman’s freedom of choice by creating barriers to the few doctors willing to assist them.
26
If the Roberts court overturns Roe v Wade, it will the Plessy v Ferguson case of our era -- a decision that will go down in history as discriminatory, un-American and wrong.
18
Chief Justice John G. Roberts is keeping the supreme court balanced and ensuring that the fear mongering critics were wrong that the appointment of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaigh will shift the collective balance of the supreme court. Roe v Wade stands firm as it should but late term abortion is still and issue that remains questionable and was not a part of the Roe v Wade.
25
@Girish Kotwal,
This was a temporary injunction.
"5-4" roberts and his koch owned conservative kangaroo court will overturn Roe v Wade.
They'll just wait until there is an American back in the white house instead of president genital-grabber.
Overturning Roe v Wade with such a misogynistic animal in the White House is not the kind of optics Charles and David Koch want for their bought and paid for Supreme Court.
9
@Girish Kotwal interesting term, " late term abortion, " created to stir emotions of the uninformed. Do you know the truth about the number and circumstances of abortions beyond 20-24 werks? Rare and a tortuous decision. Make no mistake, anti abortionists want NO abortions and will keep going until one can't have an abortion at all.
11
@Girish Kotwal
Kavanaugh and Gorsuch voted against women’s reproductive rights thus the “fear mongering critics” were not mongering fear, they were correct. Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas are judicial activists something Republicans don’t mind when weaponized against women.
22
Kavanaugh sided with the conservatives as we all knew he would. The only reason he was appointed by DT - as well as Gorsuch- was to appease the religious right who Trump owes his presidency to. Trump doesn’t personally care one whit about abortion. He is playing with political fire but he delights in tearing down established norms like Roe v Wade.
Susan Collins is toast.
410
@marian Kavanaugh more than sided with the conservatives. His reasoning, as shown in the article, is patently flawed and probably inconsistent with what he would rule about stays of laws that he didn't favor, if they abridged constitutional rights. But, like his patron, he's a con man; he does a very good fake of impartiality.
27
@marian, so much for Kavanaugh's empty promise that he believe is precedent. This was already decided in the Texas case but he is so willing to overturn his former SCOTUS justices.
31
@marian Let us hope you're right and that Collins really is toast.
26
Roberts and possibly Kavanaugh have the savvy to realize that these sort of state laws will have little practical impact in reducing the number of abortions but a colossal political impact in driving women (the vast majority of whom regard this as a private matter and want freedom of choice) into the arms of the pro choice lobby and the Democratic party. Overturning Roe would be political suicide for the Republican party and the more perceptive Republicans know it.
6
Anyone that Donald Trump labels as "an absolute disaster" (as he did with Chief Justice John Roberts), is okay in my book.
I am happy that CJ Roberts has shifted more to the center of the court since Justice Anthony Kennedy retired last year. This has happened before, when a conservative justice's viewpoint changes from right to center. I am thinking of Justice David Souter as an example.
I am hoping that CJ Roberts continues with his centered stance as he did in this most recent case. Hoping for that, and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to live to 100.
40
It's disgusting how powerless the majority of women in the United States are over their own bodies and financial futures. Are our lives better than women living under any other religious tyranny? No healthcare at all for many, no or threatened access to contraception and abortion, limited access to prenatal and postnatal care for many, no support for childcare, and the threat of losing one's job if one does not return to work after having a child as soon as possible. Many women struggle to pay for menstrual products and diapers! And we act as though the terrible anxiety, lack of self-agency, perversion of sex, and ruin of futures is simply women's burden to bear. There is no future for mankind if we can not move past the prejudice of the past. Just as we must protect and improve health care and the environment, we must protect Roe. And any man that has ever loved any woman, including the mother who gave birth to them by choice or not, should support the rights of women to agency over their own bodies as well as the right of families to privacy and choice.One thing perhaps we can do now is boycott the slave states like Louisiana that pass laws that hurt women by limiting access to Planned Parenthood or other contraception and abortion providers. They do not deserve our business. Oh yeah, vote Democratic.
243
@Dr. Conde: An eloquent case. Another aspect of the anti-abortion fundamentalism that doesn't get enough scrutiny is the bleeding over of anti-abortionism to anti-contraceptionism, with re-definitions of various contraceptive drugs or devices as abortifacients. The hypocrisy of the right is breath-taking. All these fervent Roman Catholics seem to have only two children: no one ever seems to remark upon this curious fact. The only justice who really lived his faith, including the ban on contraception, was Justice Scalia--with (I think) nine children. Of course the person who actually lived that faith was Mrs. Scalia. (But it was amusing to see the President remark incredulously on the size of the Scalia family at a recent ceremony. Like many people he presumes that the Roman Catholic "people of faith" who are appointed to important positions by Republicans eager to appease their base don't [of course!] follow the Catholic church's teaching on this point.
