Moving toward the establishment of national religion - ultra Christianity.
11
Roe v. Wade should be overturned. It was produced by judicial fiat. The people were not consulted. The laws of 30 plus states were overturned by 7 judges based on feelings, emanations and penumbras.
Byron White in his dissent wrote:
“I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 states are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand.”
What we see in the states now is an attempt to re-entitle themselves under the constitution after being disentitled by seven judges.They want to be sure that abortion doesn't become wholesale slaughter a la Kermit Gosnell. There have been something like 50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade and anyone who thinks there were not wonderful human beings with unlimited potential in that number, you are lying to yourselves.
The state should not be sanctioning the wholesale slaughter of human beings when they are at their most defenseless.
5
So Ms Greenhouse has “seen a lot in decades of paying close attention to decisions coming out of the federal appeals courts, but ... can’t remember seeing such expressions of outright contempt for the Supreme Court.” A highly selective memory!
Ms Greenhouse had plenty of opportunity to “play close attention” to what was coming out of Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, long known as one of the most liberal judges on the courts of appeals. When it came to “expressions of outright contempt for the Supreme Court” Reinhardt was a master craftsman! Reinhardt's former clerk Michael Dorf said that when Reinhardt "believes himself clearly bound by Supreme Court precedent with which he disagrees, he states his disagreement” and “resolves cases under existing precedent as he believes those precedents should be read, without regard to whether ... the Supreme Court [is] likely to reverse him." It’s hard to match that as an attitude of contempt for the Supreme Court.
He said that the Supreme Court could not review and reverse every one of his flagrant opinions, and therefore wrote many he knew were entirely wrong.
He did not believe that a Supreme Court reversal meant that his opinion was wrong. "The Supreme Court changes the law regularly. And this Supreme Court - which is the most activist Court there has ever been - is constantly changing the law.” But the overwhelming majority of his reversals were not caused by the Supreme Court chsnging the law.
“Contempt,” you say?
2
Maybe it's time to limit the power of a whole bunch of unelected, unaccountable political hacks in black robes to conjure out of thin air all sorts of "constitutional" reasons to make law not enacted by the people's representatives (e.g., abortion rights and gay marriage rights) and overrule laws actually enacted by the people's representatives (e.g., campaign finance laws, voting rights laws and, now, potentially Obamacare).
By getting involved where they don't belong, judges will soon be as hated by this side or that side as politicians. Is that where we really want to go to register a "win" for our favorite cause rather than achieve that win where it counts -- at the ballot box?
Judges should focus on protecting rights clearly identified by the Constitution, like First Amendment rights and, most crucially, rights which the majority would happily strip from hated minorities (e.g, criminals).
5
Here are the trade-off's I could live with: 1) free birth control to any person who requests it, no questions asked 2) immediate end to the death penalty 3) immediate gun control, including criminalization of all military-style weapons, cartridges, bump stocks, etc. 4) complete access to morning after and other medical abortion pills 5) restricted access to abortion after first trimester 6) free childcare and preschool to families making $50K annually or less. Here's the thing: the same hypocrites who insist that abortion is murder don't give a fork that people are gunned down in mass shootings because of easy access to guns. They don't care how the children who would be brought into this world are taken care of. They believe in the power of the death penalty and the sin of birth control. So disheartening. For so many years I actually thought it was about abortion.
15
Truth is hard to take. Anti-science when it fits their needs.
1
There will be a new underground railroad.
2
The USA ….. "Fly Over Country" for the rational world.
The mystery to me is why are there ANY female supporters of the GOP or women who do not want to protect the right to control their own bodies ?
America , you are sliding backwards and the rest of the world is aghast but moving forward as they look over their shoulders and wonder, is Trump the symptom or part of the cause.
7
The ultimate issue is whether the fetus, before viability outside the womb, is a human life.
If it is, all of the arguments over a woman's right to control her body are moot. No one has the right to intentionally take a human life.
While many may disagree with me, I believe it is clear that it is a human life. This is a matter of common sense for all.
Planned Parenthood has always gamed the finances to illegally divert taxpayer funds to subsidize abortions. If that were not the case, in those states that will not allow abortion providers to receive any Medicaid funds, PP would spin off a separate entity, in separate quarters to handle abortions.
But if they did that, if the state requires a sonogram, pp would not be able to charge Medicaid for the sonogram [it's not an abortion, after all]. That would cut into the profit for the clinic, because the price for the abortion would either increase, or they'd have to absorb the cost.
1
Too bad we who advocate for common-sense restrictions on gun ownership don't organize and play the long game as successfully as those who oppose a woman's right to choose did.
7
Can we at least stop quibbling about terminology? One side says it's a baby, the other side says it’s a clump of cells (aren’t we all?), as though what we name it should determine how we treat it. But *we* don’t make the call; the person in whose body it resides makes that call. She may want to nurture and protect it at the cost of even her own life, or she may want to kill it -- yes, that is the proper terminology for what happens in abortion -- either way, it is her call to make, not anyone else’s.
8
Maybe this is what's needed to wake Republican women up that the Republican Party will fight tooth and nail for every living being in this country to have as many guns as they want, but if you wish a safe abortion...you're on your own. I know some have philosophical disagreements about abortion, but to deprive a woman of her constitutional right to choose while also denying women equal pay for equal work, the Republican Party is conveying they simply despise women - but they'll gladly take their vote.
10
It seems to me that Ms. Greenhouse either cannot understand or will not honor the rights of citizens to contest the abortion rulings of the supreme court.
There are millions of Americans who firmly believe that at the moment of conception a human being is formed. Yes, it is based on religious convictions but since when is a person's religious conviction not be acceptable in the marketplace of a free society.
1
@Edward Lewis believe what you want, but leave me and my right to choose out of it.
17
The poem about love 's going -- what's Love got to do with it? No woman "loves" an abortion. It's a right she has, and she may exercise it if she decides to do so.
No argument. But as an event in itself, it strikes me that an abortion is unlikely to be more "lovable" than, say, an appendectomy or a colonoscopy or any of a number of common medical procedures. The procedure may be necessary, life-saving, maybe even not as painful or distressing as the patient expected it to be.
But, please, save the "Love" for something other than routine medical procedures. It's a little over the top.
2
Let them come. They'll force the people to make abortion part of privacy, and then to create a Constitutional amendment protecting privacy against intrusions from the State. The unintended consequences of that will of that be profound.
2
The arc of history, I think, is no longer bending in favor of abortion rights. Those who believe the Supreme Court stuffed the notion of abortion rights down their throats are now working overtime to turn back Roe v. Wade. And if they have to destroy our constitutional order in the process, they are willing to do it.
It would also appear that the “inevitable” triumph of classical liberalism and democracy is now at risk. Were I a radical feminist or civil libertarian, I would be preparing for hard times. A growing, and increasingly well funded, percentage of the electorate is either indifferent to, or strongly opposed to, the values such groups hold most dear. Try singing the praises of liberal democracy or “global governance” to my Millennial sons when it has failed so abjectly and publicly to halt global warming or guarantee a living wage. Our rights-based political discourse was fine as long as it was delivering sane and fair public policies. Those days appear to be over, and the system that failed to deliver is now at risk.
3
One thing that interests me is the general absence of discussion in the abortion debate about what it means to choose to be a mother. It’s basically signing up for the most important unpaid job you’ll ever take on. It has enormous moral consequences and changes your life permanently. The “pro-life” movement totally trivializes the enormity of motherhood by demanding that women who find themselves pregnant when they don’t want to be take on the burden of motherhood. And it is a burden, if also a joy. No one demands the same of the men who pitched in half the DNA. Every woman I’ve known who has decided to have an abortion has done so for reasons that are altogether thoughtful, loving, and based firmly in reality. Impossible for those not walking in their shoes to fully understand, and impossible similarly to justly legislate every nuance of such a wrenching decision. But that’s not even what’s being attempted, of course...
18
now the liberal abortion proponents know how gun owners feel when anti-gunners rabidly go after second amendment rights...how many commenters here are pro-abortion and anti-gun rights? hopefully someday we will call a truce and have dialog instead of vitriol...
1
Most conservatives believe that abortion should be legal in cases of rape and incest. I believe that proving rape or incest to obtain access to an abortion puts an undo burden on poor and marginalized women in our society – the very people who are most likely to be victims of such crimes. This is a violation of equal protection. I think even our most conservative Supreme Court justices would agree.
6
If the low information voters/right wing religious group want a full ban on abortion based on their belief it is murder, then we should ban all guns for the reason - the only intent for use of a gun is to kill.
13
So, after decreeing that kids with special needs must be birthed, the administration tries to eliminate all the programs in place for their survival. "The most vulnerable among us" applies only to the unborn.
17
No surprises here. The preposterous position that "life begins at conception" is unsupported in science, law, morality, and, most importantly because it exposes these people as phonies pretending to be Christian, the Bible.
Forced Birthers who seek to impede lawful abortion are monsters. We see them use the term "innocent babies" to refer to zygotes, embryos, and non-viable fetuses, yet their ONLY use for those "innocent babies" is as punishment for women who dare engage in non-procreational sex. Universally, to a person, without exception in my experience, Forced Birthers work actively both to ensure that (1) no unwanted child goes unborn AND (2) no unwanted child is given prenatal care or is fed, housed, clothed, educated, or cured of disease on their dead-souled, compassionless, self-absorbed, narcissistic, "not my brother's keeper," "I got mine," anti-social-compact, objectivist dimes, even though they would be directly responsible for the births of all of those unwanted children when abortion becomes illegal again.
As, at the end of the day, it is those children -- for whose birth these degenerate phonies and ONLY they are responsible - who suffer when inflicted on those who don't want them, Forced Birthers are the worst humans alive. There's a special corner of hell reserved for all of them.
15
If all women in this country had access to good health care, and to foolproof and inexpensive birth control, the abortion issue would be moot. But apparently, some states would prefer to chastise and punish women instead. And I’ll give you a real scenario - what if you learned that you were pregnant with twins who both had spina bifida? And you were poor and had to work to support yourself? And that your birth control failed? It’s easy to be self-righteous and tell other people what you think they should do; not so easy when it’s you.
9
When abortion is illegal, women will have illegal abortions the way they used to before Roe v. Wade. I remember those times. There always were and always will be abortions.
13
What led Judge Sutton to his startling conclusion was the prospect of elevation, á la Barr and Whitaker. When we are finally delivered from a GOP presidency, Sutton will decamp for greener pastures, á la his former colleague and perennial GOP SCOTUS shortlisted Michael Luttig.
The infant mortality rate was extremely high for the entire length of human existence. Something like 30-50% of all babies died before the age of five until modern medical science reversed that trend in the 20th century.
Your “god” did nothing to reduce infant mortality over the millennia. Science has saved more babies in the last 100 years than all the prayers to a god for the last 2,000 years.
Your god, obviously and with extensive historical evidence, has no interest in preserving the life of a fetus or a baby, born or unborn, inside the womb or out.
Women, unlike your god, are extremely interested in prenatal care and preserving the life of their wanted babies. But if the pregnancy is unwanted, I do not see why women should be held to a higher standard than your god.
13
Overturning Roe v. Wade would be the best thing that happened to the Democratic Party.
Republicans who control purple states such as Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and other states would feel the wrath of the voters if they dare outlaw most abortions (just exceptions for rape and incest).
And believe me, it would also help tremendously in the 2020 election.
2
When I was a child an older, wise man told me that "your freedom ends where my nose begins". Very sensible and a notion today's angry liberal children should take to heart.
Somewhat similarly, women's rights end where a child begins. Those on the left who think that full term abortion and even post birth killings of unwanted children will ever be the law of the land need to rethink everything here.
Abortion should be that limited right that exists until the baby's heart beats. Anything more than that and no one can claim any moral high ground by chanting any nonsense about women's rights.
The crime here is the idea that a government has agency over anyone's body.
5
I've read the Constitution many times and you know what? Abortion is not in there. The Supreme Court erred in Roe v. Wade.
1
The word”woman “ isn’t there either. Why? We don’t count as people.
6
It's ironic how "right to life" only applies to unborn babies. These same people who are sanctimoniously protecting "life" are against any sort of health insurance to keep people healthy and any modicum of gun control. The abject hypocrisy is astounding.
7
And from this we are to infer that republicans really care about all children? Even those in cages and those dying at the border
Please spare me the pictures of those demonstrators really thinking they are doing something about abortion
Texas has a huge backlog of children needing loving homes. Yet the Rs are not rushing to love these children
There is not a backlog of R parents wanting unwanted children.
Vietnam Vet
6
Back in my day, before abortion was legal, if a young woman got pregnant in college or high school her entire future, career, life, was derailed and if she was alone — usually she was— her life ruined. The boys men were unaffected and went on their merry way.
Women pushed through pro choice legislation. Now women are so used to this right they have become apathetic. Where is the rage of college students that what happens to their bodies is largely to be determined in the future by people without vaginas?
There should be mass demonstrations in front of the White House and on every college campus. Without this action the clock will be turned back to prehistoric days when young women feared every sexual encounter could end their lives. Makes me glad I’m not young anymore.
7
This is a good thing...
The question of abortion was supposedly settled by Roe v Wade in the Supreme Court, rather than through democratic process. Right now the only avenue for people who still oppose virtually unrestricted abortion is through the courts.Over the long run in our Republic, the democratic processes can't be ignored.Until the Supreme Court over rules Roe v Wade and allows the citizens to decide the many questions concerning abortion, it will not stop. I expect the resolution of the question to resolve itself around the question of viability.
Let us be as clear as is possible:
The word "Abortion" does not appear in the Constitution.
Justice William O. Douglas admitted that the
"Right to an Abortion"
was an extension of the "Right to Privacy"
which he admitted was not found in the Constitution.
The vast majority of the "supposed" constitutional arguments in favour of abortion on demand are really arguments in
favour of contraception.
As for a patient having to wait 18 hours between the
Ultra-Sound and the Abortion being un-Constitutional,
will someone please tell Emergency Rooms and Doctors
that such delays are Unconstitutional - I have waited 20 hours in an emergency room and two months to see physicians.
Finally, as is usual with Ms. Greenhouse, she never mentions
that she was once an embryo, once a foetus, once a babe in the womb of her mother. Ms. Greenhouse now enjoys the right to life, as does the mother of any babe in the womb,
but she seems to have no qualms over the killing of the human beings in the wombs of their mothers...
2
I saved this comment from another poster a while ago because I found it thought inspiring:
Roe is going away. Inevitably. And soon. Probably without being explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court, but by being undercut in so many ways that it becomes meaningless.
Then, things may get very, very weird. In those states that succeed in passing laws dictating that fertilized eggs have full rights as legal persons, it will be a strange new world. Can a fetus that is miscarried at 4 months inherit property, if it is named as heir in a will by someone who dies during the fetus' time as a legal person? Can a pregnant woman be charged with child abuse if, in the judgment of her local sheriff, she fails to eat properly, get sufficient rest and regular prenatal care? Will we see photos of police busts of illegal stashes of morning-after pills?
Maybe strangest of all will be the inevitable attempts to prevent pregnant women from leaving an anti-abortion state. Will South Carolina subject every woman to a pregnancy test before she exits at the border, lest someone 9 weeks pregnant be on her way to New York to obtain an abortion? The mother has the right to travel; but what if she is "kidnapping" her fetus in order to later murder it?
7
@Anonymous. Have you seen "The Handmaid's Tale". When I first starting watching it, I thought it was weird but very entertaining. Now I fear that the issue of abortion will be the topic that tears the fabric of our society. Women will continue to be second class citizens and are voices will be silenced forever. Our only purpose will be to procreate.
4
All good questions. Let’s have a good logical discussion...
@Cecilia I haven't watched the show but I have read the book as an adult. The story is horrifying because it can so, so easily become reality in America today. And it was all incremental. First women can't have jobs. Then women can't have bank accounts. It all cascades until women are forced to live as faceless baby factories on legs. It could so easily happen now with all these religious extremists tooting their "life" horns. But it's not our lives that matter. Never was.
9
I dream of a day when women can walk away from these abusive states and move to pro-choice states. Eventually, without women, these red states will be depopulated. Wouldn't that be great?
Maybe we can set up an Underground Railroad- except it can be done above ground and in plain sight because it isn't illegal for women to move.
Of course the women most affected by these laws are poor and can't move.
11
The photo in this article puts to bed the lie that pro-lifers are mostly a bunch of conservative men who want to control women. There are always far more women at these rallies.
3
@Erik Women who have time to attend rallies are not the poor women whom anti abortion laws hurt. These are the wealthy women who can afford to take time off work (or not work at all). They are the ones who can afford to quietly take a "spa day" when they have a "miscalculation" in their cycle.
8
Liberal takes on abortion are all the evidence you need to realize that science denial is not a characteristic of conservatives alone.
3
@Thomas. Enlighten us. What science are you applying to abortion as it relates to women?
6
Sometimes I catch myself hoping that the court invalidates Roe because abortion will immedaitely become unavailable in the vast majority of counties in the country. When that happens all those women who take this lightly, the young and many others will wake up. I suspect R’s will have a tough time winning an election after that in any but the most red of states. I pull back though, because women will die as result. It’s inevitable.
6
The reasoning in the last case mentioned is bizarre to say the least. Under this same logic can’t the state forbid doctors from performing abortions, leaving women with the right to an abortion, but no one who can perform them?
I am frankly astonished that Linda Greenhouse can maintain any respect for the right wing judges she writes about. Mysef I have concluded that the Right has taken over the judiciary and we no longer have the rule of law. We have it only when the Right deems it too blatant to force their views on the country.
Once Trump is gone, even if D’s are in control of congress and the presidency, they will be unable to do ANYTHING. The right wings courts will simply veto anything that is passed. Does anyone think that this SCOTUS would allow any of the many forms of Medicare for All to become law? Just as with the ACA, they will gin up ridiculous cases that they will then use to declare the laws invalid.
6
Should Roe vs Wade be overturned, the next step is to compel men suspected of fathering these unwanted babies to have their DNA analyzed. If women are legally compelled to give birth, legal principles suggest men should also lose legal sovereignty to their bodies when it comes to matters of reproduction.
Then, having been identified, the State can act to see that these fathers share in the financial burden of that child until it either reaches majority, or in the case of disability, the rest of its life.
9
@Chickpea Why don't we do that already with single men who impregnate women and have no intention of supporting their offspring.
3
Today's young women do not seem to care much that pro-choice is about to become a thing of the past.
6
We wouldn't be having these battles if the Supreme Court had not made abortion a near absolute right, similar to the way the NRA sees the Second Amendment. It's scary how similar the abortion and gun lobbies are.
Do abortion proponents honestly believe there isn't a human being inside the uterus the day before delivery, the week before, month, two months, three months, even six months before?
The battle continues because in our minds and hearts, both men and women know that no one should have the right to kill an innocent human being, and that's exactly what's taking place with an abortion.
3
No one has a late term abortion unless it is a medical emergency. No one.
14
@Micea001: The infusion of humanity from culture begins at birth.
2
In my view, if a woman has the right to get a tattoo, to get a nose job, and to have Botox injections, then she has the right to a procedure that can terminate a pregnancy. It’s her body, it’s her choice. I think the Supreme Court got the Rowe v. Wade decision right. But, I’m not so sure about gay marriage. I'm not personally against gay marriage, but I'm not so sure the ruling was sound, since men and women always had equal right to marriage. That might get reversed.
3
Most who call themselves "pro life" are not --- this demographic loves the death penalty, wars, guns and the rest of the extreme right-wing agenda.
We should be calling them what they really are: "anti woman."
22
The acceptance of Roe v Wade was based on Griswold v Connecticut, a case that was correctly decided based on privacy concerning contraception and invasion of government into the intimate actions of people in the bedroom. It should never have been accepted by the Supreme Court. Rather is should have been returned to the States. It was not and never should have been a Constitutional issue.
Over reach of the worst kind...
2
@JAC: The states do not deliver equally protective laws, and they mess with our heads with all sorts of psychopathologies like laws that take control of our bodies away from ourselves and generate expensive red tape for medical practicioners.
5
@JAC So I guess we should expect to go back to back-alley abortions by organized and unorganized criminals, and inadvertent death by self-inflicted coat-hanger wounds. A woman has an absolute human right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, the religious fantasies and beliefs of any individual or group notwithstanding.
5
It still doesn’t make it constitutional. It was a bad decision no matter how you cut it
1
Make no mistake. Roe is going down. It may take another 10 years but that ruling (notice I didn't call it a law) will be invalided. Most likely by recognizing that the baby is a person.
2
@Matt So I guess we will go back to back alley abortions by organized and unorganized criminals, and inadvertent death by self-inflicted coat-hangar wounds. A woman has an absolute human right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, the religious fantasies and beliefs of any individual or group notwithstanding.
3
The same people against abortion also want to cut food stamps, health care, housing subsidies, day care—and of course no family leave, no raise in minimum wage, no free college education, no clean air, clean water.
6
@Matt: You became who you are after you were born, infused by the people you grew up with.
2
This looks like a slow motion train wreck: the inevitability of it is so stark.
Trump now has enough Trump/Bush justices on the Court to reverse Roe. It's coming inexorably.
Fact is, Roe was never the best case, founded on a right of privacy found nowhere in the Constitution (except perhaps in the 4th amendment to be safe in our persons). Even Justice Ginsberg wished Roe had not been the basis of abortion rights.
Justice Blackmun struggled mightily and ultimately argued the difference between abortion and infanticide involved drawing lines and he drew his at about 21 weeks.
But now, the law will be what Justices Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Roberts say it is.
This will mean no abortions in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina.
Those women too poor to travel out of state will have unwanted children. The consequences of that are easy to imagine.
If there were any justice, the consequences of all this will be suffered by those deep South states most especially.
2
@Claudia: It is a no-brainer under the blanket prohibition of faith-based legislation. Live begins at birth, and not all births have good medical prospects.
2
One reason that back alley abortions should NOT become as common in the event of an abortion ban is that it is going to be relatively easy for women in search of an abortion to put their hands on an abortion pill. The anti-abortionists are not going to be able to stop that from happening.
2
@Thomas But that pill is only good in the very earliest stages of a pregnancy, isn't that the case? Many pregnant women will not recognize their gravid condition until later.
4
@Tim
It can be used up to 9 weeks. Almost 90% of abortions take place by then.
1
I am utterly baffled and sickened by the relentless effort of the faith into which I was born to be hell-bent on robbing me of who I am as a woman. It is so wrong. I am told by a medieval religion that I am a sinner, a murderer for my pro-choice ideology. I ask, “Who among you knows at what point a fertilized ovum becomes a human being? Who among you hands guns to the living to kill the living?” They call us sinners, those pedophile priests, those sexually frustrated women and men, those power hungry misogynists. Little do they know, or accept, that it is they who sin against a universal moral law of respecting the dignity of an individual’s sacred right and responsibility over her own body, soul, and mind. I am I, you are not.
80
@Kathy Lollock the child is not your body. He or she is a separate being. "I am utterly baffled" that you don't understand that.
5
@Matt I am "utterly baffled" that you don't understand that a self-functioning, truly alive and breathing woman is less important and has no rights compared to a indescribable lump of cells. It is her right to decide what happens to her body. It is none of your business.
20
@Matt
A woman's rights over her own body means she the absolute right to say who or what can be inside it and physically attached to it.
Unfortunately, I am not "utterly baffled" at how many men have difficulty understanding this.
18
Women : Don’t have Sex with Republicans. I never have, and never will. Maybe THAT will give them a Clue.
Seriously.
12
@Phyliss Dalmatian - I did, years ago when I was way too young to even be dating. Reagan worshipping, good old boy. He left me when I was pregnant. Lesson learned the hard way.
14
@DR
I’m sorry. I hope you were drunk, at least, and can’t remember the details. Personally, I would have to be unconscious. Not like that would stop them.
Seriously.
4
No health insurance
No maternity leave
Expensive childcare
One of the most dangerous things a Black woman in the US can do it give birth
Honestly it is like they just want to ban sex.
12
What would ultrasound of stone-hearted judges reveal?
6
@Robert Roth: Look for amygdala metabolic activity in their brains via fMRI. You probably won't find much.
2
When I was a teenage girl in the 1960s just learning about dating, my father cautioned me that *it's always the girl who gets hurt.* Sometimes it seems that little has changed since then, except that I now know that it is all society that is hurt when men don't take responsibility for their actions and instead try to control girls and women.