12
Dr. Conde,
It is the lives within the womb who are powerless. Their fate and destiny lies in the decisions made by the mother. Will they live or die. They are at the mercy of their mothers and have absolutely no say in the matter. Pro lifers want to change that. Hopefully with determination and grit these fetuses will see the light of day.
1
Excuse me, that to say the lives in the womb have
absolutely no say in the lives of the mother is a misnomer. Life or death comes to mind. Tyranny can go both ways.
3
John Roberts is clearly concerned about how the " Roberts Court " will be viewed in the context of history. The " curve of justice " bends toward individual agency. The Conservative, sectarian based agenda, is antithetical to that individual autonomy, and John Robert's apparent move to the center, may reflect his understanding of history's direction, and the ultimate evaluation of " his court".
26
So let's say that the law goes into effect. One doctor out of four can provide abortions, which just doing easy math (don't pound me for my math skills and assumptions here...this is just rough math) means that of the 10,000 women who seek an abortion, 7,500 can't get one and so will give birth.
Okay. 7,500 children born to Louisiana women every year. 7,500 children who need to be fed, clothed, housed, schooled. Since I would posit that many of these women can't care for their children financially, out of their own pockets, the burden will fall on the state of Louisiana.
Let's just say that Louisiana is an average state, so to extrapolate out a bit, 50 states times 7,500 unwanted children translates into about 375,000 per year added to the patchwork of food, clothing, child care, housing, schooling rolls across America, each year, every year.
Who's going to pay? Republicans have already demonstrated their complete fixation with fetuses and a complete indifference to the welfare children out of the womb, so who's going to pay? I mean, Republicans will slap you in the pokey at the drop of a hat, but they'll slash your library funding or ignore your medical needs while they're slamming the prison doors shut.
Am I wrong, but isn't Louisiana a pretty poor state? I mean, I never thought it was particularly affluent.
So what's the deal about populating our planet with more poor people? What's in it for Republicans? Organs? Body parts? I don't get it.
73
Votes. It's what their base wants and they want to be elected.
19
@sarasotaliz The GOP doesn't follow logic but raw emotion. They believe that if they make abortion hard to get fewer will get abortions. But it only leads women who don't have the means to travel to more progressive states to get illegal abortions. Perhaps many in the GOP believe that these women deserve the physical destruction which often follows such procedures.
6
@sarasotaliz Population growth generally drives economic growth. If you want to know why the economies in Europe and Japan has basically stalled out in the past couple decades, just look at their birth rates.
Putting the whole argument of whether abortion should be allowed or not aside, your assumption that they all end up on welfare and cost the government money is flawed logic. Don't forget that the majority of those 375k kids could easily make their way through the adoption system which has a long backlog of qualified parents that would be thrilled to have an infant. Given the cost of adopting, the parents tend to be upper middle class, so the kids would very likely be productive members of society.
1
The NYT notes: "Only Justice Kavanaugh published a dissent, taking a middle position that acknowledged the key precedent and said he would have preferred more information on the precise effect of the law."
Only Justice Kavanaugh was put on the Court as an accused sexual abuser by blocking the available "more information" about his predatory conduct.
Trump's conman to replace his personal "fixer" with his new and improved SCOTUS "fixer" is earning his money.
Way to go Senate.
47
Even the vast majority catholic countries in Europe have legalized abortion for quite some time, with Ireland having been the last one by referendum.
As a not so pious naturalized citizen from what Republicans so endearingly call "socialist Europe", it never ceases to amaze me that the so-called pro-lifers in the US overlap with the ones that are pro-gun and pro-death penalty.
121
@Sarah. The irony isn’t lost on me. And I might add, once that precious fetus is born, they complain about educating it, making health care available to it and assisting it any form.
16
So Chief Justice Roberts lied to the Senate and has broken his oath of office. He's playing politics not justice, and showing his favoritism for the public opinion of the Court rather than the merits of the case.
2
I'm pretty proud of him for this decision. He followed the law and women's constitutional rights will be upheld.
13
@Richard Mclaughlin
Actually, he's doing his job IN SPITE of his politics. The "merits" of the case, and that of the TX case, clearly show this inane law would cause an "undue burden" and is NOT "medically necessary". I think it is you sir, who is playing politics here.
7
@Richard Mclaughlin Please share your work with the class so we can see how you ended up with this opinion.
5
It remains to be seen how Chief Justice Roberts votes on the case in chief, but he has profound respect for the institution and knows the turmoil that would erupt should the Court overturn Roe. He is conservative, but would not be the first conservative to take an occasional walk on the judicial wild side. And then who knows what happened. After all Roe v. Wade was authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, a reliable conservative appointed by Richard Nixon who took that walk with the liberals on Roe, and never looked back, becoming one of the most liberal members of the Warren and then Rhenquist Courts.
18
I wonder how Susan Collins is feeling about her vote for Kavanaugh now?
He promised her not to vote to overturn Roe:
but chipping away at the practical ability to obtain an abortion by voting to validate state efforts to impose irrational and unreasonable barriers is functionally the same thing.
Collins knew or should have known this would be Kavanaugh’s approach and voted for him anyway, a true Moderate In Name Only. Hopefully Maine voters will remember come ‘20.
196
@winthropo muchacho
Susana Collins speaks out of both sides of her mouth. She likes to pretend she's open minded when it comes to a sound bite, but she is a reliable GOP rubber stamp. M
13
@winthropo muchacho Susan Collins is "all-talk." In the final analysis she always votes the way Mitch McConnell orders her to.
8
@Bob Burns Yep, she speaks out of both sides of her mouth! And I for one don't understand either of them!!!
2
If and when the Supreme Court rules on the merits of this case, there is good reason to believe that Roberts will respect precedent and uphold the Texas decision and Roe v Wade itself. Moreover, Kavanaugh, in his dissent, also indicated that the Texas decision is binding precedent. Rulings on stays are strong predictors of rulings on the merits since the facts don’t change, only the law does. Nothing is certain and skeptics will correctly argue that anything can happen. But Vegas will give very good odds that Roe v Wade is secure. It is a very good day for the pro-choice crowd, indeed.
9
It’s good to know the Supreme Court isn’t letting religious zealots use the government to impose their religious beliefs on the people. Why don’t these religious conservatives believe in freedom? Sad.
17
My take-away from this is that if Trump gets the chance to put one more far right person on the Supreme Court, most of what passes for women's reproductive rights under the law will fall.
If, by some insane roll of the electoral dice, Trump were to stay in office and the Democrats take back the Senate, they must, absolutely must, do what the Republicans did to Barack Obama and refuse to hold hearings for as long as it takes until there is another Democratic President.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
33
That’s right! It’s a mandate to stop Trump any way they can. And Republicans can use a taste of their own medicine, for once. Take that McConnell.
2
@Hugh Massengill They must also do the same if anything happens to RBG and she's no longer on the Court.
1
Why would Roberts join the liberals when we all know he personally abhors abortion? Because the Louisiana law is unjust, and because he knows a hardline conservative court will eventually destroy the legitimacy of the court.
62
All 4 supreme court judges who voted against a stay of the Louisiana law were men.
46
We must keep fighting for reproductive rights.
Forcing women and teenage girls to give birth against their will (and which can include threats to their health and life) is a cruel, inhumane and a grave injustice.
39
This is a disappointing defeat for the pro life cause. But they must never give up. As a pro life woman, I and many others will continue fighting for the rights of the unborn. This just gives us more energy and determination to speak out against abortion. You win some and you lose some but you just keep on going. We still have made a difference in convincing many people that abortion is immoral and barbaric. We just need to say this over and over. And we will. This was just not our day to victory but it will come and soon.
1
@WPLMMT,
And we pro-choice women will never give up fighting for our lives and this gives us more energy.
You should thank your lucky stars that women like me chose not to have a child when the time was not right for us and we didn’t have to depend on your tax dollars to survive.
27
@WPLMMT OK, you're pro-life and I'm pro- choice.
We'll both keep fighting, and I, as a woman, will keep fighting for the right of a woman to control her own body. But, I must ask you, how many unwanted children you've adopted? I haven't adopted any. Are you in favor of reducing benefits to welfare moms, taking away health programs, food programs, reducing school activities, sex education in school, and, of course, in favor of guns, which harm more children than accidents or diseases? And, remember, WPL..., no woman goes joyfully into an abortion procedure. It's a heart-wrenching decision, but obviously, for the woman having an abortion, far better than bringing an unwanted or unaffordable child into the world. Do you know how many children live in poverty in this country? I have a feeling you don't.
10
You're NOT pro-life you are forced birth.
If you don't want an abortion then simply don't have one, but don't force a woman to be a vessel for an unwanted pregnancy.
You could help by ensuring that all women have access to birth control and that the government pays for it with Healthcare.
You could ensure that Republicans are not ripping children away from their mothers at the borders. These are children who are already born.
You can ensure that people have access to food stamps when they need it for their children. Yote for the right people who will ensure that children of immigrants can have access to food stamps as well without penalty of deportation.
Why not start there?
16
While Justice Kennedy was on the court, Justice Roberts had the liberty to indulge his whims/political views or personal beliefs. Now that he is truly the "chief" justice, he must decide cases for the good of the country and our people. Judos to him for "stepping up to the plate," to use his own baseball analogy. Let's hope that there will be more enlightened decisions in the future.
9
Pro life groups need to start praying that President Trump is given another opportunity to seat a conservative Supreme Court justice like the ones he has already chosen for the bench. Justice Roberts is not a reliable choice for pro life causes. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are with the other conservatives on this issue and one more would most likely guarantee that pro life legislation would pass in their favor. We need to save more babies not kill them. This is what most Americans favor.
2
@WPLMMT: You are incorrect according to numerous polls taken over many years. They show that most Americans favor abortion rights (and access to reproductive health care).