10
Cal,
Planned Parenthood performs more than 300,00O abortions every year and they are the largest abortion provider in the country. All the good they do in providing other health care services is immediately wiped away by the astronomical number of abortions it does every year. This is where they make their money. The other services pays them just a pittance of the amount that they receive from abortions. Of course, they want to provide abortions. This is a cash cow for their organization. This is so sad.
3
Abortion is legal. It’s not your body, not your decision.
8
@KMW. Please cite your sources. That number is ridiculous!
8
In 2015, 638,169 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate for 2015 was 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 188 abortions per 1,000 live births.
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm
There are times when death is justified - for war, for punishment, for self-defense, and for pain removal. But in the case of a six-week old embryo, we can't even call it death because there wasn't much life. For this reason, let's dispense of the crocodile tears and the faux outrage about "killing". We kill all the time - real live humans - and we barely mind.
72
@"much life?" What does that even mean?
Many years ago I worked with children in foster care in Milwaukee, WI, where there were numerous anti-choice groups involved in ending abortion through political campaigns and pregnancy counseling centers. One teen girl I worked with got pregnant and was opposed to abortion as a Christian. She turned eighteen during her pregnancy and was no longer in the system. When her baby was around four months old she called me because she had no money for diapers. Her boyfriend and extended family were all poor and simply had no money to help. I called every “pregnancy counseling center” (anti-abortion counseling) and several church groups and asked if assistance for a teen who had “chosen life” was available. Most were astonished by the request and none offered assistance. All I could do was refer my former client to apply for emergency government assistance.
The hypocrisy of the Republican right to lifers is breath-taking. The same people who stand in front of clinics trying to dissuade women from having abortions vote for politicians who cut services to the poor and give tax cuts to the wealthy. This country is disgusting.
31
@Anita Lichtenberger This is the real truth. Anti-abortionists are wrapped up in a fantasy. But they won't put their money where their mouth is when it comes down to the nitty gritty of what it takes to raise a baby in America these day. You're on your own. It's your fault. You were stupid. You deserve to suffer. And apparently the kid does too, because they only really care about their fetal fantasies. Not actual living people.
6
The cure to clear the docket is the very first stipulation required by the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution, only fact-based legislation can be enacted.
2
Canada has no abortion law and yet women are not rushing to end their pregnancies in the ninth month, during birth etc as the American christian busybodies supposedly fear will happen.
People perhaps don't like to come right out and say, we don't want equality. Non whites, women, gays - back you go to the positions you would have held in 1950. Don't even dare to dream.
67
All part of the Make America “Great” Again agenda!
4
I know I must read these articles and be aware of the things they describe--of the cruel and foul demagoguery that is at play in the work of these judges so passionate for restricting women's rights--but it is so hard to face the hostility toward women that is ever-present. It's sickening.
Pre-dating our constitution is the understanding that people--those human beings that are post-natal--are entitled to rights and also have responsibilities. The notion that the not-yet-born have any rights is antithetical to the laws of the ages and the attempts to use this issue as a cynical way to motivate the simple-minded to vote republican are maddening and exhausting.
8
Where again do we find the term "abortion" in the United States Constitution? It isn't there.
1
@cannoneer2: The Constitution enumerates no right or power that is reserved by the people. It is strictly about the limited delegated set of governmental powers.
8
The word “woman” isn’t mentioned in the Constitution either.
9
@cannoneer2
Neither is the word privacy.
But Supreme Court cases have held that the penumbra of rights enumerated in the Constitution include the right to privacy.
3
Tomorrow the movie "Unplanned" is opening across the country. It is the true story of Abby Johnson of Planned Parenthood who has a complete turnaround about her opinion of abortion. She was one of the top directors at Planned Parenthood but walked away permanently after participating in a 13 week old fetus who was aborted. It made her sick to her stomach and she said she could no longer be part of this cruel and inhumane behavior.
What also convinced her were pro life folks working next door to her abortion facility. She knew she could no longer take part in providing abortions which ended innocent life. Now Abby Johnson is one of the most outspoken pro life advocates we have today. She worked for many years in the abortion industry but it really took seeing this 13 week old fetus that convinced her it was wrong.
I plan on seeing the movie immediately as I have a feeling it will not be in New York City theaters long (it is only showing in two). It is very important to hear Abby Johnson's story which speaks the truth about abortion. Supposedly they do not sugarcoat events but just present the facts. For pro life people like myself, this is a must see movie. This movie could not have come at a more important time as abortion is now one of the most important hot button issues in our society today.
5
@KMW This movie is about one person's experience and she has every right to have an opinion and also to change her mind. But her experience, and her change of heart is just that--- HERS. It does not speak to my experience, my circumstance, my health, my reasons, --- it is not about me at all and what I fear and resent most is the people who will use this movie to determine what I or others can/should do in this most personal of situations.
20
@KMW - It's a shame there aren't any movies for you to see about how to really prevent abortions, with sex education, a living wage, affordable health care and contraception. You might actually learn something.
19
@KMW -
1. Johnson was the director of the PP clinic at Bryan, Texas. Hardly one of the top people in PP.
2. Fox News reported that Johnson was unable to provide any documentation or other evidence to support her allegations about pressure to perform abortions.
3. Johnson's description of her conversion has been questioned. Planned Parenthood stated that its records do not show any ultrasound-guided abortions performed on the date Johnson says she witnessed the procedure, and the physician who performed abortions at the Bryan clinic stated that Johnson had never been asked to assist in an abortion. Although Johnson said the abortion was of a 13-week-old fetus, records from the Texas Department of Health show no such abortions performed at the Bryan clinic on the date in question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Johnson_(activist)#cite_note-texas-monthly-8
4. Johnson revealed in January 2011 that she had had two abortions herself.
I think I'll skip the movie.
12
There probably were similar articles like this being written by conservative writers when Democrats were in control of appointing pro-choice judges lamenting the erosion of our morality through baby killing.
In fact, abortion has become a single most consequential issue that dominates our politics and government. IN FACT, I dare say, if not for wanting of these abortion busting judges the moralistic conservatives want, the obviously amoral Trump might not have been elected!
For the Evangelical Christians, so long as we are not killing innocent "babies", or copulate immorally with the wrong people, it is okay for us to kill babies after they are born and adults when they are poor by taking away our healthcare, or kill all of us with environment contamination and unchecked food productions by corporations, and inflicting suffering to all of us with nonliving wage, poor quality schools, etc. etc.
There is only one thing to do -- vote.
15
@Doodle: It all apparently follows from the belief of many that the US is "under God", so everything bad that happens here must be punishment for some blasphemous public policy, most likely legal abortion.
1
The pro-choice movement has created the environment we are currently debating. Clearly it wasn't enough that abortion became legal, no...it became something quite different indeed.
Now the debate has become about aborting downs syndrome babies and aborting 1 hour prior to birth. It was the scene when the New York bill passed with all the legislators cheering that was quite unseemly. And don't forget Governor Northam and his infanticide comments.
There are a lot of pro choice people out there who don't support that. It is becoming too extreme and the pro life movement is taking advantage of it.
1
@Melissa M. And how many 1-hour-before-birth abortions have been documented? So I guess you'd like to go back to back alley abortions by organized and unorganized criminals, and inadvertent death by self-inflicted coat-hanger wounds. A woman has an absolute human right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, the religious fantasies and beliefs of any individual or group notwithstanding.
9
No one seriously advocates abortion "one hour before birth." That is nonsensical.
9
@Melissa M. - Give me one concrete example of an abortion that was done one hour before birth solely because the fetus had down's syndrome.
6
Does anyone doubt that there will be a dramatic increase in the number of "D&Cs" being performed on women of the wealthy if Roe goes down?
7
Posting again, maybe the third time is the Charm.
Women : Do not have Sex with Republicans. I never have, and never will. Nothing good can come from it, and they have NO incentive to change their ways. I’m deadly serious.
13
It’s just a matter of time until the Supreme Court overrules its fabrication of a right to abortion not found in the constitution. America’s inhumanity to millions of babies will end.
3
The pro-lifers are making sure there will be a lot of dead women when/if legal abortion is banned.
12
Just for fun, let's imagine men could not purchase a condom without infinite hoops to jump through. Let's add waiting periods, outrageous fees, and intrusive procedures to make sure they were "healthy" enough to wear a condom. Let's imagine that they might die in the process of waiting for the condom sale to go through, and, in the most radical thought experiment, that they - and they alone - would have to raise an unwanted child on their own, without a dime of help from the government.
14
Republicans want US to go back to the time when rich women could get abortion safely while others die from inappropriate means. Human or not. They don't really care.
8
Minority religions zealots from red states has captured power through gerrymandering and now they're trying to install their small mind onto rest of us, who are in majority.
It's time to get a clean slate of Non Red state leaders into Congress and impeach all these religious black coats out of their positions.
7
As I remember pro choice advocates started by claiming that an embryo was not human, just a glob of tissue. Michelle Goldberg said as much recently in her podcast. Then, it's not a human being until the time that the baby is born. Now some states want a botched aborted baby to be left to die. Or, it's not human until a heartbeat is detected. Planned Parenthood lied about selling fetal tissue and organs. The Pro Choice movement has made huge errors in not recognizing that they cannot treat Pro Life advocates like idiots and that unborn babies deserve advocacy every bit as much as a women with an unwanted pregnancy. Then maybe we can have a discussion
4
@JAC: We become human by absorbing the cultures, civilizations, or jungles we are born into. To do that, one needs to be born, with the luck and good fortune of health, and a fertile brain.
3
The neo-liberal acceptance of Judge Ho’s “the moral tragedy of abortion,” is a betrayal. Abortion is birth control and should be considered birth control until viability at 24 weeks. The neo-liberal betrayal of women to satisfy the religious demands of a few has empowered the destruction of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” . By adopting the “moral” argument, the Courts and Legislatures are endorsing and thereby making laws “respecting an establishment of religion” and “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” by demanding compliance with the religious beliefs of some.
The claims of the “pro-life” crowd are religious and have no place in any discussion that discriminates against women. The religious beliefs of the SCOTUS Justices should force them to recuse themselves regarding abortion. Their decisions that violate the “establishment clause” should be cause for their sanction or removal. Any “precedent” that incorporates religious justification or beliefs that discriminate against women must be eliminated to prevent restoration of slavery on a religious basis.
7
You’re interpretation of the constitution is grossly wrong.....and you make it easier for pro lifers to make their case.
A case that advocates for human like just like those who opposed slavery and punitive child labor laws. Would say slavery was ok for those who wanted it but allow those opposed to be silenced?
Religion doesn't just poison everything, it is the #1 toxin used to destroy girls and women for over 2000 years.
12
Don't worry. She's got this.
Finally, respect for human life. Talk about FAKE NEWS...my whole life I've listened to the liberal "choice" argument...never once hearing a liberal admit the choice they support is murder. The Hippocratic Oath was changed, after thousands of years, to pacify the murdering left, and this too, they will never admit. Abortion remains today the greatest farce every perpetrated on the American people. One lie after another, leading all the way to the graveyard.
1
Well said
This kind of incremental erasure of women's rights is how you get people like Kermit Gosnell. Now I know anti-choice people love Gosnell as it gives them an outrage to point to and the chance to malign abortion services. I always find it interesting that none of the anti-choice crowd ever considers the logical end point of their policies: They create an atmosphere where the unscrupulous will take advantage of the desperate.
1
I am all for Women having control of our bodies, but what about the Female Fetus that is aborted or born and then eliminated? Doesnt she have rights? Control of her body?
Years from now, Abortion will be looked at the same way Torture and Slavery is looked at today.
As Barbaric and Criminal
4
@Sara When the fetus can live on its own outside its mother's womb, than I'd agree with you. Until then, it does not have any rights. The will, the health and the rights of the mother are paramount.
8
53% of white women voted for trump. They want this to happen.
3
Only 41% of All women voted for Mr Trump. The majority of women do not want this government or their neighbor deciding their right to have an abortion. It really upsets me that GA State Legislator and Governor are getting ready to pass a law stripping women of this right and placing an undue burden on the poor and lower working class.
2
@Lisa Podskoc Completely agreed. That is why I stated "white women". Until that demographic flips there will be trouble. And, incidentally, I don't think that these white women are benighted handmaids who are suffering under delusions propagated by the patriarchy. Most are reasonably well educated---high school or above.
Welcome to the Republic of Gilead. As Sinclair Lewis said, when facism comes to America, it will be draped in the American flag, and be carrying a cross.
15
The title should be “...threaten the right to choose an abortion.”
1
DR,
You are correct. I have not saved any lives due to abortion. I am fairly new to the movement. But I know many others even in liberal New York City who are responsible for convincing women in gentle ways to keep their babies. They were so glad they did not go through with the abortion and have even joined our movement. They said that through compassion and kindness they were convinced that they should not abort. It is so satisfying when we hear stories such as this. It makes our determined efforts all that more rewarding. If we save even just one baby from abortion we consider it a success for both mother and child. They have absolutely no regrets that they chose life.
3
@KMW - Personally I find abortion horrifying and could never have one. I dealt with my crisis pregnancy by having the baby.
At one time I was deluded enough to think Republicans actually were pro life and then I grew up and joined the real world and realized their policies made abortions more likely. Withholding sex education, affordable health care and contraception are more likely to result in an unwanted pregnancy that may make a woman decide to have an abortion.
If you don't believe me take a look at the statistics in red states.
11
Life begins when a baby takes its first breath. Terminating a fetus is not a choice made lightly at any stage of pregnancy. Such decisions should be made by a woman and her physician. The pro choice movement should take a page from the gun lobby and unapologetically insist that all pregnancies may be terminated without restriction until the first breath. Compromising on this leads down the slippery slope of continued attacks on the right to choose. If it's good enough for the gun lobby it should be good enough for the pro choice movement. Legislative nuance and compromise have only led to an extreme erosion of the right to an abortion.
5
Linda Greenhouse provides consistently good and informative reporting on the Supreme Court. As a lawyer, I say "thanks" and keep it up.
5
Fine Christian folks, these "pro-life" young men & women. Do they have the slightest idea what life was like in America before Roe v. Wade, the bloody coat-hangers, the filthy illegal back-alley butchers. If conservatives succeed in re-criminalizing choice, women will not stop having abortions, they'll just no longer be having them in clean safe clinics.
67
This is a valid argument that merits more discussion. The problem now is that Democrats have crossed a line
entering the world of barbarism. Where next will they (you) go ? It does make me wonder.
1
@TritonPSH The most ridiculous argument yet. People will always steal, murder, cheat, and lie, no matter what the law is. So why even bother having laws? "People will always murder one another, so how about we do it in a clean environment? Enough of these back alley shootings!" "People will always shoot each other, so let's just make it easy to get a gun!" At least have a consistent ethic, here.
1
Please tell us how?
1
For me, this issue is very real and personal. I have always been in the camp of supporting a woman’s right to choose, even if, in the abstract, I thought that I would never go through with it myself. Well, I have an abortion scheduled for tomorrow morning. This baby was planned and very much wanted. My husband and I have been trying to start a family for years. Last year I miscarried twins. This time, I received a definitive diagnosis of Down Syndrome. I wanted to share this because I often hear extreme examples being cited by pro-choice supporters: the single woman who can’t afford to raise a child, the rape victim, genetic death sentences like Trisomy 18.
In my case, my husband and I thought through the best-case scenario: a high-functioning child with DS. This child would be loved and protected by us for as long as we live. But this child would likely outlive us (we’re in our 40s) and would be all alone when we’re gone. People with DS need to be cared for for their entire lives. It would be irresponsible for us to bring this child into this world knowing that support for people with disabilities—especially adults—is paltry and in jeopardy. And this is the best-case scenario. I have a 40% chance of miscarriage. Most DS cases have other complications, like heart defects.
We wouldn’t wish this situation on our worst enemy. It is complicated and personal and absolutely devastating to live with, and I don’t see how politicians and judges think they have any say in it at all.
22
Responding to my own post just to say that I regret using the word “extreme” when referring to the situation of a single woman who cannot afford to raise a child. Sadly, this scenario is all too common.
1
@L.M. My heart goes out to you for making this difficult decision. I have worked with people that have DS. They are wonderful. But I understand your decision. You may not die before your child but children with DS need stability and any disruption of their schedule is very upsetting. Our country doesn't really care about people with disabilities, the elderly, etc. Your decision is yours and yours only. I support it.
2
It may not matter to you, but trust me on this, people reading your response today are praying for you.
2
Possibly the most help that people in pro-choice states can give women in anti-abortion states is to legalize over the counter sales of abortifacient drugs.
This may require both a political fight inside pro-choice states and then another with the FDA. But as a New Yorker (now living elsewhere), I'm confident that New York State would be willing to do this.
Here in Louisiana, even Democratic politicians are mostly anti-abortion, including the Governor. That's crazy, but the topic is mostly taboo.
3
"...while women have a right to obtain abortions, neither Planned Parenthood nor any other abortion provider has the right to perform them." I wonder how judge Sutton would react to that reasoning being applied to gun sales: while citizens have a right to bear arms, no gun manufacturer nor seller has the right to provide them. The more activist judges stretch to justify unconstitutional bans on abortion the more they make it easier to quietly erode all our rights.
22
@Michael: Guess how long gun retailing would survive if the FBI didn't take responsibility for approving gun purchase applications.
2
@Michael
There is a clear individual right in the Constitution to own a gun, complete with supporting documentation from our Founding Fathers on the issue. As for abortion, only a contorted legal argument from 1973. Some of us believe in the freedom to have both, but I am tired of hearing some folks argue the legal merits for abortion and against guns, based not on law but their own ideas of how things should be.
1
@cannoneer2
The constitution doesn't provide a "clear individual right" to own a gun, it provides for well regulated militias. It was only after the Heller decision that it became an individual right, much like having an abortion became a right after Roe. I wasn't arguing for abortion or against guns merely pointing out that judges writing opinions that seemed tailored more to "their own ideas of how things should be" than to the law (including precedents) can be problematic.
4
The abortion provider has very different interests from the mother and the father. If the father wants to protect his unborn child, his right to procreate is certainly greater than the provider's right to earn a fee.
The courts have made their biggest mistake by inventing a woman's right to destroy the fetus without considering the father's interest. This omission has left the courts without a justiciable case. It also highlights why the interests of the abortionist may not be a proxy for the woman that engaged in a consensual relationship with a man under circumstances where new life was foreseeable.
4
@Eugene Patrick Devany - Here's a helpful tip. If you're a man use protection and make sure that you and your partner are on the same page when it comes to the consequences of your behavior.
7
@Eugene Patrick Devany
You have repeatedly refused to consider the fact that the man does not have the right to force a woman to gestate a baby for him. You have refused to respond to the fact that his part of the reproductive process ends at ejaculation. Where is role ends, his rights end. I'm not sure that you even understand that the woman's body must go through a pregnancy for a baby to be born.
I would be very interested to see if you can even attempt to respond to this, rather than simply repeating your benighted vision that men have the right to force a woman to give birth; that he has ownership over her reproductive organs and can determine how they are used against her will.
15
@Eugene Patrick Devany: People's "right to procreate" has already gone past the capacity of this planet to sustain this population with this technology, and God is not going to expand the Earth.
4
How may men favoring forced birth would accept restrictions on their reproductive rights? How many would accept that DNA testing would be done and that they would be responsible for half of all costs through adulthood of the children?
I am curious how do the men favoring forced birth feel about forcing their wives or significant other to give birth if she becomes pregnant due to rape or an affair by another man?
How do they fell about forcing their daughter to give birth to the child of man who raped her?
How many would prefer that the women in their loves undergo a risky pregnancy where their loved ones have a high risk of death?
On any number of topics all too often those screaming the loudest are experiencing self-loathing and have the most to hide. How many forced-birth proponents have secretly had or sent someone for an abortion?
13
The author scandalously and shamefully misstates the law. The state has a compelling interest in banning abortion after viability. That was the Roe holding.
The Supreme Court will soon correct the error it made in Roe by allowing technology and medical science to end abortion forever. Once a child can be taken from its selfish mother and be nurtured, loved and sustained without her womb, the law allowing infanticide will be no more.
The state interest in life far exceeds the purported right of a woman to murder her child. Were it no so, how can the state force parents to pay for a child they do not want? Why do we allow the state to put in prison parents who do not support his/her child? Because we are a moral, civil society that requires the state to protect the life of a child.
Advocates for abortion on demand lack the moral compass requires for reasoned debate. Each such proponent of infanticide surely is thankful his/her mother was not so selfish, shortsighted and immoral. Else they would not have breath to speak the arguments in favor of murdering an unborn child. The irony is surely not lost on any reasonable person.
Termination of a pregnancy is a tragic event, as anyone who have lost a pregnancy knows. To advocate for the ‘right’ to do so, without reason, time to reconsider the ‘choice’ or without regard to the life of the unborn is barbaric. The author would be well served to rethink her position. I pray God forgive anyone performing this sin.
1
@EWG"Once a child can be taken from its selfish mother and be nurtured, loved and sustained without her womb, the law allowing infanticide will be no more. "
Once the state is faced with the cost of sustaining over a million fetuses per year that would have been aborted that state will reinstate abortion with flags flying.
11
@EWG: There is no law allowing infanticide, where do you get that outlandish idea?
2
If it weren't so clear that the advocates of these abortion bans lose interest in the zygotes, embryos, and non-viable fetuses with which they confuse actual children the moments the "Innocent Little Babies'" heads crown, this movement would be a regrettable attack on settled law rather than pure evil. No one suffers as much as the children themselves when monsters inflict them on parents who don't want them or can't raise them. If these awful people worked one tenth as hard to ensure that children are adequately fed, housed, clothed, educated, and cured of disease as they do to ensure that unwanted children are born, this world would be a far better place, but no one works harder against helping children than the people who make the term "Right to Life" just a cruel joke.
19
Vote for Democrats. With a Democratic president, senate and house we can add judges to SCOTUS to repair the gravedigger of democracy, Mitch McConnell’s degradation of the senate’s functions.
9
Elderly white men who are owned by hypocritical evangelicals are making the decisions that affect the lives of millions of women. Are we living The Handmaid's Tale yet?
12
@Linda how is Handmaid's Tale even remotely the same thing? Where is the logic in that argument? (Hint: there is no logic, it's just a catchy phrase.) And why do people constantly bring unrelated factors like ethnicity and age into this argument? This is about killing human beings. Or are you supportive of nihilism - the very same belief system used to justify things like genocide? It would be better if people who made these arguments went ahead and removed their mask.
1
"But as the tide of Supreme Court-bound abortion cases turns rapidly into a flood, it’s become a challenge even for people with a deep interest in the future of the abortion right to keep track of what’s happening and of which cases to worry about most. "
Again with the journalistic passive. What is it with the writers around here?
There is no "tide" of cases and no "flood"; nothing is "happening".
This is the end-game of a half-century long, extravagantly-funded, cradle-to-grave, campaign of perfidy, deception, outright lies, and criminal abuse of the ungodly status our all-too-trusting founders allowed religion, and the now-obviously-pathological faith in the goodness of mankind they chose as the basis for all their political fulminations.
Cavanaugh, a legal and personal affront to humanity, was no accident. He was so carefully raised and groomed he may as well have been a genetic experiment.
The fully-indoctrinated court now holding place at 1 First St NE is no aberration, nor was Mitch McConnell.
Old Mitch was breaking the tape at the finish line for this cabal of self-interested, barely American technocrats. Granted he jumped the gun a bit with his "You shall not nominate!!" bellowing, but after all these years the finish line was so close...
Bland "...they wouldn't do that, we're on the same team here" Dems, still clueless, see none of this; fail to respond.
Let's just say these godly boys win. What then? Where's all this righteous energy go? Who's next?
1
And extremist Democrats are doing whatever they can to swing public opinion further against abortion by pushing for laws permitting that horrific procedure right up to the moment of birth.
1
@EGD: They (Democrats) are doing no such thing. Abortion right up to the moment of birth isn’t even medically possible. If a fetus has died and/or not viable late in pregnancy due to a serious birth defect such as anencephaly or having its organs outside of the body, birth is induced or a ceasarean is performed, just like with a living baby.
14
The title says it all... as if threatening abortion was a bad thing! Humanity's proclivity to redefine evil as good should make our stomachs turn, but we can't even blush anymore. This world is so twisted it doesn't know its right from its left. Racism, discrimination, war, abortion, hatred, greed... God have mercy on us.
1
I guess Canada should brace for a flood of wealthy Republican women crossing the border for "a day at the spa."