9
@WPLMMT This is what most Americans favor. ??? What poll do you base this "fact" on? Most Americans do favor abortion. When you pro-lifers fight as hard for medical care for children (and adults) as you do to prevent abortion, then I'll believe you're pro-life.
9
@WPLMMT - You haven't saved anyone. Children born to parents who don't want them and can't care for them are often abused and even killed or they end up sick and sometimes dying from a lack of things like medical care, proper nutrition etc.
4
My take from this is that Chief Justice John Roberts knows full well that recent (Mitch McConnell) appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh represent a distinct and perhaps lethal threat to his tenure. The hard right, of which he is a charter member, threatens his very home. The lions are roaming around the narrow cage and he's lost his whip; or rather, relinquished it in the service of the one percent.
Catholic though he may be, I think that he has fully come to understand just how politicized his Court has become and is likely to remain, even unto the end of his time there. I think that in his deepest, most private moments, he realizes that the Court is now bereft of the widespread, vitally necessary national public respect that is, in reality, the only thing that legitimizes it. America may be, on paper, a rule of law, but when that law has been circumvented by an ideology that is unforgiving and almost totally plutocratically lawless in its own right, a Supreme Court is an oxymoron.
The Chief Justice should have thought about these and other urgent national matters (as opposed to Republicans and their wealthy donors) as he was deciding Citizens United and other verdicts that have benefited only one narrow class of people: the oligarchy.
27
Kavanaugh seems to think that the Fifth District court is capable of "predicting" the future and that somehow the U.S. Constitution and the rules of Judicial Proceeding allow for rulings based on those predictions.
He also seems to think that the predictable harm to women that letting this immoral and unnecessary law will cause should be allowed to happen and then women can spend years and millions of dollars trying to get back to SCOTUS.
Let's see if he feels the same way over bans on guns, restrictions on gun sales, or the curtailing of Trumps illegal activities comes to the court.
10
That four justices would so callously overturn a decision made by the same court a few years ago shows a main consequence of the Trump presidency and tenuous state of justice we face for the next 20 years.
21
It is a mistake to read too much into the concealed reasoning underlying a stay. However, Roberts continues to be the apostle of stare decisis in the face of extreme post-Scalia originalism. He hasn't changed, and the central holding in Roe hasn't changed.
The vast majority of Americans are still deeply uneasy about terminations of fetal life, but accept that Roe's permission for 3d trimester bans does not permit the government to interpose itself between the mother and the doctor in matters where the life or health of the mother indicates a need for termination.
4
Justice Roberts perhaps has been exposed to new ideas and is seeing things from a more enlightened perspective. We definitely would appreciate it if he became less reflexively conservative and more of a swing vote. People change. Perhaps in 35 years the VA politicians have changed.
14
Roberts is fighting for his place in future history books. He does not want to join the list of pivotal Chief Justices who altered the role of the Court.
Roberts does not want to go down in history as the Justice who allowed the Court to become an official arm of a single party, with the addition of disputed nominations giving him his plurality.
Mostly, I respect Roberts, even as I respect Gorshuch, and Ginsburg and several other of our Justices. I just don't agree with the political philosophy that drives his interpretation of the Constitution.
He is now in the position of having to assure that his personal philosophy does not run rampant over the rights of others. I don't feel he will be anything other than extremely conservative; but I do feel he understands his role of the last bastion of restraint in assuring the protection of rights of people who can be run over by conservative philosophy.
I can only hope that in his effort to try to assure that his Court is fair, he will give more leeway to ideas that are not native to his own outlook.
12
How can Kavanaugh be unbiased with regards to women’s rights when his attitudes toward women is well understood? History proves Louisiana’s curelity in the way they have treated Africa Americans. The state is trying to abuse women’s rights as it has that of African Americans. We need to increase political pressure on the courts of this land to uphold human rights far better than history shows the have in the past.
28
Why on God's green earth don't right-to-life crusaders stand against guns and the NRA and 2nd Amendment which kill children (and all people), instead of assailing anti-abortion efforts? Roe v. Wade is the law of our American land of liberty. Living children are alive and growing and needing love and care, no matter their circumstances. Too many are suffering frightful lives in our country today.
Abortion is often and tragically the last resort of desperate women, and has always been that "sophie's choice" since men have had dominion over women's bodies. Gratitude to Chief Justice Roberts for the Supreme Court's majority dissent yesterday against the grotesque Louisiana abortion law that supplied only one doctor in a single clinic authorized to provide abortions for many thousands of women.
In our present reality under president Trump, our most pressing goal for America and the world is to help roll back climate change in every way possible. If climate change (called "a hoax" by Republicans and Trump and their loyalists) is not made Job One this and next and all the coming years, there will be no human, flora or fauna on earth. No argument for or against women and the right to own their own bodies.
156
@Nan Socolow I agree whole hardheartedly. If climate change is not addressed soon, nothing else matters. As a nation, we need to start governing with a long term plan to regain the health of our planet. If we don't, humanity will die from stupidity.