17
When i encounter men who feel abortion is murder and a sin, i often ask about other capitol sins: greed and gluttony. Are they willing to make billionaires illegal? would they put a 100% tax on luxury items?
It seems the only sin the want to legislate is the sin they never have to worry about committing.
17
With the ridiculous redistributionist economic policies of the current crop of Dem candidates...
Been forced to weaken my personal pro-choice view...
Not the philosophical aspect – the geographic aspect...
For 2020 and the rest of the decade, willing to go along with abortion being restricted in some states, so long as it is both legal and accessible in others...
In these crazy times, if one-third of the states would pass a constitutional amendment protecting the right to choose, and another few would at the statute level, I'd call it a day...
Prior, wanted something national and affirmative – e.g. any physician or facility licensed to perform caesareans, would need to provide equal clinical access to abortion...
It’d be the physicians who had to personally and overtly opt out – a la draft deferments...
.....
For clarity on a related topic, would yield less than an inch on full LGBTQ civil rights...
In that space, only nuance there would be that a provider wouldn't have to personally pen some text that would be antithetical to their faith...
i.e. must bake the cake, and put two grooms or brides atop it...
Must print typed-in invitations and save-the-dates...
Calligraphers - whether by ink or icing – and their ilk, narrowly exempted...
Yeah, a bit off topic – but I’d thought 2020 would be the year all these rights’d unequivocally go national...
Not at the Dem price-tag...
A free country cannot sustain itself by printing free money and giving away free stuff...
Brett K has his beer already chillin!
1
Republicans want abortion illegal.
The US is has the highest infant mortality rate in the western world.
They are sentencing newborns to a death penalty.
It is a woman's choice and women have chosen badly for eons. White women do not vote democrat. Who's fault is it that the people white women vote for are there to end women's choice?
2
@Mogwai
All the white women I know vote Democrat
1
Abortion is usually a moral trajedy but should not be illegal.
Prohibiting Abortion is a tool to control females, period.
The anti-abortion crowd only wants to control females, they want nothing to do with the kids, just the power.
Controlling reproduction is right behind Abortion, so get ready.
We are entering the "All pigs are equal, some pigs are more equal than others" phase
9
I am 71 yo and am still not sure morally or ethically how I feel about abortion, others are certain and that is there right. But I darn well know know how I feel about that law...what the SC rules is the law of the land. These moronic attempts to go around it should be shot down every time.
4
Linda, if just one child is saved by any of these judges, it will be a good day for America. Please, accept that life begins at conception and that every abortion kills a human being.
4
@Rosa M
Please. Don't credit the judges for "saving" a child (sic).
The woman is the one gestating, giving birth, and raising the baby.
Forcing someone else to be a kidney donor doesn't mean you saved someone else's life.
The judges wanna save babies? Go distribute food to staving children in Syria. Go donate blood marrow. Birth your own fetus. They can't offer me up and take the credit.
9
And how many children are born into poverty, hunger, abuse or homelessness?
“If even one...”
How many potential children are never conceived because nonviable pregnancies cannot be terminated?
“If even one....”
2
Given that all laws which restrict abortions present the greatest obstacles to indigent women, is it not possible that the real agenda of the leaders of the anti-abortion movement is to keep the poor from escaping poverty and obtaining higher quality jobs and social status? Unplanned pregnancies can force a woman to drop out of school or lose a good job. Wealthy women will always find the resources to terminate their pregnancies, so unwanted pregnancy is far less catastrophic for them. I wonder how many of these "right to life" crusaders were against the Christmas bombing or the Iraq war. And how do they feel, I wonder, about women who are maimed and killed by self induced or back alley abortions, which are commonly resorted to by desperate women who are denied access to a safe abortion? Did those women have a right to life?
183
I think that it’s not only possible but likely a tool to also get people to vote against their other interests and let those in charge fail to support their needs in order to gain control, power, and money.
27
@Jon Gordon
Indeed.
It's all part of that Calvinist ethos that sees the wealthy as worthy, the poor as unworthy. And we can't have people rising up out of poverty and confusing class and status.
"The rich get richer, and the poor get--children."
34
@Jon Gordon
Certainly politicians would think twice about banning abortion if they didn't know that they themselves, or their wives & daughters, would always be able to afford traveling to get one. It's the same with taking health insurance away from the non-rich, or a hundred other issues that transfer freedom & power to the few. Perhaps they aren't motivated by ill will toward the poor, but in a country where financial power buys political power, keeping the poor poor is a means to empowering & enriching the rich.
26
I believe all the judges you've mentioned are men. Make no mistake, they are pushing forward with the idea that 'society' has standing--the 'right'--to nationalize women's wombs for its own benefit.
Remember the horrors of Ceaucescu's Romania, and the horrors of the one-child policy in China: two sides of the same totalitarian coin. This has nothing to do with the sanctity of life, and everything to do with controlling the means of production.
326
@Comp -- "This has nothing to do with the sanctity of life, and everything to do with controlling the means of production."
I must disagree in part. They may be in error, but a large percentage really do think of this as protecting fetal "life." They really do see it as "killing babies." It does not help to refuse even to understand the nature of their error.
It isn't life yet, it isn't a baby yet. But vast numbers are are wrong about that, not just pretending about it.
The difference can lead to some workable resolution, because refusing even to see what they think can only prevent any resolution.
How do we convince them? That is another question, but it starts with acknowledging what it is that so many must be convinced of.
19
@Comp
I agree with your comments and am grateful for Linda’s thoughtful columns. In addition, too many of these same judges, and definitely the GOP, are for cutting benefits to children in need, family planning and contraception access which the Guttmacher Institute and other research tells us greatly reduce abortions. The current proposed budget from this administration completely cuts funding for Special Olympics! Sanctity of life clearly has nothing to do with it.
31
@Mark Thomason
You are foolish to believe that the vast majority of anti-abortionists simply believe that abortion is murder of a "life" and that therefore, it is wrong.
The ones who are driving the takeover of the federal judiciary, overturning Roe v. Wade and defying the Supreme Court's precedents are religious zealots - whether Catholic or evangelical Christians - whose objective is to turn this nation into one of theocratic rule.
They are no different from those who believe Sharia law should rule their nations - indeed, the Bible, not the Constitution.
Moreover, the anti-abortion movement aims to control women and to do this, taking away reproductive rights is the place to start.
49
Anti-abortion advocates have never lived in a country where abortion was entirely inaccessible, so they truly don't understand what they are asking for. I live in Chicagoland, but in Wisconsin - a state where it is very difficult to get an abortion. When I found myself pregnant a few years ago and began bleeding heavily, I was mystified why the hospitals in my home town gave me sympathy and then sent me home. The ultrasounds showed that the "baby" had a heartbeat. So, I was literally sent home. The next day, I hemorrhaged at work and was rushed to the hospital. In short, I nearly bled to death before anyone would help me, and despite the heavy bleeding, if the ultrasound had still revealed a beating heart, I would have been discharged and told to drive myself to Milwaukee to get help. So when anti-abortion lawmakers state that things will be just fine if the life of the mother is in danger, I can assure you, that is not the case. When the life of a mother is threatened by a pregnancy, if that mother doesn't live in a state that allows any medical facility to perform an abortion, some of those mother die. More will die as laws get stricter and stricter. The value of a woman's life too often gets lost in this conversation. A government that can sentence women to death for a pregnancy that has no chance of producing a baby is tyrannical by definition. This anti-abortion stuff is HUGE, intrusive government.
544
@ADubs -- "in Wisconsin - a state where it is very difficult to get an abortion"
That is frightening in another way. Wisconsin was once the heartland of the Progressive movement, as the home of La Follette father and son. "The Wisconsin Idea" was the "laboratory of democracy" behind the Progressive Idea. in the 20th Century.
That the heart of it could become a center of its complete opposite is reason to be frightened of what politics can be.
91
@ADubs
Abortions and guns has been the gop's most successful issues that rally their voters for many years. In fact, these issues have been so successful that most of their voters eagerly vote for the gop who consistently pass legislation that is directly contrary to the financial best interests of these voters, who apparently do not care.
74
Dear a dubs,
I am so very very sorry to read of your terrifying and life threatening ordeal. I know that it isn’t an isolated incident, either. I agree whole heartedly that those - especially our fellow sisters - who advocate to legislate against all abortion really don’t understand what that world would look like.
You wrote, “The value of a woman’s life too often gets lost in this conversation.” You are entirely too charitable. The plain fact is that the value of women’s lives is completely ignored and discounted.
If only, if only all their passion, money and energy were devoted to universal free birth control and birth control services. This would reduce abortions far more quickly and less expensively than the punitive legislative path that has been dictated by those pulling the strings. (Yes, birth control is only one component of the complex topic, but it is a material and relevant one.)
98
If the anti abortionist religious conservatives get their way will it finally be enough? No it will not. Not until they have put reproductive rights, gender and sexual orientation and (for some at least) racial equality back in the pre 1950’s box it came from will they be content. Why, because it’s about domination for the sin, secrecy and shame crowd. They want queer people back in the closet, women back to a place of subservience and people of color back in their place. It’s not a coincidence that many of the same people who are opposed to reproductive rights are opposed to equal rights for others & of course are Trump supporters. They use similar language and their legal advocates / judges use similar strategies to deny access and rights to others. Whether it’s denying people of color the right to vote or women the right to reproductive choice it’s all of a piece & in the end it’s about controlling “others”, they lost it and they want it back.
8
Having undergone numerous 'Summers of Mercy' in the city where I live and having Dr. George Tiller assaulted and finally assassinated in his church on a Sunday morning, I am tired of the abortion debate. If this were and easy subject it would have been solved years ago, but it isn't so it hasn't. Outlawing abortion will only change the argument and new conflicts will start.
While pondering abortion over the years I've concluded that for me, it's not a matter of right or wrong, it's just sad. It's sad that pregnancies can go horribly wrong and threaten the life of the mother and an abortion is needed. It's sad that young women of no means get pregnant. It's sad that women are raped and want an abortion. It's a sad, emotional decision. But I would never deny any woman the right to decide for herself what is best for her.
I see young women and men at these protests and wonder what they will do when life breaks their hearts and decisions are needed. Those options might not be there for them.
HL Mencken called it:
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
5
The legal status of women is notably absent in the determinations of these judges, all men. As they rush to give personhood to fetuses, the person who is pregnant is relegated to the legal status of a suitcase.
The hubris of these judges, these men, who ultimately base their arguments on their imaginary “right” to extend their jurisdiction into the wombs of living women, is an exercise in erasing the legal status of women.
11
No person has a right to another person's body. If you believe a handful of cells is a "person," then than "person" does not have a right to occupy someone else's body, and they have the right to remove that "person."
But let's be honest, Cons don't care about life. They're pro-guns, pro-pollution, and pro-war. They oppose anything that even remotely looks like caring about life like healthcare and social services. The anti-choice movement is not at all about opposing abortion. Cons are fine with abortion when it's their daughter or mistress. The anti-choice movement is about controlling women. Remember: these are the people that Americans had to go to war with to force them to stop owning people as slaves.
9
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 Americans 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, the judges he has appointed, Republican members of Congress, and leaders of the Christian Fundamentalist movement.
6
The measure of the health of a country is how it treats it's women and girls....
1
If only ...
They cared about the babies, the mothers, the families, the poor, the unfortunate, those without a living wage
They cared about rape and incest, and "milder" forms of coercion
They cared about sex education, about birth control access
They cared about the devastating effects of poverty and climate injustice
As General Schwartzkopf said: "if you don't want abortions don't have one"
Please get government out of women's and doctors' lives.
Jesus wept (try the Gospels, if you call yourself Christian)
5
Good. About time any opponent of left-wing, socialist and anti-republican form of govt start using the techniques that have worked so well for the left in jamming the courts and promoting their agenda. Too late to cry when you have been doing the same for decades.
Abortion rights are an issue of equality. Women cannot be equal to men without access to birth control. Abortion is last resort birth control for millions of women.
5
What of the protection of a human life, — throughout its life? Or do we say once born you’reonn your own, baby.
God may well create a soul at conception. If so, this soul remains infinite and God includes this soul among the infinity of us all.
If society wants to protect the birth of this soul, then society should include the moral requirement upon itself for the life and protection of the mother AND the lifelong right of the child to health and education — as someone else’s responsibility. And, that society is the disengaged, criminal,ungodly one.
2
Term limits for all federal judges including SCOTUS.
3
I wonder why the Us relies only on a Supreme Court decision to ensure pro abortion rights. During the first two years of Obama’s administration Democrats could easily have passed a law allowing abortion on demand. Were Democrats too timid? What else were they doing that was more important?
1
I viewed the movie "Gosnell" on the On Demand cable channel and it was truly shocking. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion doctor, was charged with many counts of murdering babies that were already born. This movie was only presented in one theater in Manhattan and was out of the theater within less than a week. I do not know why it was removed so quickly but I have my suspicions.
The movie was extremely disturbing and upsetting to watch but I forced myself because I am a pro life woman and wanted to see this movie about the infamous abortion doctor who had killed so many babies. Also included in the trial was a murder charge that involved a woman who had died during an abortion.
They stressed at the end of the movie that he was not charged with abortion but killing already born babies by cutting their necks. The details and testimony were gruesome and even both the detective and attorney involved in the case were very upset with the facts presented. It was especially obvious by the facial expressions of the female attorney that she was moved by this case. It must be noted that both detective and attorney were pro choice but still enraged by what had happened.
They showed Dr. Gosnell in and out of the abortion clinic and what struck me the most was how relaxed and peaceful he was. He played the piano at his home while the prosecution were investigating the case. Apparently his killing of babies In and out of the womb had little effect on him. This was quite shocking.
As I said before, nobody like abortion. It’s a very difficult, and often traumatic decision, frequently made by poor women in miserable circumstances. However, if abortion opponents succeed in eliminating it, a woman desiring an abortion will, in an existential sense, not be responsible for the child....it will be all the abortion opponents who forced her to deliver. To me, they stand responsible for any deprivation and ill treatment that child receives, typically because the mother is too busy struggling to survive. Trump once said, “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have had abortions. OK, then who is responsible for the pain and suffering of the born child, when the mother knew she couldn’t provide in the first place? A study by the US Department of Agriculture showed that for a typical family of four it costs $233,000 to raise a child to the age of 17. Are abortion opponents going to cover that?....for every single forced birth? Absolutely not.....”Hey, not MY problem”....and keep your government hands out of my wallet.
3
Thank you, Linda.
I was curious about how many women in Louisiana seek abortions every year.
10,000.
I noticed last fall, when there was hoop-la over the decline in the birth rate of the states, that all states - except one - were all in the same range.
The one that screamed bloody murder was, of course, Utah.
Utah is popping them out, surpassing every state, wildly.
You remember "Utah", don't you?
It was made a joke yesterday when Senator Mike Lee, A.K.A. "Boo-boo Highjinks" swore to us that the solution to the Climate Crisis was to have more "babies".
I have no idea where they get these people from.
But, back to Louisiana.
Louisiana is called a "Red State".
Supposedly it is filled, chock-a-block full, of Republicans.
Republicans.
Evangelicals.
Fundamentalists.
Conservatives.
But I didn't find that in the birth numbers.
Their BN's are on par to every other state....barring Utah.
There are many women in Louisiana having abortions.
Birth control does fail.
When it does, an abortion is needed.
In fact, 10,000 are needed.
That's what keeps that 'family size' down.
Mike Lee has 3 children.
Mike Pence has 3.
Trump has 5 - but he needed 3 wives to get there.
Check out all of your own politicians and judges.
How many?
If they don't have "one-a-year, every-year", then they need to explain why.
And, if they don't explain "why" then put it on a placard and march it around in front of their workplace.
Mike Lee: You shouldn't have sneered and jeered yesterday.
Your bad.
4
Where did RU486 go? It was supposed to change everything. More info, please.
We've been hearing that abortion is in grave danger during every election cycle since 1974.
Even Clarence Thomas has gone on record as saying that Roe is settled law and the court will not overturn that.
But abortion is a high-volume money fountain for both sides of the issue. So every election, meaning incessantly in these days of endless campaigning, the alarmist rhetoric will swarm thicker than bees.
Of course it's different this year. After all, this time... we face the most important election of our lifetime. Again.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
1
Drug dealers should just add Miffy to their menu. Since the US can not seem to eradicate the drug dealers after umpteen years, women would be guaranteed to ability to terminate a pregnancy in the first 3 months anyway.
'Judge Daniel Manion ... accused the Supreme Court of making abortion “a more untouchable right than even the freedom of speech.”'
10 to 1 this same judge finds the "right to bear arms" more untouchable than freedom of speech.
3
If republicans are so against poor people populating the US, why do they want so many of them to be born?
Rich republican women can pay for their own reproductive
decisions.
4
The reasoning behind these right-wing judges is the product of theology and idealogy and not sound legal reasoning. These judges are being selected because of their religious beliefs and and their legal accomplishments are a second consideration. We are entering the age in which religious beliefs weigh more than anything else in this consideration. This type of influence is destructive to any court system. It means that justice will not be blind and looking at the case from the facts, but the facts will have to be molded to fit a preconceived theocratic idea of how things should be, not as they are.
3
The persistent defiance of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" proves to me that the whole US system is fraudulent from A to Z. We are not protected from tyranny by fake constitutional limitation of the powers of majorities, and the people who govern us are comprehensively dishonest blatant liars.
2
The real problem is pro choice folks don’t confront the issue correctly. Where in the world has abortion ever been eradicated? No where. All of Latin America save for Guyana and Cuba is now “pro life,” yet abortion not only didn’t end there, it increased. Yet in legal,countries like the US and Canada and Western Europe, the abortion rate keeps dropping.
Us, the irony is pro life countries end up killing more babies.
2
100% of people in the forced birth movement should have been aborted. These “people” care more about protecting the sperm of a rapist than about stopping and locking up rapists. Clay akin wasn’t an outlier he was what all the “people” in the forced birth movement.
1
Abortion rights are probably going the same way orcas (killer whales) are going in the greater Puget Sound region. Disappearing bit by bit.
1
Regarding these holy, well-fed , white college educated girls in this picture- my guess is that if any one of them is raped and impregnated, or just unintentionally impregnated, their oh-so-holy parents will ask forgiveness from the northern european looking white male god they worship, and then whisk them away somewhere "private" to have things, well, sorted out.
The fact that the rich have always had the means for and access to abortion is nothing new.
It is the hypocrisy that is astounding.
5
Every one of the pro-forced-birth women in the accompanying photo are of child bearing age.
Man, this world is just way too nutty for me.
Why is it always folks who have never experienced and suffered some horror are the very ones who favor the conditions that bring on the horrors?
5
Perhaps, in the absence of abortion, we could institute a mandatory paternity test and for the identified father, a 25 year indentured servitude during which all his money goes to the mother and child, or, for those who we now refer to as deadbeats, the court-supervised ability of the mother to rent him out to the highest bidder.
Want to see a lot of backtracking when men are suddenly on the hook for sex?
7
As Etta James might put it, "At Last." Amen to all those fighting abortion. A horrible stain on our country and humanity.
Republicans are the party of back room dirty dealing, subverting the will of the voters while suppressing the middle class and poor. Their partners in crime, the Christian Right, tramples on the public’s right to freedom of choice with their god complex. And the voters keep sending them to Washington.
4
I only hope that this legal anti-woman nonsense will drive women to the polls.
7
The Republican Party has become the American Taliban.
If abortion rights are overturned, close to one million young
women (mostly teenagers, i.e. other people's children), each
year in the United States, will be forced to have unwanted babies. Most will be born into abysmal poverty.
Interestingly, both sides on the issue come from places of love. Pro-life love for the unborn offspring, pro-choice love in not wanting to ruin two young people's lives.
Read "The Book of James" and "Ghost Writers in the Sky,"
both by Suzy Smith, to learn what William James, The Father
of American Psychology, had to say from the "other side" regarding miscarriage and abortion. It is helpful.
Through George Daisley, the great English medium, a friend was told, by his parents from the other side, that he has a sister, Elizabeth, who is a very enlightened woman. (His mother had had a miscarriage and Elizabeth had been raised by loving entities, on the other side.)
Mamie Eisenhower's favorite hymn was "There is a Wideness in God's Mercy." We live in a wonderful universe.
2
This is depressing, but that new director of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen, really gave me hope:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbG6L8Ka5Xk
2
The current Supreme court has a 5 to 4 conservative majority and is expected to either explicitly over-turn Roe V Wade or to do so implicitly by allowing states to further impede women’s access to medical abortion services.
The conservative majority, Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanough are men raised in the Catholic church. Two of them, like many catholic priests have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct.
Why are so many catholic men in positions if authority tolerant of the sexual abuse of children and so opposed to women being allowed to make decisions about their own reproductive healthcare?
12
Yes
1
Clearly, there needs to be a new modern day Underground Railroad for reproductive age females in America, as well as easier emigration of U.S. females to safe, secular bona fide 1st world countries
4
Ten thousand women, and their partners (making 20,000 citizens), want an abortion every year. Over a period of ten years, that's 200,000 citizens. Almost all of these couples are of voting age. Are they disenfranchised? If every woman and man who had taken part in an abortion voted for politicians who supported the right to control one's reproductive life, Louisiana would not be a deeply anti-abortion state. Why don't they vote the pro-abortion bullies out of office?
4
It would be alarming if it was never going to end, but it will, which is why they are desperate. The white old evangelical vote only cares about stopping abortion and immigration. The state legislators must maintain a supply of bans on abortion to ingratiate themselves to their dying constituency. These legislators know the laws are unconstitutional and that is why they vote for them. The legislators are COUNTING ON THEM TO BE STRUCK DOWN SO THEY CAN DO IT AGAIN. Their worst nightmare is successfully banning abortion, because no other issue in American politics motivates their voters.
But the religion of “no religion” is growing life wildfire in young people, and like LGBTQ rights, they think abortion should be available. And that’s why this will end in about 10 years. Enough of the antiabortionists will be dead, gone, or senile and no longer voting.
2
Lets be clear. For the most part, all of these anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood laws are attacks on the poor and lower middle class. Even when Roe is overturned, the wealthy in these red states will always find a willing OB-GYN who will discover that the patient needs a D&C, not an "abortion." And if not, they will just hop on a plane to New York or California or somewhere else where abortion is available.
6
This is the last chance US men have to continue to subjugate women by controlling their reproductive choice, and they’re not about to stop. It’s my body, stop telling me what to do with it. I do not subscribe to the religious zealotry about conception being foisted on me by white men and resent bitterly the now common mingling of church and state.
7
Bottom line, liberals should fight anything that threatens the wise decision made by SCOTUS in Roe vs. Wade, ie the right of the women vs the fetus re abortions.
What not to do? What NYState did ie over react and make late term abortions routine and easy without any regard to the rights of the fetus.
A majority of Americans are for Roe vs. Wade, they are not for abortion on demand.
The democrats should let the public know that if they want to win in 2020.
1
@Paul
"What not to do? What NYState did ie over react and make late term abortions routine and easy without any regard to the rights of the fetus. "
False. You're lying. Under the proposed law abortion is only permissible after 24 weeks if NECESSARY to protect the woman's life or health. I capitalized it so that you would note the word.
That hardly qualifies as no regard to the rights (sic) of the fetus, and it hardly qualifies as routine and easy.
Plus, please be aware that third-trimester abortion is an arduous, expensive, serious medical procedure. It takes days, it may involve what is akin to a stillbirth, and it costs thousands and thousands of dollars. Nothing about that sounds "routine and easy" to me.
5
@C’s Daughter- Thank you for you're reply C's daughter, bottom line it was overreaching. NY State already has a liberal abortion law. It overreached just like gun states do when a democrat gets in and they pass laws for mentally ill people and dogs to get guns.
Learn from Lincoln C's Daughter, get what you need not what you want.
You better believe the Trump people will use what Cuomo did to say the democratic are for abortion on demand no matter how viable the fetus is.
Americans are not for abortion on demand, they are for Roe vs. Wade, a wise SCOTUS decision.
C's Daughter, you want to preserve Roe vs. Wade, listen to Lincoln and what history has taught us, get what you need not what you want.
If you do the latter you will help re elect the ego maniac demagogue Trump.
1
Reason number 1023 for the Dems to pack the courts when they take over.