In 2016, a doctor's son standing before me in the voting line said (and I paraphrase) this election is an IQ test for the American people. Looking at the current president, I think we failed. If this is who we are as a voice for our nation, we deserve what we get.
May humanity all rest in peace.
7
This outcome does not surprise me.
All five of the five right wing justices are either Roman Catholic or raised in that church. Gorsuch was raised Roman Catholic, although he allegedly attends an Episcopalian church.
My sense is that any intellectual opinion crafted in legalese is grounded in religious views for that right wing group. Maybe there is a better explanation, but that is doubtful. Roberts is a surprising exception, but understandable given his concern over maintaining existing laws and dampening the polarization on the court.
There will be other cases, given that abortion is arguably the most persistent and divisive social issue of our time: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/the-argument-abortion-medicare-for-all.html?emc=edit_ty_20190207&nl=opinion-today&nlid=370747320190207&te=1 .
The divisions will not go away and there will be other cases in short order. We can hope Chief Justice Roberts holds his stance.
10
@JSK
As a recovering Catholic I can say that it does not bode well for the future to have all those militant conservative Catholics sitting on that bench.
6
Looks like Chief Justice Roberts will be invited to the White House for a dinner with Trump, just like the recent dinner with the Fed chairman and just like the dinner with Comey.
Will the word "loyalty" be brought up?
16
Trump is pro-choice and always has been despite telling the evangelical and pro-life types what they wish to hear.
1
These states are removing women's rights on the basis that an unborn fetus has a to be protected. When the child is born then what are the protected rights? Why do school age children not have the right to be free from gun violence? If they care about all these children how about sensible gun laws too.
110
@KAL
They only care about embryos and fetuses as a means of controlling women. They demonstrate this by their actions. They do all possible to deny children public assistance, safe child care, a decent education, a learning environment free from the fear of gun violence, and access to comprehensive healthcare. Their concern for the life of children especially children living in poverty ends when the ‘babe exits the womb’, most anti-choice folks can’t even use proper terminology.
6
I cannot say I am for abortions, but I cannot say I am against them. No child should be brought into this world and disadvantaged. I believe in the sanctity of life but cannot deny that the sanctity of life includes a right to survive and prosper as a citizen with all the rights accorded to any citizen. Our current system of government denies them this right as does our behavior and temperment. God forgive us for our blindness to God's Laws.
9
So pro-life means you deny a women access to healthcare with onerous requirements for doctors who would provide the desired services and you don't require gun control as we continue to see 40,000+ persons a year in America killed due to gun violence. If this is not illogical, then I do not know what is. Clearly, we have made the abortion issue political and not based upon individual rights like the gun rights issue. We are being inconsistent and illogical as both situations may be viewed as contributing to loss of life. The abortion issue is complex and one in which no court will be able to decide logically. The best the courts can do is allow individual rights to prevail in abortion as it has allowed with gun rights. Allow women to chose what they want to do with their bodies. It is an individual right like purchasing a gun and killing 40,000 persons a year is an individual right that the courts have basically decided to live with. Therefore, let's live with women having individual rights to decide what they will or will not do with their bodies.
21
Americans will never allow these so-called right-to-life zealots to force women back into the unsafe and dangerous times of pre Roe vs. Wade. We all remember what those times were like. Women died excruciating and painful deaths from complications of botched abortions performed by non-medical people in unsafe environments. These were our sisters, our daughters, our aunts, our mothers. Outlawing and redistricting access to safe abortion services will NOT stop women from seeking abortions. It never has and it never will. When the difficult decision of what to do when an unwanted pregnancy presents itself to a woman, she has the constitutional and even the moral right to seek medical advice and treatment however she so chooses. The ultimate goal of all these anti abortion laws, despite what is said to the contrary, is really, deep down, about the control and subjugation of women.
50
Roberts fancies himself as the new Justice Kennedy. He always resented the power of Justice Kennedy as a swing vote when it was he, Roberts, who was the Chief Justice.
And for now, even if it is opposite of his previous position, he has to put on the show of a centrist—and try to make the court appear more centrist.
But the only way for the “Roberts” court to gain any credibility is to revisit the worst Supreme Court mistake in modern history—Citizens United.
8
First, thank you to Justice Roberts for blocking the Louisiana law. It comes as no surprise that Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh voted to allow it. The usual suspects are hostile to women.
Kavanaugh lied about more than one thing at his confirmation hearing. He acknowledged that Roe v Wade was established law yet here he is imposing his personal religious beliefs on women and girls by voting to allow Louisiana to enact it’s law while the case is reviewed by the Supreme Court. Same goes for Gorsuch.
I’m appalled that the future of women’s reproductive rights in America will be decided by the religious beliefs of men. Men who are clueless about the dire circumstances women and girls often find themselves in because of men. Men who have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be pregnant or fear you are pregnant.
To men like Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh women and girls are just empty vessels meant to gestate. To these men women are second class citizens. The rights of embryos and fetuses outweigh the rights and lives of women and girls.
We know how Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will vote when the challenge to the Louisiana law comes before the court. It’s up to Justice Roberts to preserve the established law of the land and vote to uphold the right of Louisiana women and by extension all women across America to a safe and legal abortion.
68
The idea that women's rights and freedoms - something as basic as the right to own and control their own bodies - should rise or fall according to the whims or personal beliefs of those who oppose abortion rights is absolutely intolerable. Could you imagine a supreme court precariously balanced between those who regard the 13th amendment as constitutional bedrock and those who want to reverse it, treating it as an open question whether African Americans really have a right not to be enslaved? The ongoing debate about women's right to own their bodies - to which the right to obtain a safe and legal abortion is intrinsic - is no different. I can only imagine the rage that millions of women must feel to have their fundamental human rights kicked around like a political football, especially when those doing the kicking are men who will never be placed in the position of having to choose between abortion and bringing a fetus to term. It's not mind boggling to me that our society should still be debating the ethics of abortion. But it is absolutely mind boggling to me that the right to have an abortion is still not universally regarded as fundamental and inviolable. That abortion itself is not just effectively being taken away by being regulated out of existence but that the right to obtain one is now in danger of being taken away altogether.
13
@David One also has to take into consideration it is states lying within the bible belt we see this the most. This violates separation of Church & State. We can not make laws based on how ones religious believes dictates we should. You have also made a very good point that a majority of the SCOTUS is male and not affected by these laws.
4
The Supreme Court has a liberal bias based on the structure of the Constitution. The history of decisions and judges has been guided by the underlying insistence on liberty and protection of individual rights. Conservatives forget that the constitution was constructed by radical liberal thinkers. They confused the culture of white patriarchal supremacy with the constitution and become surprised when "conservative" judges, relying on a "strict constructionist" approach to interpreting the constitution continues to support liberty and individual rights. The lifetime appointment business provides Justices like Roberts the relief from political fealty.
2
It's important to keep in mind that this is only a "stay" and not an overturning of the Louisiana law itself. While it is comforting to see Chief Justice Roberts decide to extend the stay until October, there is no final decision in effect now.
Undoubtedly, there will be an evangelical-pleasing tweet storm from the White House accusing Roberts of being a liberal Obama-leaning justice, despite his having been appointed by G.W. Bush.
Given the decision about the Texas law in 2016, the "precedent" to which Kavanaugh alluded had already been set. Thus, there was no justification for his dissenting decision on the stay.
The most disturbing part of the final SCOTUS decision that will take place after the October hearing is that a woman's innate right to decide hangs in the balance. If only one provider is permitted in a state of over 51,000 square miles does not demonstrate an "undue burden," then perhaps the old reactionary Southern meme of "vote with your feet" will become the law of the land again.
7
We’re playing with trifles here. A right is a right. I wonder what the Right would say if similar restrictions were placed on gun purchases?
190
Unlike the right to bear arms there is no right to an abortion in the Constitution.
1
@JerseyGirl
Read the Constitution, the foundation of which grants its citizens "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." ALL citizens. Not just the ones you kowtow to.
12
@JerseyGirl The Constitution does not grant an individual the absolute right to own a gun. However, it does grant s very specific right of privacy that extends to abortion. Funny how it’s always gun owners who kill the most people yet a woman trying to protect her own body is the one that offends and whose Constitutional rights the anti-abortion crowd can’t ever seem to find.
13
If the Right to Life contingent would pivot to focus their time, treasure, and energy on saving children who, oh, lets just say for instance are gunned down in their schools, then I would say that they have successfully fulfilled someone's Right to Life.
Anything related to a women's family planning and reproductive decisions is just meddling in someone's private health affairs, which should be illegal per the Health Privacy Protection Act!!
622
@We the People. They could pivot as well to suing the Trump administration for separating children from their parents as they seek asylum. But no, all they care about is men controlling women and keeping them as second-class citizens.
81
@We the People.
Well said. I agree fully.
32
@We the People.
It doesn’t even need to be the same contingent. I would settle for any conservatives at this point interested in protecting living beings.
18
No court on earth has the right to decide on abortion. In fact no one except for the women concerned has.
378
Pierre,
The Supreme Court decided on abortion rights in 1973. Were you against it then?
3
@pierre
Agreed.
A landmark SCOTUS ruling in 1965, Griswold v. Connecticut, determined that a woman cannot be prevented from receiving contraceptive services.
In another landmark case in 1973, Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS ruled almost unanimously (7-2) that a woman's right to privacy includes a woman's right to have an abortion.
The choice to have an abortion rests exclusively with the woman since it's her body. If a religious woman wishes to not have an abortion, that too is her right but access to safe medical abortion procedures cannot be restricted to all women. That's the law of the land.
It's horrible that Judge Kavanaugh apparently lied to Congress when he said he would respect stare decisis (landmark case law).