2
The more the merrier. It is a good thing that so many of these cases are being brought before the Supreme Court. It shows the seriousness of the pro life cause and proves babies need to be protected in the womb. Abortion is a ghastly and evil business and results in the cruel death of an infant. We do not need to see any more innocent lives taken in this dreadful way. It must end and hopefully the conservative justices will allow that to happen. Hopefully they will see how inhumane abortion is to the weakest among us. And to even think that some babies suffer infanticide is horrendous. This has to stop.
@KMW
Planned Parenthood prevents more abortions than any other organization, by providing low cost or free birth control in a non judgmental setting.
4
Maybe if US women were really EQUAL citizens, rather than chattel in 21st century, we wouldn't have men CONSTANTLY undermining our rights... Get it now, US women are 2nd class citizens!
5
GOP’s version of government....we don’t get involved unless it’s a woman’s body. She can’t possibly make a decision on her own. Just around the corner we have the GOP’s next target,,,,the right to die. Nope, you can’t do that either....
1
Meanwhile, in Toronto, Margaret Atwood leans back, smiles slightly, shakes her head, and boots up her laptop again.
4
I think we can count on the two Georgetown Prep alums new to the Court to obey the Pope and join their three brothers-in-faith to require all American women to follow the teachings of their Church when it comes to abortion, although in other matters such as the actual teachings of Christ, the current Pope is far too liberal for them.
8
Should the US Supreme Court overturn Roe vs Wade, as appears likely, we will see how solid the support for unlimited access to abortion and at every trimester as the recently enacted in New York law.
I read Linda Greenhouse's opinion with growing concern. I am long past the age of bearing children, but I remember distinctly junior and senior high school girls who became pregnant and ended up in Mexico for termination. Safe terminations was a matter of economics, social status, and privilege. It was a step forward when clinical procedures became available along with contraceptives. I didn't have to make a decision to keep an unborn child or not, but I felt it was right to have that choice and a safe procedure.
In disguise, Greenhouse is writing about a religious belief and people who want to impose their religious beliefs on all others. Religion is driving people apart, even to the extent that some groups want to ban contraceptives. We should not take a step backward; nor should we, as a people, punish clinics and programs which care for the entire women's health issues.
In the limit, the argument can be made that no man may cast his sperm upon a bed because that is aborting a possible life. This sounds preposterous but it is the same "right to life" as argued against males rather than females. In another limit, if the State rules that "no" abortion is ever legal, then the State is responsible for all unborn children and takes control of the bodies of all pregnant women and the rearing of the children, leading to the dystopia of women in cubicles.
5
Human biology requires a male sperm and a female egg unite to form a human fetus. This human fetus has a different DNA combination of genes than from the mother or the father. Once a human fetus is growing in a mother’s womb some argue that the fetus has as a right to live. This argument is based upon the principle that every human life has an intrinsic dignity. The hot debate we now face in our nation is “when” the fetus is viewed as “viable” and a “human person”, and as a such, when the fetus is deserving of protection from harm and given a chance to live a full human life. There are a lot of diverse opinions on this — those who argue this occurs from the first moment of conception to those who argue it exists only at the moment of birth and the fetus’s first breath. People of all faiths —and no faith —sincerely agree and disagree on this. We as humans frequently demonize those who do not share our views; however, that is not necessary and is counter productive to every reaching a consensus.
1
This is indeed a troubling state of affairs. What is too seldom recognized by these anti-choice zealots are the future costs of their policies. Women of means may travel to terminate unwanted pregnancies. It is poor women who will suffer disproportionately, ultimately giving birth to children that will require pubic assistance, education, medical care and other services that many red states can barely afford. And it will be the economic engines of liberal blue states that have to foot the bill for their ill-begotten, unwanted offspring.
3
The "right to life" party this week has Betsy DeVos cutting funding to the Special Olympics and special education programs and threatening the ACA. Again, they are far more worried about fetuses than those of us, especially the most vulnerable, who are, as I like to call us, "post-birth."
9
The republican dominated Supreme Court do not have the majority of the nations population interest in mind, and hasn't in decades.
If its decisions continue to go backwards in time I expect to see "ducking stools" and burning at the stake made a comeback.
Like the puppet republicans in Congress being told what to do by Trump, without question, I don't see the Court being any different.
2
Remember that glorious day when you signed on the dotted line consenting to the government now restricting our abortion rights? Neither do I?
So, who exactly signed on the dotted line? The historians tell us 39 men signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787. These men have saddled us with this Frankenstein monster violating our rights to our bodies.
We must forcibly remind the rulers that we didn't sign their constitution and their government is illegitimate.
5
The left is out forum shopping and writing as many pro-abortion laws as they can feed into the court system, too, as NY and Va. recently demonstrated, and others have followed. Late terminations are included that go beyond Supreme Court precedents, too, and are promoted and argued in public with serious lies. The pro-abortionists tell us that all late term abortions are tragic and involve severe defects or endanger the life of the mother, so we must allow terminations up to and even past the moment of birth. The Guttmacher Institute tells us that the vast majority of last trimester termination have nothing to do with fetal anomaly or life endangerment. Statistically, that means about 12000 healthy lives are ended each year, a number that rivals the number of people murdered with guns in the USA. But why tell the truth about late terminations, if it will show what abortion is really about.
2
@TD. It’s hard to know where to start here. To start with, there are no abortions up to the end of a pregnancy or after birth, which makes no sense. It is illegal and no doctor would do it. If the fetus is viable, it is delivered by caesarean. Also, there are approximately 39,000 gun deaths a year. Of course, you are probably pro-gun so those deaths are just the price we pay for freedom.
7
@Kb
I was careful to use the word terminations, but NY does now have a law granting late abortions. It is not illegal everywhere. Lit up the Freedom Tower pink, right? Northam explained how a non-caesarean termination would take place under the failed proposal in Va. Your gun deaths number includes all gun deaths. Mine was just murders. I did not include suicides or accidents. As far as your sense that caesareans replace terminations, you are simply wrong. "Data suggests that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment." I am quoting from Guttmacher. Take it up with them. They are pro-choice, but scholarly, so they don't spin it, let alone deny it, like most pro-abortionists.
2
" Judge Carnes refused to call doctors who perform abortions either “doctors” or “physicians,” noting that “some people” regarded those designations “as inapposite, if not oxymoronic in the abortion context.” He called them “practitioners.”
Maybe he thinks that real doctors cure people. Unless the mother's life and health are threatened by a pregnancy, what do abortionists cure?
1
@Charlesbalpha
Unwanted pregnancy.
They prevent problems associated with unsafe abortions.
Don't be obtuse.
5
We didn’t hear a peep out of the anti abortion movement when women were miscarrying left and right in Flint, Michigan. Nor did they seem to lose any sleep when news surfaced about ICE separating small children and putting them in cages. That makes any pretense of cherishing life, fundamentally suspicious.
9
Overturning Roe v Wade will have little effect on the ground. Countries like Chile and El Salvador do not allow abortion without exception, but due to modern pharmacological technology, rates are up in both. Michelle Oberman’s Her Body, Our Laws is the premier book on the subject. In the US abortion would still be allowed in Blue States, while the Red States with the procedure now illegal, would move from very difficult access to slightly more difficult access. But women will always find a way. Meanwhile with the most divisive wedge issue of them all off the table, the Republicans will be slaughtered at the polls. John Roberts knows this and will not overturn. Even if I am wrong, it may be time to call the bluff of the radical Christian Wrong and let the chips fall where they may.
If this goes forward to the extent SCOTUS overturns Roe (and in the interim establishes so many road blocks as to effectively overturn it) there's going to be more than protests.
Right now, this is largely under the radar to the majority of people who are going about their lives working to keep a roof over their heads, and food on the table. When the mothers, wives, daughters and the men who love them realize what's been done (this affects them too), these judges (republicans) are going to have a revolt on their hands. And it won't be just democrats who are outraged.
1
Going out on a limb here.
Abortion is a procedure to remove a growth of living cells found in an otherwise normal human body.
Now, using that definition, why can't we expand the definition of abortion to all procedures that inhibit the growth of living cells found in any body of any gender? That's right folks, we're talking about any alien growth in anybody.
"Poor, aunt Bessy, she had a growth under her armpit but the doctors couldn't do anything about it because removing it would be in violation of God's plan."
Don't push back on abortion, expand its definition to cover all procedures involving excising living cells from a human body - every time someone has a growth removed, haul them and their doctors into jail and charge them with a crime.
When the first case of someone having surgical or other treatment to remove a nonHodgkin's lymphoma winds it's way to the Supreme Court enjoy the meltdown.
This is nothing more than employing the marketing concept of "embrace and expand" to destroy the momentary advantage of a competitor with an new product or technology.
2
In the end, this is a matter for women - and women alone - to decide. And the only mechanism that I can see to make their decision known - and to see it implemented - is through the ballot box. If women vote Republican it is at their peril. I see signs of that realization having taken place in the 2018 elections. I hope for all our sakes that they demonstrate the same determination in 2020.
3
Is the Republican Party and the far right wing "Christian" evangelical con men (and women) that support them in their quest to end legal and safe abortion, oh and contraceptive services as well, ready for a) the loss of their best fundraising slogans and b) the loud, angry backlash that will be coming as women start to die, unwanted children flood the adoption pipeline and women, already motivated to vote, vote in even larger numbers to kick Republicans out of office?
1
Ireland changes course while the US picks the old attitude up.
3
No moral or ethical case can be made for abortion. I'm glad to see that judges are not blind automatons but have a sense of the unmitigable evil that is abortion.
1
The most important word here is "Republican", for they are now the party of the most vile Trump.
He has transformed them into a mob absolutely devoted to turning the clocks back to 1850, when women knew their place, black men and women knew to step onto the street and off the sidewalk, and no child ever asked a penetrating question to the rich man strutting about.
Until Americans wake up and vote down each, and every Republican, this dark dream will become a reality, and our Constitution Democracy will become, well, Putin's type of pretend world of pretend democracy and rule of law.
If Roe V. Wade gets overturned prior to the next Presidential election, I do hope there is a march in Washington, one with such a thundering step that it frightens even Trump.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
6
If you are apposed to abortion don't have one!
Where in the constitution does it say a pregnant woman does not have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Does that right disappear the moment she becomes pregnant?
The second amendment says I have the right to own a gun, but I choose not to do so. If these anti abortion laws persist expect a big run on the morning after pill, or is that the next thing to become unlawful?
4
Abortion is the ending of innocent human life. This cannot be said enough. All lives matter even those in the womb. Let's not marginalize these very important human beings.
2
if all of this goes through and abortion is super restricted because an unborn fetus has rights- what happens if two undocumented immigrants conceive a child while in the united states? is that unborn fetus an american citizen? could this be used to prevent a deportation of an undocumented immigrant(s)? is the mother entitled to food stamps in order to better care for the unborn child? are the mothers check ups covered by medicaid if she does not have enough money for healthcare?
(im making this argument to make the far rights heads spin)
Could someone please explain how the Pro-Life - Right to Life Conservatives can dedicate hundreds of millions in the name of protecting unborn babies while fighting just as furiously defending gun ownership and use?
The Guns designed and used, all too often, to murder tens of thousands of individuals, each with an absolute Right to Live. Conservatives, are you pro-life or pro-gun - you can't be both! Decide!
3
I am a pacifist.
I don’t own a gun.
I do not “worship” guns.
I oppose Trump’s Wall.
I oppose ICE refugee policies.
I oppose the death penalty.
I support reform of criminal justice system
I oppose discrimination against LGBTQ
I support equal pay for equal work.
I support decent housing for all.
I support universal healthcare.
I support the fetus’ right to life.
Given this tragic chipping away that clearly endangers women, can we expect to soon see the resurgence of Jane, the underground abortion service that had been in place prior to Roe?
2
Many lawsuits in the US are utter nonsense that should not survive a motion to dismiss. But courts are for lawyers who live on controversies like the topic of this blog, so grants of motions to dismiss are so rare that lawyers recommend against spending money on them.
I occupy a rather lonely position in this debate:
Pro choice, but anti-Roe.
Both sides want the Federal Government to decide this - THEIR WAY.
Do restrictive laws butt up against religious freedom? Various religious faiths define life differently, and imposing the nonscientific beliefs of one faith on another suggests that these judges are seeking to sanction one particular state religion over another.
3
@et.al.nyc
That's already happening. It won't be long before laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are declared unconstitutional because they offend evangelical Christians' "sincerely held religious beliefs."
2
The GOP has long planned to keep women as second class citizens. The GOP agenda of outlawing abortion must be viewed in the correct context. As with all things GOP and free market determination, the laws would outlaw abortion for women who can not afford it. Women with money will always be able to find that doctor who provides her with whatever procedure she wants and the no one will be the wiser. This has always been the case and the GOP knows it. Healthcare being available and affordable for the 1% but not so much for the little people. Dirty little secrets that the 1% enjoy, like tax fraud, and for which no one ever goes after them.
When will we reach the breaking point, stand up for each other and our rights?
7
Women in this country have to make it incontrovertibly clear to the GOP that they are tired of sanctimonious Republican men telling them they know what's best when it comes to family planning and access to reproductive healthcare. Or, as the renewed attacks on Obamacare suggest, any healthcare at all. The country has been down this road before and it's not a good one. Roe was intended to provide some relief from the tragedy of back alley and do-it-yourself abortion. It succeeded. Now the Republicans, who never seem to learn anything from past experience, want to go back to those dark days. Just vote no.
6
The fight against abortion is no more sound than the discredited, misguided ideas that led families to stop vaccinating children. It’s a handy depository for all kinds of anti-anything about our country and culture, a cause about nothing and a distraction from genuine problems.
3
I was a student nurse when it was illegal to have an abortion. Back street abortions killed the fetus anyway and sometimes they maimed or killed the mother thus depriving her husband and children of her support. Why this is considered as an improvement over a legal abortion under sterile conditions with doctors experienced in the procedure is beyond me. More women die in childbirth than after an abortion. Again, how does forcing a woman to carry an pregnancy to term regardless of why she wants or needs an abortion protect her health?
11
I am PRO-LIFE and PRO-CHOICE.
I would suggest, perhaps by GOD's example, we remain free to choose. I would never abort a child of mine but have no right to force others to agree by such a law.
The PRO-LIFE signs need to say ANTI-CHOICE!
I'm so sick of their "better than thou" attitude!
10
I vote to keep abortion legal so it will be done safely.
I want to reduce the number of abortions by teaching sex ed and making birth control info and products widely and easily available. Pilot programs in states like Colorado reduced abortion by 30% but the state GOP voted to stop funding the program.
I expect continual challenges to abortion but do not expect Roe to be overturned. The issue is a huge money maker for religious groups and a vote getter for the GOP. If Roe is overturned and the issue goes away it will materially harm both the GOP and religious groups -- neither of which really want that to happen.
The abortion fight will be with us always, like Arab-Israeli wars.
5
Everyone, regardless of the side of the fence you sit on with respect to abortion, should be terrified. While it's certainly about foisting one's opinion and religious views over another, it's really the cautionary tale of how to slowly erode individual freedom and rights. The Republicans have been doing this quietly to voting rights, worker rights, the environment, etc. These are dangerous times and those controlling the purse strings to GOP lawmakers won't stop until they completely control our government and the wealth and the 99% effectively become serfs serving these feudal lords. Welcome to the New Middle Ages.
6
I suspect the Republicans -- and the Federalist Society -- really chose judges because of their pro-corporate views, and only incidentally attached themselves to abortion to drag along religious voters who are unmoved by the interests of capital.
That was clear with the Trump tax cuts. Once the state's interests are fully parallel with corporate interests can government suppress individual rights the way fascist governments have done throughout history.
4
People obsess about abortion because they believe that God runs the US and punishes the US because abortion is legal.
Abortion is not healthcare. It is the willful termination of a fetus/baby in the womb. Most abortions are performed on healthy babies. This is a sad but true fact.
2
electico,
Why is the government involved at all? It was fine in 1973 when roe v Wade was passed by the Supreme Court to pass this bill. It was an all male court that decided this case.
Shouldn't it be all right in 2019 for the Supreme Court to decide on pro life issues? You cannot have it both ways.
1
Dear Ms. Greenhouse,
I don't care about Abortion one way or the other. It doesn't matter to me if a girl or woman gets an Abortion once every two months, year in and year out! Actually I wish the issue would go away so the U.S. Supreme Court could go back to 'just' being a third branch of gov't, w/o the hatred on both sides.
However, please don't act, and I mean 'act' "Surprised" when Chief Justice John Roberts upholds Roe v. Wade. You know as well as I do (you're not blind, just Liberal to the core) that he will, and has signaled so already.
Just to be clear: it is NOT nor has it ever been just about stopping abortions. It is about birth control.
Because, in the end, it is about cutting the competition down. It is ALWAYS about competition.
4
I'm all for national and state capital regulation of the nation's uteruses.....as long as the nation's testes get the same degree of state regulation.
10
The problem, of course, is that Roe was a political invention utterly without constitutional basis; it is impossible to assert that the Constitution protects – or deals with – abortion while remaining intellectually honest.
(Incidentally, how did you deal with Sotomayor’s “gratuitous comments” supported by citations to notable legal scholars like Ta Nahesi Coates and James Baldwin?)
Republicans do not want judges “who could be counted on to oppose the right to abortion.” We want JUDGES who can read the Constitution and will abide by its terms. Since no such “right to abortion” exists, we want judges to say so.
The CoA judges you cite are precisely right: while the Constitution cannot legitimately be interpreted to create a right to abortion – and people who commit them do not deserve the honorific “doctor” – until such time as the SCOTUS recognizes the error of its ways, the CoA must follow the “law”. These judges express no “contempt” for the SCOTUS, they justifiably heap contempt on the worst opinion ever written, on a par with Dred Scott.
In short, they understand their job description – unlike, say, Stephen Reinhard or RBG.
(Oh, and as Judge Sutton noted, since PP brashly said it would continue to do abortions even if deprived of taxpayer dollars, they have no standing, as they have not be harmed.)
The sooner the SCOTUS corrects its error and vacates Roe, the better, for the law, for society, and for the threatened children.
1
The ONLY reason this divisive flap persists is the abject cowardice of an ivory tower court that can’t even give a straight answer when asked what an “establishment of religion” is.
'Judge Carnes refused to call doctors who perform abortions either “doctors” or “physicians,” noting that “some people” regarded those designations “as inapposite,'
Although Linda Greenhouse's article is chilling, I had to chuckle at the above quote, thinking that "some people" would regard Judge Carnes' justice as "inapposite."
If so-called prolifers really wanted to reduce the number of abortions, they'd make sure that contraception was widely available to every woman who desires it. But they don't. It is logical to conclude that what they really want is to control when women can have sex, hence the abstinence crusade. The depth of their disrespect for women is stunning, their willingness to meddle in women's lives disgusting. Shame on them!
6
Lets be real here. It is all about control. Control of women and often their children. This is over and over again men and sometimes women with them as their "handmaids" to rule. A distraction issue to win more power and stay in power. No matter what all these states and judges rules, women with cash get what they need. They did before Roe as my mother did in 1935 and many more women before the ruling.
Choice is a word they use for everything else except what a woman can do about her own personal life. We need equality in the constitution so all of the states recognize women do not need permission to be in control.
201
@Judith Southard
Yes the autocrats are still using the playbook.
Divide, Demonize and Distract.
It gets more chilling and frightening every day.
(Yes I can hear others saying
" Oh NOW you're scared ? )
5
@Judith Southard - It is all about control.
And trust. If you feel you can't trust people to do as you wish than you must control them. It's really about trust.
4
@Judith Southard, I've widely read articles and comments on this and while not disputing the influence of men in this subject I think your are downplaying the role of conservative women too much. To diminish their role in the reproductive rights argument is to diminish their agency in this. They aren't simply parroting men and are driving the agenda as well.
4
The moral failure of the anti-abortion movement is the absolutism with which they pursue their quest to overturn established law. The movement is incapable of recognizing the medical and social complexities that drive women ( and their male partners) to seek abortion. As a result, women at risk of hemorrhaging to death due to miscarriage are denied life saving treatment in many red states because that treatment has been legally classified as abortion. Women carrying non-viable fetuses are denied medical intervention in these same states to end the very real nightmare of carrying a baby that will be dead on arrival. As for the other reasons women and men choose to have an abortion the anti-abortion movement remains steadfast in its insistence that an unwanted pregnancy is God’s punishment for being a bad person, and that they deserve to be “saddled” with a child that they neither want nor can afford. Like so many conservative movements, the anti-abortion movement is not pro-life; it’s pro-hate. Around the country our elected leaders demonstrate a seething resistance towards acknowledging that a pregnant woman is a living, breathing person worthy of fair treatment under the law. Instead they construct women as state owned entities in which they have interests and a legal right to control. Women, they assert, are their property, and any law that gives women agency over their own lives must be struck down.
217
I appreciate your insight. I agree that the anti-abortion movement is pro-hate towards women, women’s rights, and women’s bodies. And I have every right to feel that way as the mother of a son from an unplanned pregnancy many years ago (and the daughter of an unplanned pregnancy myself!) how dare these judges pass judgement on the particulars of women’s reproductive rights! I am seething at the thought. By the way, I had my unplanned son because I wanted him. I chose him! But, guess what? Even with health insurance at the time, I was in credit card debt for the next twenty years. The laws in this country are just stacked against families. I am thankful that I love my son so much, and my husband too.
57
@Ann Lenhardt Thank you! I would have bled to death 29 years ago from a planned, wanted pregnancy that went horribly wrong at 23 weeks if I lived somewhere else. The pregnancy was not viable, but there was still a heartbeat. Thank God I live in Massachusetts. It was the worst thing that ever happened to us, we were heartbroken. The thought of someone being able to judge that my life was not worth it scares me to death. Because of the excellent care I received, I was able to have two children after that.
57
@Ann Lenhardt
God's punishment ? Some may believe that but not the majority of pro lifers. Its nonsense and does not lead to productive debate...
2
So much for John Roberts' notion that "there are no Obama judges or Trump judges." The solution to the problem is to allow only women of child-bearing age to preside in abortion related court cases. Other, "unqualified" judges should be required to recuse themselves.
4
ChristineMcM,
Abortion may be legal but that does not make it right. Do not be fooled. The liberal justices have also included their opinions regarding abortion.
What has made a difference in this debate is that more people are seeing the devastation caused not only to the fetus/baby but also to the mother. They see it as the termination of innocent human life. That is fact and not fiction.
1
""He [Judge Daniel Manion] accused the Supreme Court of making abortion “a more untouchable right than even the freedom of speech.” While the outcome of this case was “compelled,” he said, “it is at least time to downgrade abortion to the same status as actual constitutional rights.”"
Like Greenhouse, I was astonished at the freedom judges now feel to add their particular personal opinions into rulings that should be objective based on legal facts.
The freedom with which new Trump-appointed judges are revving up attacks on Roe vs Wade seems to have a certain inevitability.
But one thing is clear: a GOP (and yes, this is all political) that prides itself on limited government has no such qualms about permitting said government to strengthen its oversight of the most private parts of a woman's body.
First abortion, next birth control: conservatives seek to diminish a woman's right to privacy, inviting government to almost mandate that every sex act must be aimed at reproduction.
How can that be limited government? To me this is mixing theology with secular law, which is unconstitutional.
307
@ChristineMcM
Christine, abortion is just one of many wedge issues the Republicans have used to get votes and power. The hows, the whats and the consequences of outlawing abortion do not matter to Trump or the Republicans. Promises made, promises kept - it's just that cynical.
The pro-birthers have held their noses with Trump and are willing to damage this country's ability to function in order to get abortion outlawed. This has been in the making for decades, we're finally here.
33
@ChristineMcM
A secondary question is why on earth all these corporate religious businesses and any yahoo revival tent thumper is unilaterally exempt from paying local, state and federal taxes. The various types of religious tax exemptions is staggering, not just from local property taxes and income, but in housing, investments, building bond programs, and on and on and on it goes. Tax 'em all and feed some poor and homeless Americans, pile some much needed resources back into local economies where homeowners now foot the bill for everything.
25
@JD Ripper -- there is no prospect that the "right-to-lifers" can get abortion outlawed nationally.
If they prevail the nation will return to state's rights, and some states will have legal abortion, others will not.
The effect of this is entirely predictable:
* surgical abortions will remain available for everyone rich enough to travel
* there will be a large increase in do-it-yourself abortions among the poor, with predictable increase in awful outcomes.
The only thing that will have changed since the epoch just before R v W is mifepristone & misoprostol medical abortion.
These are now common, and trafficking in these drugs into states that make legal abortion difficult is already on the rise.