24
@pierre
Perhaps a better way to frame the issue (from a pro-choice stance) is to say that no legislature has the right to decide on abortion (whether considered as a human right or a constitutional right). The courts are restraining (or not, as the case may be), the lawmakers from the constitutional standpoint, even though this may really be a human rights issue.
The question with respect to the courts is whether, or to what extent, they should be permitted to so restrain the legislature. Since the constitution is not self-enforcing, however, see Marbury v Madison.
1
I AM THANKFUL That John Roberts, true to his claim during his appointment hearing, that he viewed his role of a judge as being an umpire (i.e., not legislating from the bench). Since the court majority are activist extremists who legislate from the bench, it is with immense gratitude that I read of Roberts's striking down the Lousiana law. I have always questioned the claims of so-called "conservatives" who criticize the intrusion of government into the lives of citizens; yet the very same people are the first to jump into bed with women who conceive in the name of falsely defending the law, thereby denying a womas's right to control her own body. The fact is that since Roe v Wade, the number of abortions has stayed consistent; it has not increased. Meaning that if Roe were reversed, women would once again be forced into becoming victim of butchers: illegal abortionists who cause many women to die from bleeding to death or from contracting deadly infections. I was surprised that Kavanaugh published his dissent, giving as a reason that he needed the specifics of the case to make a fully informed decision. Perhaps he will show that he is attempting to redeem himself, though the question remains of when he will be investigated for lying to Congress during is appointment hearings in the Senate. Since such oversight must be the duty of the House, Kavanaugh may meet great challenges due to evidence of his violence toward women withheld from the Senate by Trump's overreach.
20
@John Jones
I too am thankful, and surprised to the point of being flabbergasted.
Let's not forget, before we inundate media with giddy and borderline-offensive victory dancing, that we are about one percent home.
We have a long way to go. A little grace on our part wouldn't hurt anybody.
Maybe use this as a teaching moment instead.
1
No, Justice Kavanaugh, under your logic if the Court denied the stay and the law went into effect, women would be denied abortions until the doctors' application for privileges would be acted upon. Doctors without admitting privileges would be in jeopardy of losing their licenses and freedom if they chose to perform one. Accordingly, no doctor in his or her right mind would risk performing an abortion until the case once again made its way to the high court. That could take years. Your logic is twisted. The majority made the right call under the precedent set in the Texas decision. Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts. You did the right and correct thing.
127
Thank you .... Justice Roberts for doing the right thing for full rights as citizens and humans that happen to be pregnant women .
We women decide whether our pregnancy will be viable
Not a government of paternalism on top of fundamentalist puritanical Supreme Court political hacks
Justice Roberts is a Brave non partisan
Which surprises and delights me while women in America are under attack .
11
So why not find out know if the doctors can get admitting privileges before the law goes into effect. Why wait till after?
Hospitals who deny Doctors admitting privileges for any reason other than professional, should be denied federal money. Hospitals are in the business to help people no matter the reason they are ill.
16
@oscar jr: Physicians are denied hospital admitting privileges for many reasons. Some hospitals are owned by the Catholic Church and refuse to grant privileges to clinicians who perform reproductive health services. There are other reasons also, but the bottom line is that abortion procedures are safe and rarely require hospital admittance, and if they did women could be admitted without this specious law. This burdensome, unnecessary law is merely another attempt to prevent women from obtaining abortion.
9
Louisiana's atmosphere is decidedly anti-abortion. Even our Democratic governor is pro-life. There can be no doubt as to the intent of the law in question, which is to deny as many women as possible access to abortion. Unless the Supreme Court fails to act on precedent -- an outcome that would not be surprising in the age of Trump -- they have no choice but to strike down the law, and made the right decision in issuing the stay. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.
50
Roberts is the latest so-called conservative to sell out.
Liberal always stay liberal, but many conservatives p, over the years, have flipped.
That is why we need at least one more conservative appointment from Trump. Two would be even better.
5
You don't seem to understand what "precedent" and "caselaw" are, and how they inform Supreme Court jurisprudence.
21
@dick west - So you're very disappointed that Justice Roberts blocked this law - for now.
You, another man, who will never get pregnant or give birth thinks he has the right to decide such life changing matters for all women. I suggest that until you do get pregnant, that you mind your own business. The only man who has a right to participate in such matters is the father and/or husband of the woman who is faced with such a decision.
Would you like to be forced by law to have a vasectomy at age 35, and if you did not, you would be fined and/or incarcerated? No? Forcing women to give birth, regardless of the myriad reasons why it would be harmful to them, is really no different.
364
@dick west
Yes, many conservative judges, over the years, gain wisdom and become more liberal. That is why we need those that start out liberal. Why should we suffer their learning curve?
29
Considering that a few minutes delay in driving from point to point is considered an undue burden and requires millions of dollars of road “improvements” to fix, a law that requires a woman to travel out of state for an abortion because there are not enough doctors to perform them thus should compensate the women for their trouble or abandon the law
6
Being a parent is work and a long responsibility. If the mother to be is not situated to do a good job or there is a health/emotional issue blocking that ability, then her need is more important than fetal tissue, period. The world is over-populated and there is no need to grow some pastor's flock.