The right-to-life movement and Mitch McConnell are doing serious damage to the constitution and governance, to get this? Really? This is what they want?
I'm afraid that this is exactly what they want -- they do not want to end abortion; they only want to make it expensive, and dangerous for the poor.
16
Well, this is what happens when women don't vote and when they vote Republican. It's a truism that you don't know what you had until it's gone. Add the right to obtain a safe, legal and timely abortion to that list. The anti-choice movement has been working assiduously and patiently for decades to return women to the days of back-alley abortions and now that day is again looming closer and closer. I suspect that, once women of child-bearing age discover, to their horror, they do not have a right that their grandmothers and mothers fought for and won, they will finally become galvanized and get politically active. But, by then, it will be too late. Abortions will, of course, continue, but more women will die from them, more unwanted children will be born into lives of poverty, and women will have lost a crucial aspect of personal autonomy. How many generations must pass before this new reproductive-rights Dark Ages gives way to a new reproductive-rights Enlightenment?
281
@David Blame it on the women who are the victims?!!
Even if men were not the other half of the equation for a woman to get pregnant, in a civilized society men are responsible for being concerned about the other half of the population.
11
@David correct, and in the Republic of Gilead, women will not be allowed to vote because they have no bodies, and slavery will become the law again. Orlando and Twelve Years a Slave will be banned books.
9
Your point is valid, but so is David’s. Too many women support GOP hardliners who are set to work against a woman’s right to choose. I simply cannot understand that. It used to be it was accepted an early fetus was simply non viable. When and why did that change? Abortion should not replace birth control. But, regardless, a woman has the right to choose. As a man I support that. Too bad more women do not these days....
10
Twelve States have now either enacted or proposed more restrictive abortion laws. A strategic trajectory that identifies Republican intent. To ultimately have the abortion issue brought before the Supreme Court whose right wing majority, they anticipate, will rule to revoke Roe vs Wade. This is the current operational template fueled by the Republican Party's spiritual guides, their Christian evangelical faction. If these Republicans are successful in re-establishing abortion as illegal in America, they'll see it as a victorious step closer to achieving their ultimate goal. Re-structuring the secular democracy that is America into a Christian theocracy.
9
This puts the anti-abortion measures passed in the current session of the Arkansas legislature into national perspective: it's going on in many red states, and maybe, with the recent Supreme Court appointments, these will stick. Since 1973, abortion has been Republican's most reliable issue for keeping their low end voters loyal (this is why I do not think Roe will be reversed), and they are making another run. As a psychologist, I know that when trying to figure out why people are doing something the last thing you believe is what they say; that is even more true when politicians are speaking. God only knows what these anti-abortion Republicans believe, but some things are clear: the actions of the Republican controlled legislature in Arkansas were to cut income taxes for high earners and raise gas and sales taxes for poor people. Similar changes are happening across the country and at the federal level. I suspect passing nasty laws against abortion--it will now be illegal in Arkansas to abort a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome--is the Republican way of distracting people who are being robbed with the tax system.
8
The conversation about abortion rights would change substantially if men who impregnated women were held liable for their actions: costs of care of the child, health care costs for woman and the child, and need to commit to its care. Yes, only women can wind up pregnant; yet it is the way that men imagine they can absolve themselves from these responsibilities that fuels the belligerent attack on women's choices.
15
@michelangelina -- you do not know the law, and your view of why some men argue against abortion is 180° backwards.
In New York and almost every state (every state? I'm not sure) a woman can name the prospective father, demand a paternity test, and if it establishes paternity then demand child support on terms equal to those in divorce. (Theoretically the man could fight for custody, and if obtaining it then demand child support ditto ... has this ever happened?)
Men cannot demand an abortion in the event of pregnancy, nor can they prevent a woman from having one.
I know of no parties arguing that men should be able to compel a woman to have an abortion. However one of the prime arguments of the pro-life movement is that men should have the right to prevent an abortion if they are the father.
1
@michelangelina - Failure to pay child support doesn't even impact a person's credit score.
2
Agree. But that is why it is incumbent upon women too be assertive in protecting this right. Too many women support dismantling it....
The flood of pro life cases being upheld on the flimsiest grounds will stop if the Court declines to hear them or if it overrules them. This is obviously a test to see whether the shift in the Court's composition is sufficient to overrule Roe. Given how strongly people feel about this issue and the cultural disparity between the red and blue states, I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn't have been wiser to let the states decide, which would be the result if Roe is overturned.
As others have pointed out in the near future it could be that women in some states will have access to abortion services and women in other states will not. Then add the financial layer: women with money will have access and women without money will not. What is needed is an "underground railroad" response where wealthy philanthropists band together and form an organization that facilitates the cost of and logistics of transportation, lodging and medical service to women in need in restrictive states, providing them access to abortion services in more liberal states. No matter what the law, abortions will happen and women will suffer. There must be a way to reduce this eventuality, here is one idea. I bet there are more.
4
@Bailey -- of a certainty illegal & do-it-yourself abortions will increase. The biggest change in the facts of abortion since R v W is the development of medical abortions with various regimens of mifepristone (RU-486), misoprostol and less commonly methotrexate + misoprostol.
There are already a substantial number of do-it-yourself abortions with these drugs; these are available by mail, over the internet.
In poorer countries around the world abortion with misoprostol alone is common. It is a WHO-recognized method, though not as effective as the combined-regimen and with more side-effects, but is cheap and readily available. This is particularly common throughout central and south America, and our immigrant population has brought this cultural knowledge with them.
Misoprostol is available in the USA as a veterinary medication; it's a store-isle item in most pet-supply stores.
While hardly "good," this is far safer than the bad old days of coat-hangers, and far more dangerous drugs.
The right-to-life movement won't be able to reduce abortion much, just make it more costly and more dangerous for the poor. One wonders if that is their real intent.
2
Ms. Greenhouse can gnash her teeth on this repulsive issue until she has none, but as I discovered when working for Barack Obama in my own hometown, there are religious people who persist in pegging their whole view of politics to this one issue. A hard pro-abortion stance in American politics has cost economic liberalism mightily in its effort to stand up to right-wing extremism. It will be a big favor to us all if the U.S. Supreme Court permits serious restrictions on the sensationally disputed "right" to abortion in Roe v. Wade, then permits the feminist extremists on this issue to flame out over a generation or two. America does NOT need to be forever choked on this question.
2
@David A. Lee: It is easier to peg your beliefs on "pro-life" than it is to admit that your candidate of choice is "pro racist" and "pro-misogynistic". There are no "hard pro abortion" activists, just "hard pro-choice" activists who want women to make decisions about their own bodies, between them and their physician. And it is almost entirely men who dont want women to have control over their bodies who fight against any reproductive choices women want to make and who, once a child is born, promptly tell them they are on their own.
4
@David A. Lee -- not going to happen. All it will do is that women who can afford it will go to states where its legal, and women who can't will turn to do-it-yourself medical abortions with drugs bought through the internet or even at the local pet store (misoprostol is a common off-the-shelf veterinary supply).
The right-to-lifers will turn to prosecuting women ... wait and see.
2
Dave D,
It is my right to have freedom of speech which is guaranteed under the first amendment. As long as my freedom of expression is not denied, I will continue speaking out against abortion. It is the taking of innocent human life in the womb. That we know as fact.
1
@KMW - Talk all you want. You haven't saved any lives and you've probably cost some women and possibly some children's lives.
Certainly your support for gun loving Republican politicians has resulted in numerous shooting deaths and then there are the deaths from environmental hazards, lack of health care etc.
Pro life my foot.
10
@KMW: Anti-abortion? I will fight for your right to not have one, but that doesnt give you the right to make that decision for anyone else.
6
@KMW
Surely you won't have any problem requiring any anti-abortion bill to also include health insurance on the state dime for the child and mother in question until the child is 26 years old, right? If not, your stance is just hypocritical. Because the anti-abortion crowd is only concerned with the embryo until it's born. Then the child is on its own, and so is the mother, while the father in most cases has little consequences to face.
2
First of all, even if Roe is overturned, abortion will not be illegal int he US, it will be up to the states. I would venture it would still be legal in most states.
Second, all rights can be restricted. You simply have to work through to what degree.
Third, if you read Roe, it clearly states that after viability the state has a vested interest in protecting the fetus. Even Roe clearly shows the right is not absolute. The stake they put in the ground is viability.
Fourth, the reason Roe is semi-vulnerable is because it was an activist decision that someone stretched the right to privacy. It is very easy to be pro-choice and believe Roe itself is a bad LEGAL precedent and decision. The proper way to codify a right such as abortion would be the same as how women were given the right to vote, via Constitutional amendment.
If you compare gun rights and abortion rights you see a very similar fights going on around the country in the states. You have two constitutional rights that states are restricting or not restricting in different ways. The courts will decide which go to far and which don't.
I'm pro-choice and pro-2nd, but I don't have an issue with semi-auto restrictions nor 20-week abortion limits with exceptions afterwards. I do have a problem with certain areas that require you go have a valid reason to own an handgun with self defense NOT being a valid reason, and I do have a problem with hearbeat bills. It's all a balancing act that the country does not agree on.
6
@Marvin You have stated my own thoughts much more clearly than I could have stated them...thank you.
@Marvin
Roe was passed in 1973, during the Nixon admin, because the GOP had yet to sell its soul to the carnival barker bible bangers and Vatican Inc. sector of the electorate. They understood Jefferson and Madison intended separation of church and state as well as freedom FROM religion. And because many of the males in U.S. politics and the judiciary at the time were of an older sexist era but they didn't hate girls and women.
2
Perhaps a more honest debate starts with the fact that life begins at conception. That is basic biology. Spinning this otherwise is an egregious denial of science.
This makes abortion an extraordinary moral/ethical decision and pro life arguments are valid.
Personally, I am pro-abortion and support a woman’s right to choose. Ultimately, to me, this is justly an individual and private decision and transcends the will of collective society. But this rationalization is more dubious.
5
@B
Of course fertilization of germ cells produces a zygote. That's high school biology. It's also not the point. The point is basic female rights; personhood of the female made pregnant by the male; personhood of a clump of cells; when does pregnancy not just a zygote begin; interference by ancient desert peasant cults in a secular nation of laws - where the physical and economic health and safety of half the population that is female already is constantly in jeopardy.
That's why:
1. Every male need to use condoms on their little soldier unless he wants to sacrifice the next 20+ years of his life to raise and pay for the resulting zygote turned fetus turned child;
2. Females of all reproductive ages ought have free and widely available access to birth control and health services;
3. Also critically important to all females as plenty of females are unknowingly made ill, not just pregnant, from sexual contact with diseased males in a nation where health care for females has always skewed male, has been exclusionary, expensive and even unavailable.
4
The ignorance and lack of basic biological knowledge is crippling regardless of your take on abortion. Life doesn’t begin at conception, life’s potential begins and quite often ends without human intervention. Science isn’t spin, opinion is spin & your just as guilty of spin here as any conservative zealot.
4
David, it may just be a repugnant political issue to you but to a woman it is as fundamental an issue as slavery. Imagine a world in which a birth control failure or a date rape resulted in you getting pregnant unintentionally. If abortion is illegal you are now trapped and whether you give the child up for adoption your life as you knew it is gone. Your employment and/or educational status, relationship with partners and family, the way you look, feel and are perceived and your relationship to your body are all against your will drastically changed.
1
the underlying issue is when does the right to life of the child succumb to the right to life of the mother?
we recognize that the right to life of both does not succumb to any claim on behalf of society.
2
@SSS
The child does not have the right to life if exercising such right requires using the woman's body-- literally relying on and influencing her physiological functioning--to sustain its life.
You can't force me to donate an organ to my born baby; you can't force me to allow a fetus to use my organs.
Simple simple simple simple.
4
@C’s Daughter
Of course we can. If you starve a child that is in your care with no regard for the welfare of the child we would punish you.
Simple.
1
Ending health care is not pro-life.
Forced birth. Forced death. It's all about force and control.
Retribution. Punishment. Vindictiveness.
We'll force you to go through pregnancy and birth and have a child to AND we will take away your health insurance.
Your GOP: boldly marching into the Middle Ages.
And do I remember Republicans loudly opposing "legislating from the bench"? But what's principle when expediency rules?
420
@Marie don't forget the solution often offered to pregnant women is that they can always opt for adoption. So then it's about forcing women to give up the living child if they can't afford to take care of it when faced with no other options. In other words, the poor women become Handmaids for the wealthy.
57
@Marie - "have a child"
What I meant there was to raise a child - without insurance.
13
@SueG - "forcing women to give up the living child if they can't afford to take care of it"
Thank you Sue.
5
Recent polling shows over 70% of Americans support abortion being legal. Yet, we see the opposite occurring.
Abortion rights will soon disappear from Red States. Abortion tourism to states allowing the procedure will start occurring for those with money. The poor, as is always the case with the GOP, will be screwed.
This is what happens when minority rule is in effect, thanks to gerrymandering and voter suppression measures.
22
Let's say the Supreme Courts says, 'yes, states have the right to ban abortion', it STILL won't work because it's INFEASIBLE. How is a poor state like Louisiana going to enforce their law? Are they going to round up all 10,000 of those women, every year, and throw them in jail? In this scenario, just trying to enforce this law if going to cause a million times more problems than it's intended to solve.
None of these threats to abortion will go anywhere which means it's a giant legislative waste of time. Again.
4
@Studioroom - Remember the Fugitive Slave Act? In my red state, I'd expect a Fugitive Pregnant Woman Act, or something similar. I can see pregnant women having to gain permission from the state to leave the state, and having to check back in with the state when she returns to ensure that she's still pregnant. If she doesn't check back in, then that would trigger the Fugitive Pregnant Woman Act, where she could be tracked down and forcibly returned to the state.
9
@Studioroom
They don't round up the women who seek abortions. They make it a serious crime for a healthcare provider to perform the abortion. This is pretty easily enforced, and results in women resorting to unsafe back-alley abortions. The resulting pain, fear, sepsis, infertility and death are the intended consequences for the women.
4
@MegWright
Don't worry...
I'd buy large tracts of fallow land in Ontario where women may run free and do as they please, get new identities, and return safely to states where they can live out their lives in security and contentment.
Donation information to follow.
Conservatives yell and scream about government intrusion, like Obamacare, and preach freedom. Yet, when a woman desires to exercise her freedom, let alone must to save her life, she may not.
No one likes abortion. No one is pro-abortion. But, for half of our population to be free, too, it must be available, not made nearly impossible because some who claim to speak on behalf of God say so. To hide behind the guise that they are protecting the unborn, which have no consciousness or ability to survive without their mother, is merely an expression of squeamishness and church-inspired guilt. That is not a viable ground to deny one their most intimate freedom.
16
A legitimate religious objection to my tax dollars going to fund warfare, bombing of children and other life destroying military activities, putting children in cages after separating them from their parents, or denying health care protections to children and others, should be given the same weight as an equally legitimate religious objection to abortion or even abortion counseling. The courts should affirm this moral equivalence and as a country we can act accordingly.
13
Contrary to the thought espoused by those in power, men have no more business telling a woman she does not have control of her body than a dictator telling those under control they have no right to think.
Not an odd world we live in, just one controlled by arrogance and the accompanying stupidity which without coincidence forms the basis of many male controlled legislatures both here and throughout the world.
If we as a nation make it through this absurd time the people to thank will not be the ones who pose so well during their hollow chest thumping press release appearances, rather the women, like the vilified AOC who stand for women's, aka human rights.
The mere fact that "marching orders" are applicable to any judiciary anywhere in our nation indicates a corruption which undermines the rule of law let alone equal justice.
Regardless political affiliation such thoughts are foreign to the way of life so many among our leadership espouse. They indicate a turn to the right which, as any student of history at any level knows, will not end up as the yellow brick road our forbears sought.
For the sake of all young people everywhere I only hope women take the reins of control and put the historical fiction accepted by so many in the bin where it belongs.
18
How dare women have control over their own bodies.
Let’s just ban all abortions throughout the U.S.
Of course the consequences will include:
* Back alley abortions
* Coat hanger abortions
* Women who are harmed or die for lack of medical procedures
* Rich girls flying overseas to still obtain abortions
You see, there will still be Americans who will be able to get abortions. Only the poorer segment of society will be affected.
12
@Richard
It always was and always will be ALL girls and women who suffer and will not have adequate available abortion and birth control services. PLENTY of girls and young women from middle and upper income families died from botched abortions or were forced to have unwanted babies, as well as unwanted shotgun marriages.
The religious patriarchy spares no female, infant to granny. You also ignore one of the next shoes to drop in the #MeToo and #BasicHumanRights area: incest and rape of girls and women inside the home by a brother, father, grandfather, uncle. No annual income level or amount of money in a bank account has ever protected females from that.
4
"The Flood of Court Cases That Threaten Abortion"
How do the cases threaten abortion? Doesn't Ms. Greenhouse know that the United States is a democracy and that if the Supreme Court pulls out of the issue, abortion law can be set through the democratic process, as is done in Europe? Or does she think abortion is so unpopular that it would never win in a level playing field?
4
@Charlesbalpha
Gerrymandering negates the ability for states to have equal representation. While the majority of Americans support abortion rights, the minority controls the voting booths.
8
Discussions of the constitutional issues involving abortion too often presuppose that a judge's personal views and policy preferences will determine the judge's decision. That probably is usually what happens, but personal views, policy preferences, and constitutional considerations ought be three very separate subjects. On a personal level, I have always believed I never could condone an abortion except in very limited circumstances. On a policy level, I have always favored legislation that would provide an almost unlimited right to abortion because I believe that a woman ought to have a right to choose and I believe that society suffers from the birth of large numbers of unwanted children. The question of the extent to which the Constitution limits restrictions on abortion has always been a much more difficult issue for me. For many years, I believed that Roe v. Wade lacked support in the text and history of the Constitution, but I now believe that forcing a woman to have a child against her will is so egregious that it is a clear denial of due process. Judges who oppose abortion for personal or policy reasons should not allow those views to influence their adjudication of the separate and distinct constitutional issues. Thank you, by the way, Ms. Greenhouse, for such an informative and forceful commentary.
14
On "norm-collapse" -- I have yet to see a compelling intellectual rationale justifying why something that a judge sees as manifestly in error should be persisted in just because of Supreme Court "precedent" and "stare decisis." This author would never tell us "precedent" should make us hew to Plessy v. Ferguson, would never tell us "Brown v. Board of Education" was wrongly decided or that no appellate court should have ever entertained disregarding Plessy until that idea dawned on Earl Warren, the consummate example of a "lawyer who knew a President." I honestly even doubt the author would tell us Bowen v. Hardwick represents "Curia locuta, causa finita," and so Lawrence v. Texas and its progeny (especially Obergefell) are all illegitimate concessions to political pressure that "compromises" the judicial independence of the Court and thus is "norm breaking." No, the only solicitude for expecting federal judges to act like good Germans, saying "I disagree but was only obeying orders/precedents" applies when Roe v. Wade is in play. The title of this essay is accurate: it's not about a threat to jurisprudence, it's about a threat to a policy option Greenhouse likes. Which is why Roe v. Wade should go.
On "the impossibility of admitting procedures" -- why would an abortionist be unable to obtain admitting procedures locally? Why is that such an insurmountable barrier, unless you are the equivalent of a 21st century carpetbagger, flying in to abort, leave, and collect?
5
@JOHN
Because many hospitals require at least double-digit admissions from doctors yearly to grant admitting procedures.
Because many hospitals are either Catholic-owned or have merged with Catholic-owned hospitals (where I work had such a merger in process, the community outcry scuttled the merger).
Because it’s a conservative community which does not want its hospital to grant privileges in the circumstances.
8
@JOHN - It is often impossible for a doctor who performs abortions to get admitting privileges to local hospitals. For two primary reasons: 1) admitting privileges are offered based on the amount of revenue a doctor is expected to bring into the hospital. Abortion is an incredibly safe procedure that rarely - very rarely - results in an admittance to a hospital. 2) Most hospitals, especially in smaller communities are religious based. Here in Waco there are two hospitals, one Baptist and one Catholic. They have refused admitting privileges to doctors that perform abortions. That is unlikely to change.
8
@JOHN Quoting Jordan Smith: "Some hospitals require a certain number of admissions as a requisite for granting privileges, but because abortion is so safe, doctors are unable to meet that threshold. (Serious complications requiring hospitalization occur in just .05 percent of first-trimester abortions.) The requirements for obtaining admitting privileges vary from hospital to hospital and can be decided based on politics alone. In Louisiana, two doctors were denied privileges precisely because they provide abortion care, according to court documents filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging the state law."
2
Is it virtue signaling by Democrats to run around and implement new “abortion til birth, and even after” legislation in every state they can?
What’s up with that?
Once a fetus is viable, the conversation changes.
If you haven’t decided yet if you want an abortion and you are entering the ninth month, it is not really a freedom of choice conversation.
5
@Ken, Women do not have abortions at nine months because they were undecided or suddenly changed their mind. If you are not well-informed of the myriad problems or fetal abnormalities that can arise in the latter stages of pregnancy, please take the time to do so before making misguided statements about the realities of pregnancy. Late term abortions are extremely rare and need to be available to the women (and their partners) who find themselves in such devastating circumstance. You might also ask yourself why you, or any one else equally ignorant of the subject, should be making decisions that that affect the health and well-being of half the population.
9
@Ken - It has been illegal for decades to kill a viable or living newborn, no matter what lies you choose to believe. If an abortion is needed in the last couple of months, it's almost always because something has gone tragically wrong and the pregnancy is either killing the mother or the fetus has serious anomalies incompatible with life.
If the fetus is viable but the pregnancy is killing the mother, labor will be induced and the newborn will be cared for just like any other newborn. If the fetus is discovered to be developing without a brain, or with brain and/or internal organs developing outside the body, or any of the other horrendous birth defects that mean the newborn is expected to die at or before birth, or at most a few hours or days later, the pregnancy can be terminated early and even then, if the newly delivered infant is living at birth, it can't be killed. Stop listening to the lies you're told by those who're willing to use any means, no matter how dishonest, to ensure that no one can get an abortion in this country, ever.
4
@Ken
Please supply references of Democrats who run around and implement new “abortion till birth, and even after” laws. You can't because it doesn't exist.
1
There are definite unintended consequences to conservative judges reversing Roe v Wade. Republicans will almost certainly lose at least a large portion of the religious conservative block. They’ve built their support with these single-issue voters. (Why I think SCOTUS will continue to uphold it.)
Good luck, I say. We will gladly take the Christians who believe in charity and social services right off your hands. Welcome to the Democratic Party...let’s go save the world.
Maybe with nation-wide comprehensive sex education and accessible, effective birth control, we won’t need abortion as an option anymore. (Except in extreme medically indicated cases, of course.)
2
Passing Shot,
We do not know whether an early-term abortion causes pain to the fetus. We have no proof that there is not pain. We do know that abortion is inhumane and cruel at all stages of development. A fetus/baby dies in the process. That we know for certain.
4
@KMW -- Fetuses don't have the neural connections to transmit pain until, at the earliest, about 27 weeks. Many think it's closer to 37 weeks before those connections are well established.
Meanwhile, in NICUs all over the country, painful medical tests and treatments are administered without anesthesia because the fragile newborns are in many cases too weak to withstand anesthesia. I know. I watched those painful tests/treatments performed on my infant grandson.
8
@KMW Of course we know. The brain is not developed. Do you even realize that 90% of abortions are done before week 12, when the embryo (or fetus as of week 10) is the size of a pea or at most a bean, which means the brain inside that bean is microscopic? Without a brain, there is no "feel". So no, there is no inhumanity. None whatsoever.
3
I truly don't understand how a minority of people with ironclad religious beliefs that abortion is murder can dictate their beliefs to the rest of us. I don't get it. If you think it's murder don't get an abortion. I can't even go into the hypocrisy that these same people are completely fine with the death penalty and have no concern for non-white peoples' right to life in any way, whether by police killings, killings at the border, incarceration of minorities at crazy disproportionate rates, disproportionate sentencings that deprive people of their liberty, but that's a separate though infuriating topic. On the basics along, these are religious beliefs that have no place in state policy. Period. End of story. The whole debate is a travesty of the constitution. Not to mention an insidious right wing effort to control women and our bodies. Look at the world - what deeply religious people have in common across all religions and countries is the use of force, physical and psychological and social, to make women to submit to men.
17
Women's bodies are just another campaign prop for Republicans. Similar, but more perverse than all the others they don't care about: the deficit, religion, the Wall, the Constitution, crime, the troops or the flag, 'freedom', except as issues for divisive partisan attacks. They really don't care about fetuses, children or families. If they cared, they would fund universal prenatal care, availability of family planning services, and they would not be cutting children and families housing, food and education while also fighting 'livable' wage laws and women's wage equality.
19
To the NY Times readers here who equate the pro-life position
with right-wing Republicanism or ultra-conservative ideology, I would like to call your attention to Father Daniel Berrigan, a celebrated poet and hero of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War era and afterward--and who went to prison for burning draft board files in protest. He was an eloquent opponent of the military-industrial complex--and of abortion as well. In fact, as late as his mid-70s, Dan Berrigan was arrested for attempting to block the entrance to a Planned Parenthood "clinic" in Rochester, New York that performed abortions-- and insisted until his death not only that abortion was morally indefensible--but that his anti-militarism viewpoint was grounded exactly in his conviction about the sanctity of human life.
3
@WiseNewYorker
Not news.
We already know Vatican Inc.'s position on female reproductive rights...and, in fact, all female rights.
4
@WiseNewYorker
Obviously his view of the "sanctity of human life" -- did not extend to nor apply to the "sanctity" and quality *and safety* of WOMEN'S LIVES.
Perhaps those who espouse Berrigan's point of view and who likewise feel that access to abortion is morally indefensible and who thus oppose all abortion rights, would benefit from first taking time out to find out how many women *die* due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth every year, around the world, to include the U.S.
http://time.com/4508369/why-u-s-women-still-die-during-childbirth/
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pregnancy-relatedmortality.htm
What about the sanctity of THEIR lives?
5
@WiseNewYorker
Good for him. Another example of a man dictating to women.
1
For those who pray for the day when abortion is no longer allowed...Have they actually experienced the time when it wasn't ? Obviously, these 'pro-life' enthuasiasts are not interested in the lives and health of mothers. They're quite willing for pregnancy to revert to what it used to be: a potentially deadly condition.
So let's just think of the children. The ones already out of the womb.
I was born in Quebec before the Quiet Revolution. Some of the girls who attended school with me came from families of 20 and 21 children. When I first saw the television programme 'The Waltons', I could not believe how rich the Waltons were. The rural Quebec families I knew did not live like that - let alone like the television Duggars.
My own mother, born to Catholic parents in England, was one of eighteen children. Twelve of them died as babies/toddlers. A thirteenth, the eldest girl, died at 23. She was sickly, and no wonder. She would have spent her childhood and teenage years trying to keep the already-born young children alive while her mother was preoccupied with that year's new baby.
For those 'pro-life' enthusiasts, I suggest they educate themselves about what life was really like, before contraception and abortion became available. And stop trying to make pregnancy a life-or-death situation for women.
129
@Oriole - One side of my family has a complete genealogy that goes back to 1653 in Canada. My relatives were French Catholics, and the story you tell is the story revealed in my family's genealogy. It wasn't at all uncommon for a family to have 13 to 20 children and have only 3 to survive to adulthood. In fact, I was pointing out to a relative the other day how many times it was 3 children who survived.
I should add that those children had the same father but in many cases there'd been three wives, the first two of whom had died in childbirth.
30
@Oriole
Why do males not use either common sense or condoms to control their own reckless breeding? Because all the pain and misery of their selfishness fall on girls and women.
9
@Oriole
I think the numbers you cite were common back in that time period. It makes me wonder whether these women were routinely raped by their husbands? I find it hard to believe that many of these women - already saddled with a dozen children, bone-tired, and likely injured from so many childbirths - actually wanted to engage in sexual intercourse.
4
"He also described the constitutional right to abortion as something the Supreme Court had decided to “bestow on women.”"
Actually, that's true. A woman's right to an abortion was created by the Supreme Court, and not by the Constitution, as originally written, or by legislatures. New York and four other states legalized abortion in state law in 1970. That would have been the beginning of a slow and healthy democratic debate and process (I am a proponent of a woman's right to abortion, by the way). Then the Supreme Court swept debate off the table in 1973 by creating a constitutional right to the process. It ended any reasoned conversation about abortion, but changed no one's mind, ensuring decades of political bitterness.
Thirty-eight US states, including many blue states, currently have criminal laws regarding the killing of an unborn child. Although I support a woman's right to abortion, I also understand that conferring the legal status as a crime victim on an unborn child in one law while making abortion legal in another may seem inconsistent. An explanation is in order, but Roe v. Wade ended any reasoned public discourse about the subject. So now, as Linda Greenhouse explains, abortion issues are settled in the court system and not by people talking to each other.
It's a really bad place for a democracy to find itself.
4
It also demonstrated that courts are more convenient for pursuing all types of agendas that were intended for public debate and legislation. The result has been the division we see today. why talk to your neighbor with whom you disagree and risk compromise when you can sue in court, and wave the decision in his face.
4
There is considerable support in the constitution including among others the freedom of religion, because only organized religion and no original documents deem it a crime. The reason is the limitation of government intrusion in to moral choices and by overextension, anti mother. Government shout not claim a right without exercising responsibility. The responsibility is to make it beneficial to avoid unwanted pregnancy and to help give families the support they need to believe that the government is honest, not lazy and hypocritical. Don’t claim yourself to be pro-life if you’re not willing to put in the hard work or if you are too arrogant to think that you’re better than those people who resort to abortion. Your party is pro abortion and anti-mother. Look at the numbers.
So it seems that women may have the right to an abortion if they so choose, but no physician nor any organization employing medical professionals may perform that service.
Some entrepreneur might take advantage of this baleful climate, bundling kits of pregnancy tests together with two aspirin and a coathanger.
4
@VJBortolot
Actually, it could be simpler than that. How well-controlled are illegal drugs in America?
Women will be able to buy abortion drugs through the mail or on the street. Should be able to. For too many, it may be the coat hanger.
"In another appeal pending before the court . . . the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit struck down a law that makes it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion if the patient wants to terminate her pregnancy because the fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome or 'any other disability.'"
The words "any other disability" are open to interpretation, are they not? What is considered a disability? A limp? A malformed arm? Would most Americans be comfortable with abortion for "any disability"? These are the slippery-slope questions that even reasonable people get hung up on.
2
@Anonymous Abortion is legal. If she wants one, she should be able to have it.
@Bill Society has the right to restrict even legal behaviors. You will find different level of support and indignation on each of the following conditions:
1. You cannot abort based upon gender.
1. You cannot abort because of Down Syndrome.
3. You cannot abort because of the fetus having no brain.
1
@Marvin So you approve of government controlling this personal decisions. You have no idea why someone decides to do it. It's never an easy decision.
"... Louisiana requires that doctors who perform abortions in that deeply anti-abortion state do the impossible by getting admitting privileges in local hospitals...."
What is so impossible about getting admitting privileges at a local hospital?
If you are a doctor practicing medicine, it would seem that having admitting privileges at the local hospital is an essential element of providing reasonable medical care for the patients. And if a licensed physician/surgeon cannot get admitting privileges on the local hospital, it greatly calls into question the capabilities of that physician/surgeon.
Ms. Greenhouse, again, premises her argument on false premises and asks the reader to buy her assumption that obtaining admitting privileges is impossible.
It is also interesting that Ms. Greenhouse, now that the prism has turned to a different spectral view of the light, is complaining that light is no longer light and needs to be disregarded in totality.
For her entire career, Ms. Greenhouse has faithfully touted the right for judges (only the liberal ones) to interpret law as they saw fit, whether or not the law actually supported the finding. Now that judges are being appointed that tend to look more carefully at what the law actually says, she is whining over the fact that the courts are finding that the liberal interpretations stretched both the law an the Constitution in ways that have been destructive to the intent that Congress makes laws, not the Judiciary.
4
@The Owl
As in other states, Louisiana has many hospitals that are religious based that may not allow abortions. Doctors have no right to be "admitted" to a hospital, that's the decision of the board of the hospital.
The size of a hospital also has physical limits on how many doctors can be admitted. And economics provide a rationale that the fewer the doctors who have admitting, the smaller the pool of competition which can reduce competition that could lower consumer costs.
10
@The Owl You know nothing about admitting privileges. Hospitals don't have to accept everyone and they routinely deny admitting privileges to doctors who perform abortions. In these cases, the doctors had applied to every hospital and were denied admitting privileges. And having admitting privileges has virtually NOTHING to do with receiving care and nothing to do with your skills as a doctor -- it just addresses whether YOUR DOCTOR can visit you in the hospital if you are admitted. It's more akin to whether a particular country club admits you as a member. BTW, do you routinely ask your doctors where they have admitting privileges before receiving medical treatment? I'm guessing you've never even thought about it before -- because it has no bearing on your actual treatment as a patient.
4
There are those who believe Roe v. Wade has no constitutional basis, there are those who believe it is never defensible to end a life at any time during pregnancy and there are those in both camps. It is for these reasons, that as long as abortion remains legal, there will be legal challenges.
And on the other side, there are those who believe Roe v. Wade is constitutionally sound and there are those who believe it is entirely defensible for a woman to terminate her pregnancy with or without constitutional authority.
It is reasonable to believe that one's view on abortion might be a result of how our brains are wired, and therefore, changing views through reasoning is not likely to succeed.
So, what will happen from here on? Lawsuits will continue and there will be columns stating abortion rights are under assault.
1
@Steve Brown And women will continue to have abortions, whether the practice is legal or illegal, just as has always happened. You can't stop abortion, period.
5
@Steve Brown: It will foul the political scene with predatory fundraising forever.
3
And you can't stop murder or theft or hunger or want, either, but that hardly makes them desirable, let alone justifiable. A ludicrous argument, to say the least.
I wonder whether some legalist out there could not develop a legal or constitutional theory that all of the these judges and politicians so opposed to abortion are standing -in loco parentis- for the fetus, and thus assume financial and legal responsibility for the child after birth? And that failure to meet these responsibilities are violations of both civil and criminal child welfare laws for which they are culpable.
Perhaps if they have skin in the game, they won't be so eager to walk on other people's faces.
14
@Steve
thanks for mentioning how these on-high decisions play out on the ground.
my mom had a total of 8 pregnancies and 6 children- she was over-burdened and in later years wished that she could have enjoyed her family, that at the time she decidedly did not.
4
Steve: I will pay for any child born who would have been aborted because the mother was unable to support her child. After the child is born, I will pay the legal costs to adopt the beautiful baby to a loving family who will raise the baby and love him/her.
We all know how pregnancy occurs. It is 100% preventable. No child should be aborted because of financial need. We don’t kill children because the mother is poor. To suggest otherwise is evil incarnate.
1
@EWG - I agree in principle, but ...
- The states and jurisdictions that most vociferously propound "abstinence only" as a birth control method are the ones most opposed to abortion.
- These same states and jurisdictions are the ones that have the weakest social support networks, and who vigorously defend against any social benefits to "those people."
Hence my call that -particularly- the politicians put up or shut up: If they are not willing to support the child post-partum, they have NO moral authority to dictate the fate of the fetus.
2
Someone needs to start challenging pro-life advocates to answer one simple question.
If abortion is criminalized in America, who should be prosecuted and what should the punishment be.
After decades of declaring "abortion is murder," do these people really intend to condemn young women, doctors, nurses and others to long prison sentences or possibly capital punishment?
17
@Eroom Trump already answered that with a yes. Remember? They absolutely do want to condemn young women to prison and death over this.
3
I note Ms. Greenhouse's viewpoint seems to be that since these cases have been decided by the Court in the past, there is no need to revisit them now. I have to wonder if she feels that same way about other cases where precedent was reversed, for example Brown v Board of Education?
9
@mikecody comparing "separate but equal facilities for different races is acceptable" to "a woman has the right to bodily autonomy" in terms of legal holdings that deserve to be revisited is probably not the direction you want to go here.
13
Zach: presidents are presidents. The Court makes mistakes; Roe being by far the Court’s most scandalous and untenable decision in history. By miles. I devote my career to SCOTUS advocacy, and no decision is more poorly reasoned and stands more obviously as an abomination of the Constitution than Roe. The decision is illegal, contrary to centuries of English common law and universal morality.
@EWG
Ah, so it is I see that you feel that "Life, LIBERTY (to make one's own private decisions about one's own body) and the Pursuit of Happiness" -- should apply only to MEN.
Strange how we just take it for granted that our judiciary is partisan. The Founding Fathers and the Constitution they left for us specifically say that the judiciary is non partisan. Yet the Republican party has been fighting tooth and nail for forty years to turn our judiciary Republican. They are all about winning, and not at all about what is best for the United States.
29
Great! So let’s pull out all the stops and some big ole lies to defeat GOP nominees from Bork on through to a Kavanaugh. And keep it coming.
Everybody know that the “impartial” judiciary should be populated by progressive judges appointed by progressive presidents confirmed by progressive Senators.
2
@WeHadAllBetterPayAttentionNow
The Constitution says no such thing.
The Constitution says that the Judiciary is to be independent of and co-equal to legislative and executive branches.
Your understanding, sir, of our Constitution, our institution, and their processes is woefully sub-par.
Because of the tenure of judges in our system, the courts are the least volatile of our "political" institutions...and, in the classic sense, therefore the most "conservative" in that the politics of the past are retained far longer than in any other branch.
Judges everywhere are placed on the bench through POLITICAL action, be it appointment by the executive with concurrence of a council or legislature, or by election. In any states, it is only the political hack that gets the life-time kiss of employment and generous pension.
One only needs to look at the political contributions of judicial nominees to see just exactly how "political" the process actually is.
Is there a better way to appoint judges?
Probably. But I have yet to hear anyone putting a system forward that doesn't the same or worse problems
1
@The Owl - Independent = Non Partisan
The clear collusion between judges opposed to women's rights is not being concealed.
A counter-movement of removal of said judges would seem to be the next step.
14
I will never condemn a woman who has an abortion. But neither will I ever condone a woman who ends innocent human life. I am about to do some pro life work in downtown Manhattan. We never coerce a woman to keep her baby but neither do we encourage her to end a life. You would be surprised at how a little care and concern showed toward these women make all the difference in a woman keeping her baby. We are there for the women at all stages and our assistance goes beyond her giving birth. She is never alone and we are with her every step of the way.
9
I think this goes far beyond just being there for the woman till she gives birth and a little after. A child is a lifelong decision and a woman needs to commit to it for decades to be able to give what the child deserves. In the pro life religious zeal towards getting the child born people willingly ignore that part. If a woman is not committed or prepared for that she should not be encouraged towards it. She should not be encouraged to follow other people's moral Ideas. Let her decide what she wants.
32
That's why we call it, "Pro-Choice."
4
“We never coerce a woman to keep her baby.” Ha ha, good one.
“We are there for the women at all stages...” So, let’s say fifteen years down the line, an unwanted child born to an impoverished teenager develops a drug addiction and starts committing crimes to support it. Then he or she comes down with a horrible disease which will cost millions to treat and devastate the lives of anyone involved. In this case, how, exactly, would the anti-abortion people provide “assistance.”
5
It's reassuring to read such intelligent, reasonable comments from so many who believe in abortion rights. I have many thoughts to add to the conversation, but alas, we are all preaching to the converted.
Several years ago, I became friends with the woman obstetrician who was the first doctor to perform legal abortions in Iowa. Keep in mind, it was before the disastrous decision of the medical profession to split abortion off from medical care and take place only in designated abortion clinics.
"Doctor Mary," as she was known, is long gone, but she told me many stories of the unspeakable tragedies that led women to her office seeking an abortion--the kinds of tragedies I've never heard, even once, anyone in the "pro-life" movement acknowledge talk about. She was morally courageous, speaking up for abortion rights very early on, and she was so very proud of the years she spent performing abortions to help women who came to her with their personal tragedies.
I am glad she died before having to watch abortion rights subjected to this hideous death-by-a-thousand-cuts.
35
@Emile...
If these tragedies remain in the shadows, then they never will come to light...
Instead of using the argument "you don't know the half of it" to make you point, why not detail those tragedies for us.
Your game is quite similar, sir, to that of the Wizard of Oz...Deceptive projection onto a misty cloud of little substance.
Is your own irony lost on you... 'death by a thousand cuts'? An unfortunate choice of words, to say the least, but then again your phrase speaks to the abstraction of abortion in many minds, a thing which pretends to have no relationship to the brutal fact of what it is.
To paraphrase the words of Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision: “An unborn child has no rights which a woman is bound to respect.”
The Dred Scott decision was 160 years ago. A hundred and sixty years in the future our culture will as different from today as ours is from the time of Dred Scott. I wonder if people in the future will be tearing down statues of today’s politicians who support unrestricted abortion.
10
@Johnny Stark maybe after the statues of "pro-life" politicians who refuse to increase funding for prenatal health care, nutrition programs, or universal K-12 education - things that would ensure children had the best shot at, you know, life - while refusing to address the fact that, in many states, it is theoretically possible for prisoners to be put to death.
If there are new statues that'll go up in the intervening 150 years, let's take THOSE down first.
9
@Zach
If spending on those sort programs were a solution we'd already have solved the problem.
The problem isn't one of money, it's one of conscious choices.
The root cause is boys impregnating girls and then abandoning their responsibilities and girls letting them do that. Reduce out of wedlock marriage and much of the problem will go
Ah, now there's an original argument for you -- all pro-lifers to a person oppose everything from K-12 education to food stamps to health care for all to the elimination of capital punishment, plus clean air and water and while we're at it nutritional intervention and inner-city community college. Tired tropes, for sure.
Thanks for the update. I would like to see a column, a discussion on these cited gratuitous, biased statements made by those judges, indicating an abhorrence of abortion.
As I recall, in that one bakery case, allowing the bakery to reject an order from gay customers, weren’t the prejudicial statements made by one of the judges/administrative judges (dim memory here) the underlying reason for the Supreme Court’s decision? Does it make a difference if prejudice is written in the opinion or spoken before? And have these judges made similar views known outside of the cited opinions?
Then, it seemed the Court required an unbiased judiciary. Now?
6
It is time to revise the way in which we review laws for constitutionality. Most major countries these days have constitutional review, but most do not use review through lower courts. Review is "concentrated" in one constitutional court. It, and only it, can put a law out-of-force.
The lower federal courts are not required by the constitution, only permitted. There is no constitutional obstacle to limiting constitutional review to the Supreme Court. We need a Supreme Court law that will do that.
Were that the case here we might be spared "give-it-a-try" legislation, a counterpart to what the late Justice Scalia criticized as "give-it-a-try’ litigation ... spawned by a corps of judges, or even a significant minority of them, who are willing to veer from text and tradition.”
5
@JR...
The advantage of having lower courts involved in judicial review of legislation is the degree to which the arguments both for and against are clarified and refined so that the Supreme Court can focus on the core issue.
This system assures that the issue is thoroughly explored BEFORE the Supreme Court hears the case...if they choose to hear it.
2
@JR
Only if we can expand the SCOTUS to 13+ Justices.
@The Owl That is the usual argument made for lower court, BUT that means at least a two-year delay in putting a law into force, Exhibit One Affordable Car Act. Other systems decide within a few months, or even before the law goes into force.
Moreover, not all cases make it to the Supreme Court, so one either gets different rulings in different jurisdiction, or one or three regional lower courts deciding for the whole country.
On balance, lower court review undercuts the law and adds little to what good briefs in the Supreme Court would yield.
This should have been written decades ago. But all that was talked about was Roe v. Wade. There was another NYT Op. Ed recently that dealt with the same topic. It is though suddenly they are saying to each other, "Maybe we should think about how to shut the barn door." Piece by piece the right to choose has been shrinking. Even if the Supreme Court overturns them, getting to that court takes time. Clinics close and access is lessened. But what is still not addressed is what was Roe v. Wade based on. It was the right to privacy and that right comes from the fourteenth amendment. Others begin to interfere in our choices. We now have to have, as well as our will, a living will and advanced care directive. Once that right to privacy is cracked, pieces start to fall away. But let's say all these laws are passed. Abortions will still happen. They will revert back to what they were before R. v. W. If there is money, there will be alternatives. Doctors will just post the case as abnormal bleeding and when the tissue is read, "Oh, she must have had a missed miscarriage." or "Oh, she must have had an incomplete miscarriage." Money can be a flight to Mexico or one of the islands. Those who don't have the finances, will head to back rooms and basements and a large possibility of lasting damage to their bodies or death. Older doctors who support the right to choose, saw the result of pre-Roe v Wade. But we also have to remember, removing choice also removes right to privacy.
17
@Ron: The Congress is DENIED the power to pay or give respect to faith-based beliefs. Minority rights are protected from majority abuses by limiting the powers agencies of government available to majorities under the theory of the US Constitution.
3
@Ron...
The issue is, and always has been, the line where abortion turns to murder.
Rowe vs Wade established that abortion was legal for a variety of reasons. It left undefined where the line when the state's interest in protecting life begins and the woman's right to abortion ends.
It is this gray area over which the fight is continuing.
My personal belief is that a doctor, particularly a doctor performing a procedure that can have serious complications, should have an affiliation with a nearby hospital as a matter of in the best interests in the patient.
That a doctor is not able to obtain admitting privileges is a far different question, and a question that deals with both the qualifications of the applying doctor and the adequacy of the hospital for the area(s) that it serves.
We should not be conflating the admitting privileges issue with the underlying discussion of when the state gains a legitimate interest in the abortion process.
1
@The Owl - The hospitals in these red states that are refusing admitting privileges are doing so because they don't want the notoriety that comes with it. They don't want daily protestors such as PP suffers, and they don't want the bomb threats and other attacks PP experiences.
In addition, hospitals don't offer admitting privileges unless doctors can guarantee X number of patients. That's why many doctors, including my own, my parents' doctor, and others, work with "hospitalists," whose sole job is caring for the patients of these doctors when they're hospitalized. Abortion is so safe that abortion providers can go years without ever having a complication that requires hospitalization. But these same states won't allow abortion providers to contract with hospitalists or even with another ob/gyn to see their patients if there's ever a hospitalization.
3
The real problem in the context of judges appointed to the Federal Courts of Appeal is that there appointment is for a lifetime. In more than one instance the writer mentioned judges appointed by President Ronald Reagan, who left office in 1988 the late President George H.W. Bush, who was last president in 1992; that was 27 years ago. No judge appointed by a president of any party should serve for more than 14 years, and that should include the justices on the Supreme Court.
If that change was made there would no longer be the worry of judges sitting on the court long after the views they represented are gone from public discourse. There would be no 35 year old appointed to serve until he or she is 95 to please some constituency or other.
Use term limits to be sure that the judges represent all the people because that certainly isn't the case now.
17
Do women not have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? Taking away a woman's agency and bodily integrity denies that. I find it off that small government and keep government out of our lives conservatism is comfortable with inserting itself in a woman's most personal decisions.
44
@MmeBott
The Founders, all religious males (even Jefferson and Madison, who were essentially atheist), purposefully excluded girls and women from the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Females in the U.S. had zip, zero, zed till they took to the street and stopped performing in the sheets, demanding voting rights and legal protections 100 years ago - which no female in America yet has in the same measure as any male and every male. Witness the constant assault on female bodies and daily lives, because the U.S. male half wants it that way, always did over the last 240+ years.
2
For the crowd that wants to increase the number of Supreme Court justices, say to 15, would it be ok if they start picking the new ones tomorrow? How about 2020? Or 2023?
It depends?
5
@B
Sure, right after we eliminate the lower Federal courts, "retire" the justices, and amend the Constitution to eliminate/overhaul the electoral college provision.
1
That depends on your party affiliation. For Democrats, the plan would have to be coordinated over time. Do it now and Republicans will stack it even more in their favor. The best plan for Democrats would be to have a long-term plan much like the Republican plan that put us where we are now. Democrats at this time are too divided for such sensible planning. Understanding that the primary goal of taking back control of the government is of paramount importance. Without that, the single-minded, single-issue Democrat voters have no hope of getting what they want. They must understand: First things First!
The fellow the other day in congress said the way to combat climate change, (funny, I thought he didn't "believe" in climate change) is to have more babies. I think these decades will be thought of as "The Rise of Religious Oppression" Each religion seems to be doubling down on its most heinous theologies. All I know is that if I were a woman I would want abortion on demand for literally ANY reason at any time. In this country for these beliefs now I am a monster for wanting to decide an issue for myself taking into consideration all of the conditions and circumstances of my own life. This is not freedom. Not even close. Change the name of our country, to Gilead.