231
@pointofdiscovery "pastor's flock" gets to the heart of it. One more child born is one more soul to save. Forget the women actually pregnant - a mere incubator.
13
Thank you to all of the Justices who voted for humanity and true "justice" for the people of Louisiana, many who probably will disagree with this verdict. SO they are saved from their own destructive instincts by the Supreme Court. Hope this continues if their are other states which seek to curtail the freedoms long valued in the US, and in other advanced countries, for women to make the choice on termination if this is the only option they feel will serve them. It is time for someone to stop the wholesale destruction of bills and legislation which has guaranteed that all Americans will have choice and healthcare.
8
@JHM
Sperm is the only cause of abortion.
Never been an abortion without sperm first.
Now who is responsible for abortion
I was thinking Brexit was a mistake for the UK, but is certainly a win for European women if you are indicative of the thinking of UK men.
The idea that Roe Vs. Wade would be overturned can only be used as a Political tool today, as there is no way in this modern world would women go back to the way it was before. As it was with Prohibition in the early 20th Century, the majority would not accept it.
59
You need to get your head out of the sand. The "modern world" has been changing around you, going backwards. This is enabled by people who assume that human achievement and progress is permanent. Personally, I can't think of anything more fragile.
9
@Frances & @ChrisH.
With four (4) sisters, five (5) daughters, and thirteen (13) aunts, I am thinking that you have nothing to worry about. The 'sand' needs to be a bridge between those who fear the change(s) and the rest of us who are learning to live (better) with it. 'Law doesn't make Religion and Religion doesn't make Law' really is right.
Yet again an article which shows that the politics of a judge is much more important than a just assessment of the case. It seems that only one judge could see in the evidence that his politically biased colleagues were wrong. Unfortunately this is only one case in so many where politics affects the outcome.
8
I wonder if all outpatient procedures such as colonoscopy require those physicians to have admitting privileges in Louisiana. I hear not. A clear attempt to deny women their rights, denied by the court today. Undue burden it was indeed. I applaud the decision.
652
@Sheeba
I agree about admitting privileges. Think about all the exposure in the myriad of "outpatient" procedures we undergo. I'm reminded of oral surgery!
14
@Sheeba Please note that Virginia Governor Northam, now embattled due to blackface/hood photos, only a few days ago defended late-term abortion, and was in turn defended by none other than the NYT's opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg. For those who missed it, here is what Governor Northam (also an M.D.) had to say about late term (and mid-birth) abortion:
“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” the governor went on. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
In other words, the baby would be born and then the mother and doctors could decide whether or not to let it live.
Wow. In most civilized countries that would be considered infanticide.
@Ro Ma -- You misrepresent the situation where a fetus is not viable due to some underlying defect. It is not infanticide it is a medical/personal decision whether to artificially prolong a life. In most countries this is considered normal. The right tries to portray these situations as something they are not. What if the fetus died in the womb? What if the mother's life is at risk? Why should in vitro Fertilization be allowed? It is not God's will. What if the family was poor and needed help to support the child? Do you support giving aid to the family probably not.
36
Chief Justice Roberts needs to stand up and declare in a majority opinion that Roe v Wade is the law of the land and any and all attempts to limit its scope or applicability such as the law before them (i.e. the Louisiana law) are and will be declared unconstitutional.He should then describe more particularly the basic parameters of Roe for lower courts to follow which the original decision left overly vague. Clarification is long overdue.
These piecemeal incremental attempts to limit Roe's application continue to eat up too much time and space on the federal court's calendar and some forceful statement is needed to stop them. Will Roberts have the guts to do that? Time will tell, he does seem willing at times to step outside what would normally be expected of him based on prior positions.
111
No court has the authority to rule on issues not before it. And that's a good thing.
2
@Sophocles I was speaking of an opinion to be written when this or a similar case comes to be decided by the Supreme Court. I am sorry if I was not clear on that.
5
can someone explain what is involved in obtaining admitting privileges and why some doctors might not want to do that? Are there other issues, cost, insurance, license or residency requirements that factor in?
2
@ Christine
Fear of Evangelical murdering terrorists might have something to do with it. They're not discerning when they decide someone must die.
Receptionist are actually a better target than a doctor. More people can identify and thereby FEAR. The "selling baby parts" was a call from evangelicals to the murderous minded and it WORKED.
If you try to help women who have made a decision for their own bodies they will shoot you in your kitchen, they will shoot you in your church and they will bomb a clinic killing women who are their for pap smears. if you were the manager or insurer of a hospital that might be foremost in you thinking about giving privileges that aren't going to give the hospital much business.
21
@ Christine - There is no standard basis for hospitals to grant admitting privileges. It's not like applying for a loan at a bank where you show that you have everything on the list. There is no list. It's purely arbitrary. Declined because of where you work (the specific clinic) and what is done there.
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