45
@Joseph: Religions are tribes competing for limited resources by population growth. It has been the cause of genocidal warfare since humans hunted out the first jungle.
1
A decision overruling Roe v. Wade would mean that an individual has no constitutional liberty interest in matters of reproduction that the state may not control through legislation. That principle must apply equally to men as well as women. If the state wishes to advance its compelling interest in preventing abortions, it is targeting the wrong gender. Laws criminalizing abortions have never prevented abortions. Women with sufficient financial resources have always been able to obtain safe abortions. The poor are forced into unsafe illegal abortions. In either case, abortions still happen. A law that mandated that all males receive vasectomies at the age of 16, on the other hand, would largely eliminate unwanted pregnancies and the need for abortions. The law could provide that males could have their vasectomies reversed after being married at least one year and with the express written permission of their wives. Any male who then impregnated a woman other than his wife would be guilty of a felony and subject to imprisonment. Of course, the mere notion that state legislatures dominated by men would ever intrude on the reproductive choices of males in such a fashion is absurd. The anti-choice movement has always been about controlling women.
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@Charles L. Thank you for this; I had come up with the same solution independently. But age 16 might be too late; I propose age 12 if medically feasible.
We need to change the perspective in this conversation. Women don't just "get pregnant" by themselves. Many are subject to men impregnating them against their will, either through rape or, less obviously, through a religion or culture that demands that the women be subject to the men's desires, regardless of the women's right to bodily autonomy. When this is no longer true, and when we have learned how to prevent all devastating birth defects, then we will have drastically reduced the call for abortions. In the meantime, access to education and birth control are the best ways to reduce that need.
8
@Charles L.
The problem with your amusing fable is that while virtually no man opposes another's sexual freedom, many women oppose the right of their sisters to have the same. This is the hidden fuel behind much religious anti-abortionism in the US.
11
@DaveD
While few men would give up their own sexual freedom, there are many who would oppose the right of others to the same. Jerry Falwell is the first who springs to mind.
3
"The Flood of Court Cases That Ban 'Legal" Abortion". There, fixed it for you. Abortions have been performed for thousands of years, laws to "ban" them are not going to change that fact. I've said it more than once, if men could get pregnant then legal abortions would be available in every doctor's office.
39
Another approach would be to pile on huge amounts of child support with sufficient tax funds to enforce payments. That is, apply tax funds that would go to supporting the child and mother on Welfare into the enforcement of Child Support payments.
5
There is nothing in the text, history, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution that justifies Roe. It is a moral stain, a Dred Scott precedent that denies personhood and protection from lethal violence for those that are most vulnerable and voiceless.
12
@James
"There is nothing in the text, history, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution that justifies Roe."
Neither is there for the ownership of semi-automatic weapons.
Hence the problem of taking an originalist view of the constitution: you can't by any stretch of logic pick and choose which parts of the constitution one should view contemporarily in terms of principle and intent, and which parts to view as if one was living in the 1700s.
If you want to debate the morality of abortion, fine, but let's dump the farce that is Originalism.
21
@T Certain weapons have been banned, such a full auto, grenades, missiles, etc. A true originalist reading of the 2nd is closer to saying that we should be allowed to form our own private militias using any weapons available to us.
In any case, banning semi-autos would not be an abolition of a right, but a restriction. All rights are restricted. Talking about banning semi-autos would be on par with talking about 20-week abortion limits. A restriction of a right but not an abolition.
3
@James
And yet, by restricting access to reproductive freedom, you are “literally” calling for the enslavement of women to their fetus.
So, if the Dred Scott decision was wrong because it denied Dred’s personhood, why is it reasonable in your mind to subject any woman to the care and feeding of a fetus without giving her any choice in the matter? Pregnancy is not a benign condition.
10
As a pro-life democrat, I pray for the day when abortion is no longer allowed in our country.
However, I think going through the court system, as opposed to passing a constitutional amendment, is the wrong path. The reason why the 12 largest marches in Washington, and 16 of the 20 largest marches in Washington have been the annual pro-life march is because we nine unelected persons change our laws on morality and freedom. As we've seen with Dred Scott or Obergefell, the makeup and mindset of the court changes with time. It's much more difficult to change an amendment.
For years the pro-life movement has been very disappointed with politicians, particularly on the right. Most pro-life abolitionists realize the GOP will always hold out pro-life legislation as a "carrot on a stick" with no intention of passing such legislation, because as their own research shows, the overwhelming majority of pro-life abolitionists are moderate-left leaning with the one non-negotiable exception of being against the pro-abortion side of the Democratic party platform. If the GOP were to ever pass real, sweeping pro-life legislation, the next election would be a landslide for the Democratic party.
As I said, I'm a pro-life Democrat, which means that I end up voting third party, or reluctantly Republican about half of the time. I'm afraid the millions like me and I will have to continue with that trend.
7
@LetsGoBlues People who are truly 'pro-life' respect a woman's right to her own self direction and authority over her own life, whether and when to have a family.
64
@M But should that right be applied before conception or should it be allowed as an ex post facto decision? That is the one of the questions upon which this debate turns.
3
@mikecody
It doesn't matter. As conception takes place *only* in a woman's body, and as it is *her* body and *not* "the State's" -- the State has no right whatsoever to interfere with *her* Constitutional right to her LIFE and LIBERTY and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
Remember that/those Constitutional right/s?
Or is the problem here, *not* one of rights applied "before or ex post facto conception" --
-- but that MEN and PROLIFERS think these rights only apply to MEN and to a FETUS?
10
When the Republican Party is finally successful In banning all legal abortion in America, poor and middle class women and girls will die, or they will have their lives ruined in court. Lots of them will be killed in illegal, backroom abortions. They will be charged with crimes. We know that. It is how things were in the "good old days". Those women and girls with wealth will travel out of country to get the quality services they need. They will continue to live the lives all citizens deserve to live, just like they did in the "good old days". I am sad for the United States and the women who live here as second rate citizens with no rights over their own bodies. We should do better.
53
That’s what’s so ironic with the term “pro-life.” Pro-lifers are so adamant about making abortion illegal, but they stop short of addressing the implications of doing so. Perhaps this is because they have no viable solutions to the inevitable consequences, they choose to ignore reality, or because they just don’t care. Either way, pro-choicers must keep fighting because, as you have pointed out, banning abortion creates many more problems than it claims to solve.
7
@Lily - It's easy to be "pro-life." As long as the fetus is in the woman's body, SHE pays the price and it doesn't cost the pro-lifers anything. The minute that fetus takes its first breath, if it was an unwanted, unaffordble child, it's going to start costing the taxpayers money. That's when these same "pro-lifers" get busy slashing or trying to eliminate the safety net programs that might give that unaffordable child half a chance at a decent life.
4
@MegWright
That's an argument on which I believe emphasis must be placed. Give people these two choices: (1) you allow women autonomy over their bodies OR (2) we increase your taxes to fund the social programs that end up either supporting the mothers or "raising" the children. So... what will it be?
The pro-life stance makes me think of toddlers who choose the short-term satisfaction of eating a dozen cookies over the long-term consequence of having a stomach ache. Banning abortion might make pro-lifers happy today, but their wallets will make them regret it tomorrow.
2
We saw this coming the day Trump was elected in 2016. Women in red states with religious bigoted legislators will suffer terribly under these laws, and Trump's SCOTUS will most probably do nothing to help them.
18
@James Mazzarella We've seen this coming long before the Orange One lied his way into the Presidency. The war on women has been marching along for decades now. All the people who said 'it will never happen' are complicit in the crime of allowing the Christian Right power over our government and power over women. We all know this is about controlling women and nothing else.
2
It never ceases to amaze me that a party which preaches limited government and deregulation continues to poke its nose into our bedrooms and regulate what women can and cannot do with their bodies.
88
@Christy apparently their limited government only applies to businesses.
The last presidential should have been only about the Supreme Court and democrats blew it. The next one in 2020 is not only Supreme, but The Federal judiciary. Nothing else matters democrats, grow up and realize this or be doomed.
16
Well this is the fruition of ill advised liberals who opposed Hillary Clinton. Trump appointed judges decimating abortion rights when the opportunity to obtain a moderate (I won’t say liberal) majority on the Supreme Court would have put this issue to rest. Lost opportunity that will take generations to get back.
20
If it was the Supreme Court that enacted roe v Wade in 1973 that paved the way to end over 60 million innocent lives, it can be the Supreme Court to reverse this course. We do not need any more lives lost to abortion. Hopefully this current Supreme Court can put an end to this.
4
@KMW
It is a person's religious belief that supports the view that life begins at conception. However, the First Amendment prohibits the government from enacting religious beliefs into law such as a law that would outlaw abortion after conception.
5
@KMW
There have always been abortions and there always will be. The end of legal abortions will only make women seek them in back-alleys or foreign countries. Many women will be killed or harmed. Is this what you really want? To punish women?
It will take a police state to enforce this ban, given that there have been abortions throughout human history. Or cheap contraceptives readily available. Or perhaps the “pro-life” people can assist mothers who are young and poor, or have disabled children, or have already have children and cannot afford more.
Pregnancy is dangerous, and only the woman becomes pregnant, no matter how much so-called pro- life people try to pretend otherwise. Leave this matter to the woman to decide.
1
@KMW - About 18 years after Roe v Wade, the national crime rate plunged, in the absence of any new laws or anything that would explain why. Finally, people figured out that suddenly there weren't so many unwanted, unaffordable children born to women who didn't want them and were in no position to care for them. Statistics show that about 1/3 of unwanted children spend their adult lives incarcerated - after having committed numerous crimes beforehand. It would be nice if the so-called pro-lifers cared for one minute about the fate of those "punishment children" they want to punish the women with.
4
Waiting periods and ultrasound requirements infuriate me. These people treat women as children or imbeciles who must surely have capriciously made the decision to terminate a pregnancy. 'You just better hear about what you are doing, young lady, and go home and think about it.' Women are not stupid nor do they make such a major decision on the spur of the moment or lightly! Yes, the legislators' goal is really to delay and obstruct, to make it much more difficult for women, but the suggestion is that women need big brother (or sister) to make them make the "right" decision.
There is little doubt in my mind that the SCOTUS will overturn Roe in the near future. Women will go back to the back alleys. So-called "pro-life" folks are delusional if they really believe that they will "end abortion." They will simply help to damage more women. Some will die; others will be left with permanent health issues.
55
@Anne-Marie Hislop The same people smugly satisfied by the difficulty in affording two days off, transportation, and delay vote for politicians who argue against common sense gun legislation. They are claim to be beside themselves that an unborn fetus is terminated yet want politicians in power who scoff at waiting periods for firearms. Wayne Lo, school shooter at my college, Simon's Rock of Bard has said, from prison, that awaiting period could have made the difference between an impulse desire to kill us all and not doing it. Instead, he shot six people, killing two- all somebody's babies at some point, all likely with parents too old to biologically produce another child should they desperately want that. The same people who want to make abused women+girls beg for an abortion and compound their trauma vote for people who cut funding from Special Olympics, who passed a law so hunters can kill hibernating bears+ wolves+their cubs, deny funding to families, including babies+children, in Puerto Rico and whatever disaster site may have people who make Trump's incomparable self-pity flare up. They babies should be born + suggest that settles everything instead of it just being the part of the need, responsibility, and hard, endless work of raising a healthy, thriving, happy child into an adult. If a fetus is even viable. It denies science, pressure it puts on a girl or woman who faces, should she take their road, a life of being called "a taker" from the same people.
8
@Anne-Marie Hislop
Imagine how that will play out. Not all states would ban abortion. So half the states in the US would be going through a crisis of some sort, jailing women, or women dying from DIY abortions etc... Meanwhile in blue states everyone will be fine.
I am having a very hard time seeing the anti-abortion threat succeeding.
@Anne-Marie Hislop Overturning Roe does not make abortion illegal in the US, it returns the rights to the states. It would still be legal in most states, severely restricted in some, illegal in some.
The problem with Roe is that it was a stretched activist decision that can easily be legally argued against. The proper way to codify the right to abortion is via a constitutional amendment.
But, I know, that simply is not possible given the numbers, which is one reason I am sure led the court to their activist decision.
1
You're out of step with the times, in a thousand ways, as science now ruins any of your pro-choice arguments. And destroying a child because of abnormalities, whether the child is a 'quarter of an inch long' or more, doesn't jive with anyone's sense of fairness or equal treatment -- ask twenty-somethings -- let alone the planet's basic norms of core humanity.
This ruinous issue will go to the high court and states will be handed the final decision, as should have been the case from the beginning. Barbarity is a difficult thing to defend, however cloaked.
4
@Ken
Hi Ken,
Please read the comment from Lawyer. May this profound and moving comment open your mind.
2
@Ken
You would benefit from a little education in the ontological and biological differences between 1. "a child" vs. 2. a "zygote/embryo/fetus," because it seems you are confusing subjective opinion with biological fact.
No. 1, a "child," usually referred to immediately after birth as "a baby," is an autonomous human being, that has been born, and is viable to the point it can exist outside of the womb, apart from its mother.
By contrast, No. 2, "zygote/embryo/fetus," are, strictly speaking, biological parasites completely dependent upon a host for sustenance.
And if I am not mistaken, that host is a woman (whenever it is *not* a petri dish or a fertility clinic's frozen storage tank).
So, if you apply the moral judgement of "barbarity" to women who choose to terminate a pregnancy because they either cannot or else do not desire for their body to give sustenance as a host to a parasite against their will --
-- do you likewise apply the judgement of "barbarity" to fertility clinics that have no recourse but to dispose of unwanted embryos?
-- who's the "barbarian" here?
It seems to me that it would be you, because you are applying a moral judgement on choices and decisions of the most intimate nature that impinge on biological autonomy and procreation *only* of the parties involved -- that are entirely *none of your business.*
4
@Ken - Thousands of children are born with horrendous birth defects such as developing without a brain, with brain and/or internal organs developing outside the body, or any of a long list of fatal defects that medical science can't cure. I watched my grandson die, painfully, in a NICU because of a fatal heart defect. All the medical science in the world wasn't able to overcome that fatal defect, and he suffered every second of his short, doomed life. Imagine if your only human contact was one that brought additional pain. It would have been much kinder to have ended the pregnancy early rather than allow every second of his life to be so filled with pain.
3
The poorest red states spend hundreds of millions on law firms and lawyers for abortion laws repeatedly while their constituents suffer poor schools, poor health care, autocratic representation in state legislatures and Congress and poor housing (they all seem to live in mobile homes), and substandard wages.
32
At the 21st week of pregnancy, my unborn child was diagnosed with profound anencephaly. This is to say the child is nearly fully formed save one body part. He (it is a boy) is utterly lacking any brain whatsoever. Fingers, toes, hands, feet, he has everything. Yesterday's ultrasound revealed his heart rate to be 159 bmp. But there is no brain, not even the beginning of a brainstem. The Childs is 100% certain to die of affixation the instant the umbilical cord is cut. I am 27 years old, married with two perfectly healthy children age 3 and 4.
Here is my question: who among the pro-life movement would like to attend the birth come July? It will be a devastating moment. Even for my doctors. The radiologist yesterday at a a major hospital broke down in tears and was unable to speak after viewing the unborn child.
Good people suffer tragedy.
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@lawyer
Thanks for sharing your story. The 'pro-embryo' crowd doesn't like to hear truths like this. But they need to. I actually have never heard what their opinion would be about a situation like yours. Would they say people like you need to bring the child to term, or would they relent and say abortion is okay? The 'pro-embryo' crowd should be made to answer. The world and people's lives are more complicated than they have the respectfulness and compassion to understand. I wish you the very best.
6
@lawyer First, so sorry to hear this, my heart goes out to you. I am sure you will find many pro-lifer who would be willing to support you at birth if you really wanted them there.
I think your case falls into the realn of what most in the US would support. 20-22 week limits for no reason and then afterwards for reasons of mothers health or something such as this where the baby cannot survive.
1
@lawyer - I am so sorry to hear that. My grandson was born with a fatal heart defect that wasn't detected until after birth. We watched him suffer horrendously for two weeks in a NICU, with every possible medical intervention. Yet in the end, modern medicine couldn't overcome that fatal defect. Of course, it's even more clear in the case of anencephaly. It's a tragedy for all involved.
4
Thank you for bringing to light all the many ways Republican-appointed judges are eroding women’s health and freedoms. The truth is laws do nothing to prevent abortions. They just drive women to take desperate means to carry out our decisions. Will we really go back to back alley abortions? To jailing women who take the morning-after pill? It’s tragic and infuriating.
18
@Kate---------------------Most men, apparently genetically, are fraught with passion to control women. Our closest beings, Chimpanzees, are exactly the same. What a pity we did not evolve from Bonobos, Orangutans or Gorillas.
I am not for abortion, I am against against the religious interference in the lives of women where abortion is concerned.
What is particularly irritating is when men dominated religions, are the most outspoken groups against abortion. Until Men experience the pain of bearing children , they should have no say in this matter,
30
No one is "Pro-Abortion." We are "Pro-Choice." That is an important distinction that must be emphasized.
3
@Glenn Thomas
I agree !
1
The enthusiasm and zeal in 1985 from when I was sworn in as an attorney, sustained its first major, unsealed blow from Bush v. Gore.
Had I known that any attorney who took that same oath would aggressively use the Bench to advance a partisan agenda, rather than justice, would have resulted in a dramatically different life choice.
The increasing erosion of the integrity and backbone of the judiciary, partisan judge by partisan judge, is not only demoralizing, is craven and decays the soul of each and every honorable lawyer, law student and Lincoln aspirant.
To each of you who wears that Robe with partisan zest - SHAME ON YOU!
19
@Lynn
Amen
I feel the same way about abortion rights as I do about climate change -- it's a done deal. With a majority of conservatives on the court, abortion will be illegal.
4
Where are the laws requiring men to take responsibility for the pregnancies that result from their sexual activity?
I'd like to see those arguments play out in full public view. Best I can tell the judges, most of them males, act as if women are the only people involved, or perhaps more accurately. women are the only people who will be held responsible. How convenient for the male half of the equation.
30
@Spring We have child support laws in this country that do indeed require men to take financial responsibility. As they should.
@Marvin - There are many ways for men to avoid paying for the children they sire. In my red state, once a Republican governor took over, Child Support Enforcement was privatized, their funding was slashed, and they could no longer deal with all the cases they had pending. I have a relative who works for CPS, and one day she reported they had 69 callers on hold. And even in states that more adequately fund CPS, it's up to the mother to track down the father's employment and turn the info over to the state. Then, months later, when the state catches up with him, fathers can quit their jobs, or persuade their employer to say they quit and instead pay them under the table. Any man who's determined not to pay child support can figure out how to get out of it, or to pay as little as possible.
7
If you are truly against abortion, you should be for birth control. Have you noticed that the majority of "Pro-Lifers" are against birth control. And if you truly cared about "life" you would fully financially support every mother and child after the child is born - especially the struggling single mothers. The reason the so called "Pro Lifers" don't? The majority don't care about the fetus, they only want to control women and control women's sexuality. It would be refreshing if they simply told the truth.
34
@Dem in CA - So many of the forced birthers consider that unwanted child as fitting punishment for the woman for having sex without the intent to procreate. Sadly, those "punishment children" don't fare well in this society.
1
Women ought to wake up and stop voting for Republicans on any level of government. They are making laws that will take away a woman's power over her own body.
I say and say again: There is no right to be born. Birth is a gift. No individual has a right to another person's body or to another person's pain. The state ought not have the power to force a woman to carry a baby to term against her will because such is involuntary servitude that is prohibited by the 13th amendment.
21
@Valerie Elverton Dixon Roe clearly states that after viability the right of the states to allow that birth is indeed a right. That is why states can prohibit abortions legally after 24ish weeks.
1
Funny how the GOP propaganda machine grows apoplectic when discussing “activist liberal judges legislating from the bench ...” yet when it serves their (declared) interests, nothing could be finer.
The shameless, bold faced hypocrisy is stunning, but no longer surprising.
Welcome to the new and thoroughly Great USA.
17
@Lars You are correct, there are unfortunately activist judges on both sides. Even on SCOTUS you have what I would call 6 of them pretty consistently - four lefties, Thomas and Alito.
Remember though, Roe itself was a huge activist decision, somehow divining the right to abortion from the right to privacy. That is one reason it could eventually be overturned, it is not really constitutionally supported except by a big stretch. The proper way to codify it would be just as we codified a woman's right to vote - via constitutional amendment.
The same judges who are trying to outlaw abortions are upholding efforts to limit voting rights and are all for gerrymandering districts so minority votes don't count even when they vote.
It amazes me that you can equate those who are Anti-Abortion Rights with those who are Anti-Born Children. Once they are out of the womb, poor and minority children cease to matter.
16
@Arlene It's not only illegal to gerrymander by race because of the VRA states are pretty much required to gerrymander to ensure there are some minority districts.
Also, both sides gerrymander and left and right leaning judges support them. See the two cases before SCOTUS right now, NC gerrymandered GOP, Maryland gerrymandered Dem.
1
@Arlene
Agreed, the true bottom line here is to actually punish women and their children. Some male children are important but only if, white and grown.
1
@Marvin - In 2016, House Democrats got 3 million more votes than House Republicans, yet Republicans kept a 23 seat majority. That's proof the gerrymandering is pervasive and is primarily on the GOP side.
Judges are only the last stand. Wait until the Latino vote really kicks in demographically. Especially more recent immigrants. Solidly Catholic in belief and culture. Vastly anti-abortion.
Unrestricted abortion rights have always been about educated white women who have benefitted the more from legalization. Coming demographics alone will challenge that.
5
@CNNNNC: I'm educated and I don't want the future we will bequeath to our progeny.
1
If Justice Kavanaugh votes to support even one of these restrictions on abortion I am sending a bunch of money to the fund created to defeat Senator Susan Collins.
7
It is unbelievable that women vote for these guys. It's easy to love a child before it's born (and seriously, is a five or seven week old embryo any of their business?). There is something desperately wrong in this country when members of Congress are giving performances on the floor of the house with a picture of Ronald Reagan riding a dinosaur and carrying a machine gun. Really? They love babies before birth. Then you can go without health insurance, they will decimate your schools if you live in a red state, and they will protect the right of someone to come in and mow down your first grader in school. We are an absolute joke and I am sick of these crazy guys making laws for my daughters and granddaughters. Will sanity ever prevail?
23
Just one more example of conservatives' drive to legislate from the bench.
4
We are forever hearing about the rights of a woman to control her own body. What about the rights of the life she is carrying in her womb. Do they have any rights. They are more than just a clump of cells. They are fetuses and if given a chance will grow and develop into a baby. We must not destroy this very important life. They deserve to live.
3
Nope, those cells have no rights. No, no one is obliged to devote any part of their body, ever, to sustain the life of another.
A woman can’t be forced to breastfeed. You can’t be forced to donate anything, not a kidney, not a single pint of blood, to sustain another’s life. If a pint of blood would save your child’s life, you can walk away.
Now that that’s clear, can we cease the moralistic handwringing over the loss of innocent life, and start respecting the agency and autonomy of the woman whose body you think the state should control?
5
@KMW: A fetus knows nothing of what circumstances await them after birth.
4
@KMW
So sorry to be the bearer of bad news for you, but the last time I checked, "fetus" was not a word included anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.
1
There is still a majority in this country in favor of a woman's right to choose what she does with her body. The #metoo movement has made it clear women can no longer be violated with impunity by men; that needs to include Republican judicial appointees...
11
It's kind of hard for me to envision where this is going to end up, because I know that anti-choice activists never give up. If states are able to eliminate abortion within their state borders, I suppose the activists will try to think of ways to eliminate pharmaceutical abortions, and to develop some type of national prohibition which will override the states that continue to allow abortion. The most conservative states will go to work on prohibiting contraception, perhaps starting with unmarried women.
9
Developing rights around abortion through the courts has led to this uncertain and horrible situation.
The right to abortions is should have be decided directly by the people through a series of referendums.
Both the right and the left have manipulated voters for nearly 50 years around this issue into perverted coalitions that only divide the nation. People who are fixated on stopping abortions no matter what have allied themselves with a number of right wing groups whose real interest is economic suppression of minorities, working and middle class people.
The legislative process has broken down due to minority yet vocal opposition and either weak or exploitive politicians that cannot stand up to the issue.
We should follow Ireland and Italy with a national referendums on the issue. A few years ago in South Dakota a strong anti-abortion legislation passed by legislature was repealed by the voters because South Dakota had Initiative and Referendum.
8
@carl There is no national referendum process for amending the Constitution or creating a law. Even state referendums must abide by both their state Constitution and the federal Constitution.
And if you want those state ones, you have to respect both sides. So, if Alabama passed a referendum banning abortion, you'd have to respect that.
Which is basically what overturning Roe would do, it would return this issue to the states. It would not make abortion illegal.
1
@Marvin
Nothing bars a national plebiscite and maybe it is time to amend the constitution to allow the electorate to amend the constitution and approve laws. The current system is not working.
We are constantly hearing about a woman's right to control her own body. That the life in the womb is just a clump of cells and feels no pain. What about the life inside the mother's womb? What rights do they have? It is debatable whether the fetus feels pain but what is certain is that it is immoral to take its life. Abortion is inhumane and the taking of innocent human life. This is something we should all be upset about. They are the most defenseless human beings and need to be protected and cherished.
3
@KMW "They are the most defenseless human beings and need to be protected and cherished." Until when? Until birth? Then the GOP would like to take away the mother and baby's healthcare, WIC, and SNAP benefits as well as section 8 housing (if needed). If the child has serious and lifelong disabilities, who pays for up to 50-60 years of care?
2
@KMW
Do not impose your morality on my body.
2
@KMW They may be potential human beings but they are not human beings. Abortion literally means "the interruption of a process". The process is the pregnancy - the development of a human. You know how a baby is called a bun in the oven? Well, it's not bread yet if it's still baking in the oven. If you take it out very early before it's ready, you didn't waste a nice loaf.
2
By now, everyone should understand that abortions only happen to the poor, the young, and minorities.
Upper middle class daughters sometimes have a medical problem that is taken care of by the family doctor. The word abortion never passes any ones lips.
Anti abortion laws are proposed by a loud minority. A dedicated, one issue block that frightens candidates and judges.
12
I think a compromise on abortion is better than these eternal battles over an issue which is, ahem, less important than the future of our planet, or our health care problems.
Linda appears to be on the extreme pro-choice side and as far as I know she has never endorsed ANY restrictions on abortion.
She is the mirror image of Ted Cruz who finds NO abortions to be ever acceptable.
But those of us who believe in our hearts on "need based abortion" rather than "abortion on demand" will agree with neither Linda nor Ted.
But we have no voice.
2
@Ludwig Roe v. Wade not only permitted abortions during the first trimester, it provided substantial basis for restrictions on abortion during the second and third trimesters. The issue is whether the Court will undermine Roe v. Wade by permitting burdensome restrictions during the first trimester.
6
@Ludwig
Speaking for myself, the decision to be uncompromisingly "pro-choice" is not based on a moral judgment about human life one way or the other. It's based on the realization that In real life, as opposed to the fantastical world of political manipulation, the abortion question is always a question about a specific abortion. A myriad of factors, the mother's physical or mental health or survival, economic factors, the health or viability of the embryo, moral judgments, family situations, the circumstances of the pregnancy, etc, all of them interacting and all of them requiring exercises of judgment specific to the situation, mean that the only people who can make the decision responsibly are those involved. In that sense, I would say that you have exactly the "voice" to which you are entitled--a voice in making a decision about a pregnancy that is yours, or in which you are intimately involved.
10
@Ludwig The real compromise is for the US to join the rest of the civilized world and assure science based sex education for all and meaningful access to comprehensive affordable birth controls.
Despite having far more liberal abortion laws Western Europe has significantly lower rates of abortion than the US. A happy side effect is lower rates of STIs.
3
An important point to remember is that the Supreme Court will not (and cannot) outlaw abortion. All they can do is decide that there is not an explicit or implicit right to abortion in the Constitution. Then it is up to the democratic process to decide whether and under what circumstances abortion should be legal.
With the Supreme Court no longer dominated by liberal voices with their own view of what the Constitution should say, Ms. Greenhouse and others may find a newfound respect for the democratic process. When you put all your eggs in the basket of 9 unelected judges you are at risk of losing those eggs when the justices aren't in your corner.
2
@J. Waddell At the moment the democratic process you extol is desperately in need of those 9 elected justices to end gerrymandering which stifles the voice of reason in significant portions of this country.
9
@J. Waddell: Congress is flat out prohibited from enacting laws that gift respectability to faith-based beliefs.
9
@J. Waddell Correct, overturning Roe v Wade does not make abortion illegal, it returns that decision to the states.
Congress could then try to create a national law, but that could be challenged as federal overreach.
Congress could then add abortion as right explicitly to the Constitution, but I doubt they have the votes for that.
1
Can someone help me understand, and feel free to push back against my premise if you disagree, but the fight for reproductive autonomy seems to be by far, the least successful mission of progressivism. I know we have numerous talented and highly driven activists and organizations working overtime. The political party that makes no bones about the fact that they aren't in the business of helping marginalized peoples, has somehow convinced a sizable amount of voters that they care deeply for the plight of the unborn, and now they've nearly got the court system blockaded. Why is it that we can never seem to do much more than live to fight another day on this issue?
5
@The Buddy - That's a very good question.
I wish Democrats would talk more about all of the other issues linked to reproduction, health, safety etc.
It would be really great if just one Democratic politician would point out that Democratic policies (contraception, health care, education etc.) actually decreases the number of abortions.
9
@DR: More babies for adoption is their real objective and they don't much care about the background, prenatal care, or health of the babies.
1
Chief Justice John Roberts' number one priority is the "legacy " of the Roberts court. He understands that any decision to overturn Roe v Wade would set off nation wide demonstrations by millions of women, could be potentially fatal to the credibility of the Supreme court, and indelibly stain his legacy. Roberts, as the swing will vote, will be against any facial challenge to Roe, utilizing stare decisis or settled law as his rationale.
6
@Don Shipp. We can only hope.
The problem with the political question of government taking away freedom for women to make health care decisions arises because it is about a philosophical/religious question for which there is no consensus. The question is, when does a bundle of human cells which is "human life" become A human life?
Simple illustration. My finger if "human life." It is animated and recognizable as "human." It is not A human life. If removed from my body it will not continue to live, it has no consciousness. The question of when an embryo or fetus switches from being like my finger, to becoming an independent human life.
Consensus exists that external viability is a safe benchmark, and our laws and the Roe decision already reflect that. There is no general agreement, and no scientific method of answering that question, beyond that benchmark. It is based on our own personal belief systems.
That is why government must leave it to us to make that determination. To do otherwise denies us all of our fundamental freedom of conscience.
30
Of all these outrageous laws, the most outrageous is the one from Indiana, outlawing abortion of defective fetuses. What? Even if whatever reason you are opposed to abortion, surely the case of Down’s syndrome or any of the multitude of genetic defects that can be diagnosed in utero is different. What is the point of creating a life full of pain and suffering, a life that can never reach its full potential and that will be a burden on its family and society forever? We are not talking about a curable condition but about a profound mental and physical disability that science, at present, cannot remedy. A fetus, whether defective or not, does not know it exists. Aborting it will prevent untold suffering of the resulting child and its family. So what is the point of this law apart from gratuitous cruelty?
42
@Mor I agree with your criticism of the Indiana law. But the difficulty is that you pro-choicers have never offered a compromise position or even admitted that a late term healthy fetus, say a five month old healthy fetus has a right to life which over-rides a woman's wishes (unless she has a medical emergency).
By analogy, those of us who have driver's licenses have a right to drive. But we do not have a right to drive above the speed limit. We do not bundle a right to speed under a "getting to one's destination" right.
Until you pro-choicers recognize SOME rights for the unborn and offer arguments other than dissing pro-lifers, there will be no peace.
3
@Mor What gives you the right to decide that a life with Down's Syndrome is a life not worth living? Many people with Down's live fulfilled, meaningful lives and contribute to their communities in valuable ways.
5
I'm pro choice, but I agree with you. I also do not agree with abortion beyond the first trimester except for if the mother's life is endangered.
1
So much of this issue is contained in this one sentence. "He also described the constitutional right to abortion as something the Supreme Court had decided to 'bestow on women.'" Evidently, women are not supposed to have constitutional rights, just men. I continue to insist this idea is behind all the anti-abortion arguments: women are to be ruled by some man. Whether a woman is impregnated or remains pregnant is the man's choice, not hers.
60
@Scott
"Evidently, women are not supposed to have constitutional rights, just men."
I don't see how Scott arrived at that conclusion. The judge said nothing about rights in general, he simply described a particular right that he doesn't think is grounded in the Constitution but was simply "bestowed" by the Court. He mentioned women because they were the only beneficiaries of the right.
2
@Scott: The power to abort has existed for millennia, and exposure was practiced before that. Laws are enacted AFTER exercises of powers are judged to be a public problem.
@Charlesbalpha: I assert that all others have the same autonomy over their own bodies as I claim over mine.
4
The liberals were OK with being ruled by unelected judges as long as those judges were liberal. The so-called "constitutional right" to abortion is itself an invention of activist liberal judges. It never occurred to the liberals to ask themselves, "What if the judges stop being liberal?"
The problem for liberals is that in the last analysis this country is a democracy. The battle is where it should be -- in Congress and the state legislatures. That is where the people have a voice. That is where the liberals must win their point, or lose it.
7
@James Ribe And conservatives are all OK with being ruled by unelected judges as long as those judges are conservative. And the banning of abortions is an invention of conservative judges. So? The people have no voice in this or any other matter, when conservatives rule.
4
@James Ribe Or liberals can look for a compromise. And accepting a compromise does imply that one recognizes that the other side also has a point.
All the letters I see here, other than a few like yours, amount to dissing pro-lifers. It is not going to get anywhere. 46 years after Roe v Wade we are still fighting, and largely because the Supreme Court will not allow the people to decide.
5
@James Ribe women have a right to body autonomy. There is nothing more fundamental. There shouldn’t be any discussion here about a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.
16
If the State requires abortion providers to have nearby hospital admitting privileges, then the State should have the responsibility for ensuring that those admitting provisions are made available to abortion providers.
If not, the State is unduly burdening a woman's fundamental right to choose an abortion in consultation with a doctor.
27
@Sequel Agree and I’ll add if the state is going to require women to give birth then the state should require mandatory vasectomies so women are not burdened with an u wanted pregnancy.
Once again, as if we actually needed a reminder, presidential elections have consequences, and one of the dire consequences is the presidential right to appoint judges to lifetime positions.
It is fitting that this particular president -- with no interest in science or in the precedence of American history or in the rights of women or in the rights of the poor or in providing medical support and financial assistance to children or in keeping children together with their families -- would engineer an abandonment of Roe v. Wade.
The explanation of this, of course, is that on top of everything else, Donald Trump consistently demonstrates that he feels no moral imperative about anyone or anything except himself. To Trump, winning on any issue is an end in itself and is what defines him.
34
@sdw Different states have different cultures and different ideas on reproduction. Roe v Wade was a "one size fits all" "solution" to a difficult problem. It is better to let the states decide, within reason.
As a start I would suggest that NO state should be allowed to forbid a first trimester abortion, and no state should be allowed to permit abortion of a healthy fetus past 18 weeks. Once we agree on THAT much, different states can then decide exactly what they are going to permit and when.
We have more urgent issues like global warming, sharp differences in wealth, a health care crisis, etc. An issue that most countries have addressed quite acceptably, is taking away far too much of our energy.
"France legalized abortion in Law 75-17 of 18 January 1975, which permitted a woman to receive an abortion on request until the tenth week of pregnancy. After a trial period, Law 75-17 was adopted permanently in December 1979.".
Note that the ten weeks in France is far less than our "constitutional right" of 24 weeks.
2
@Ludwig France like much of Western Europe assures its citizens receive science based sex education and have ready access to low cost and often free birth control. France's abortion laws are not controversial because unwanted pregnancies are far less common than in the US.
7
@Ludwig
It is highly doubtful that the current Supreme Court would accept the moderate range you propose as a Constitutional guideline under Roe v. Wade for legislative restrictions by states on abortions. The mood of the majority on the Roberts Court appears to reflect a thirst for total victory over pro-choice advocates.
The other issues you mention – including the existential issue of climate change – do require our attention, but there is nothing to stop concerned Americans from addressing those subjects, while continuing to fight for abortion rights.
I can guarantee that the recently appointed, hyper-conservative justices who differ from the majority of Americans on those other issues, will be unrelenting in their opposition to abortion.
And so, we continue to be ruled by an unelected judiciary. Under the 14th amendment, Congress has the power to act. Where is Congress? Hiding.
9
@william hayes: The Congress is out grubbing for money to resolve nothing lest it cease to be a provocative issue to raise money.
This system doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of a precocious ten year old.
8
And so a quarter-inch pre-fetus has rights superior to those of the adult human being that is its host. As reproductive rights are being strangled by an increasing mass of court-approved restrictions, we are witnessing, on the part of some, a step-by-step reduction of women’s status as full human beings to a single function: baby-maker. In the present age of rising white-supremacist sentiments, this will sound eerily familiar to those who know their mid-twentieth century history.
63
@Fred Suffet "And so a quarter-inch pre-fetus has rights superior to those of the adult human being that is its host." I agree with your annoyance. But under current law, abortion on demand is the law for 24 weeks and a 24 week fetus is quite developed compared to your "one inch".
Indeed those 24 weeks are 14 weeks past the date when abortion is permissible in France.
If pro-choicers were to accept reasonable limits on abortion, the problem would be much ameliorated.
3
@Ludwig
There is no point at which a government (any government, be it France, the US, or otherwise) telling a person that they must allow another human being to live inside their body is "reasonable." If anything, that commandment gets to be a less reasonable demand the more advanced the fetus is. I'm a fully developed human being and so are you--do we have the right to live inside our mothers' bodies? "No, of course not!" you say? And no, of course not, is correct. That is never a right that anyone has.
Look to Canada. They are, as far as I can tell, the only country that makes sense on this, i.e., the only country that says the government has no place restricting access to abortion; citizens' bodies are their own and not the state's; everyone mind their own damn business.
But you're right that if current US abortion law allowed for abortions up to 24 weeks, AND nobody was trying to chip away at that, we'd be relatively OK. The problem is the anti-women crowd won't let the law stand. They are hell-bent on destroying it. Or haven't you noticed?
2
@Ludwig When you need an abortion you need one.
Why would anyone advocate for the state to involve itself in medical operations?
2
Thank you, Ms. Greenhouse, for clarity and concision about an issue that, in my lifetime, will never find an amicable resolution.
It’s bad enough for women whose special province this is to be made political pawns by men wearing judicial robes because they fear the loss of control, of power. The right-wing fanatics and evangelicals are clearly not at all concerned about the harrowing physical and emotional pain that women who agonize over this decision have to make. They apply standards to women that have nothing to do with morality but have everything to do with how they demand that society be ordered: narrowly and punitively.
The John Roberts Court is likely to finally overturn Roe because the majority ideology is a bastion of rigid, male-domination and acidly unsympathetic. The Right’s suffusion of like-minded judges into the appellate system is bringing pressure to bear upon the Court because, at bottom, the defeat of Roe would be perceived as a victory in their campaign to roll back protections of any kind.
22
Please keep bringing these things to public attention, Ms. Greenhouse.
I'm too old to be personally impacted, but as a woman, I have always believed in a woman's absolute right to make decisions about her own body and her own needs.
All attempts that restrict a woman's right to choice scream of the rampant misogynist tone that undercuts absolutely everything.
I'm grateful for the change in congress brought about in the 2018 mid-term elections. It's a step in the direction of fair and equal treatment of women in this nation.
To quote a line from an old Joan Armatrading song, "...if women ruled the world, it would be a good thing...."
19
My hope is that one day soon women will realize they are the absolute majority in this country. Demographically, men are in the minority and always have been.
16
@gratis And your point is ...? Millions of American women are pro-life. And millions of females have died in abortion clinics before taking their first breath. Are you suggesting that a woman's right to support life will see Roe v Wade abolished?
1
@John Smythe
Millions more do not vote because they feel powerless. Perhaps more than actually do vote. Women, as a group, absolutely do have power, should they choose to exercise it. Power derived from simply being in the majority.
But your point of view takes the view that a fetus or an embryo is a baby and the woman is simply an incubator with no rights to her own life. I disagree.
5
@gratis 'your point of view takes the view that a fetus or an embryo is a baby and the woman is simply an incubator with no rights to her own life. I disagree.'
No his and my point of view is that women have all the rights you mentioned except the right to murder their own child. Quite rightly no man has that right either. YOU decided to interpret his POV as being that a 'woman is simply an incubator with no rights to her own life'.
He never either said or implied this. But you did and that says everything about you, NOT him. Deal with the actual question at hand and stop projecting your mentality onto others. You are NOT a mind reader. Stick to the discussion!
1
@LS, who writes, "It is confounding that those who strenuously oppose public assistance for poor people, who believe that immigration (from non-European countries) should be limited - are the people who oppose abortion. Affluent women will get abortions. But poor women will not be able to. So Republican policy actually encourages more poor children." That's a feature, not a bug: more white babies, fewer babies of color is and has always been the goal of the religious rights' attack on women's wombs.
10
Aren't JUDGES supposed to rule based on LAW, not on their personal positions?
10
Why is it "impossible" for doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges to hospitals? What is wrong with our medical profession that it will not stand up for the health and safety of women?
It is time to take the abortion issue out of the hands of religious leaders and start focusing on the health of the human being that walks, talks, breathes and has a heartbeat already.
15
@Maureen Steffek
It's not that hospitals don't like abortion or abortion providers -- although I'm sure some might be dissuaded by the fact that anti-choice protesters will harass the hospital if privileges are granted.
It's that abortion providers don't need privileges. Admitting privileges allow a physician to admit patients to a hospital and treat them there-- to use the hospital's facilities, staff, and resources and to care for the patient within the hospital's system. Hospitals don't just grant privileges to every doctor who asks. The physicians are expected to admit a certain number of patients. (Abortion providers wouldn't meet this criteria.) To grant privileges, the hospital has to go through an extensive credentialing process, and the physician usually has other responsibilities to the hospital that come with privileges. To a certain extent, the physician becomes a part of the hospital system. This doesn't make any sense for an abortion provider.
Anti's try to make it sound like a doctor who does not have privileges is bad or, worse, that is patients cannot be treated at a hospital-- that they cannot be admitted to the hospital. That is deliberately misleading. Obviously a patient can still be admitted to the hospital in an emergency if the doctor doesn't have privileges. They'll be treated by the doctors already at the hospital who do. Plus, these dumb laws have a geographic requirement--ie privileges at a hospital within 30 miles-- that's not realistic.
21
Judge Sutton's ruling seems absurd. Does a doctor have a 'right' to provide non-abortion services? Does a baker have a 'right' to sell a cake? Does anyone have a 'right' to do anything?
5
It's about time cases were brought before the Supreme Court to end abortion. This is a very serious matter and this should have occurred sooner. We do not need to have any more babies lost to abortion and made to suffer. Thank God for the Supreme Court. And thanks should also be directed to those who have worked relentlessly to end abortion for many years. Their work has not been in vain.
4
@KMW Except an early-term abortion doesn't involve making a baby "suffer." Instead it's a removal of tissue that will eventually become a baby. And I'd be interested to know why you believe that the government should force women to become parents.
19
@KMW We should also end this right to say "no" if a patient needs to share, access, use, or take something from, the insides of YOUR body, in order to remain alive. Allowing you to say "no, sorry" when a patient needs, say, a transplant-organ or a blood transfusion from your body, causes thousands of deaths each year, deaths which could be prevented by forcing you to donate against your will. Don't patients who need to access the inside of your body-- precious, innocent, human patients-- have a right to life?
10
No baby was ever lost to abortion. Not once, not ever.
Once you free yourself of that imaginary moral conundrum, you can see clearly the woman before you who is a full-fledged person, with agency and the right to determine how she will live her life.
Then, you might understand why it’s none of your business what she does.
3
There shall be no state religion. Not.
As long as people who believe abortion is a "sin" vote, you will have this issue and sooner or later, under Trump, Roe v Wade will be gone. As it is, we are close.
A woman's body is hers but they don't think so. The mostly men who enact these laws and who are judges think they have the right to tell a woman what she can do with her body. Worse, the idea that a fetus is an "unborn baby" has permeated our language. When was the last time you heard someone say fetus when speaking of one?
The Catholic Church teaches that the soul enters the body upon conception. Find that in the bible, folks. Find it in anything Jesus said. Find it anywhere in written theology prior to recent times. It's just another way to suppress women and keep them "in line." That women are taught to go along with this shows the power of brainwashing. Start young, keep going relentlessly and make your opposition evil. That word always works.
It may indeed be sad for a woman to end a pregnancy for any reason and people have a right to object if they do. They do not and should not have the right to decide on any type of moral grounds (based on religious beliefs) that it is anything other than what it is. Remember, Trump said a woman should be punished for abortion. While he was living in NYC and not a candidate, he was pro-choice. Surprised? Of course not.
No candidate, Dem or GOP, will stand up to the so-called Christian right and call them out. Too frightened. : (
25
@Jeanie LoVetri If you were serious about that question you could get a serious answer from any pro-lifer with theological training or advanced Bible knowledge. I claim not expertise but if abortion is murder then it is unequivocally wrong, the question is are unborn children alive? Scripture would suggest yes. Passages along of the lines of you knew me in my mother's womb, or the penalty levied for striking a pregnant woman - money if the child is harmed, death if the child dies, make clear that the child is considered a person in their own right not simply a tissue growth inside a woman.
3
@Jeanie LoVetri: The first amendment disallows all faith-based beliefs from the law.
4
@Jeanie LoVetri
The Supreme Court has never interpreted abortion as a religious issue. Roe vs Wade said nothing about religion being a factor. This is something abortion lobbyists made up in the 1970s when they realized that they were losing the abortion debate and needed to confuse the issue.
4
With data and privacy now weaponized, including health information, women who have abortions are at risk of having their identities known. There simply is no more healthcare privacy when the conflicted and politicalized State/Judicial apparatus has a hand in your social, educational, and healthcare outcomes, believing they are "God". I now tell women to have their eggs removed, choose when and how they exploit their eggs, or use long term pregnancy preventative measures, but effectively take ownership of your body and options, like never before. Help young and poor women in your community do the same. Consider it an honor to help a woman determine her own autonomy. Mostly, stop having babies until all women have open access to abortion and the right to determine their social and economic autonomy, as Med Do. Help women seek private funding, privately administered abortion, when and where you can-- so women can preserve their identities and privacy. Abortion rights have been lost. By the time the NYT's writes about it, women will be incarcerated for having an abortion at six weeks and a day. It's not about a god or any religion. It's about fundamental preservation. America simply needs the vessel of your womb, more babies, more workers, productivity, more economic viability for the rich, powerful and connected who can afford private abortion, free of criminalization. America's economy is now 53% service dependent. Your abortion, is their future cop, maid or landscaper.
6
I thought liberal judges were the “activists”. It’s clear what the future portends for reproductive rights with the actual conservative activists masquerading as judges who now hold sway on our judiciary.
7
@VAKnightStick
Depemds on how you define "activist". The "liberal activists" removed an issue from democratic control; the "conservative activists" are trying to restore it.
“Activist” is a word conservatives use to denigrate, much the way the sneeringly use “liberal”.
Watch the news next time there’s a protest. Listen for concern about the possibility of violence on the part of activists.
The professed conservative worry over activist judges legislating from the bench is 100% pretense.
John Roberts said he’d only call balls and strikes, yet saw fit to tell congress it couldn’t modify Medicaid unilaterally. Never mind congress created Medicaid and could abolish it, somehow it was up to each state to accept its expansion.
If that’s not legislating from the bench, what is?
The truth is that even if all these cases result in overturning Roe v. Wade, they will not stop abortions. They will stop safe and legal abortions. But abortions will continue. History backs this up. Women will still claim control over their bodies when faced with these hard decisions. The difference is that more women will die. Which may, in the end, not be a distressing thought to these overbearing misogynists. These are dark times indeed.
24
We will see what the Suprem Court decides.
That, even more than the abortion issue per se does, will show whether Judges, even appointed by the Executive, can maintain a reasonable level of independence, or whether we might as well abolish the courts, and leave justice to the President
2
For half a century this one issue has diseased our political process because there is no possible compromise between sides.
States rights used to be about sustaining slavery, then segregation. Now the issue is abortion.
Clash of the same cultures- it is as if the Civil War has never ended.
3
@alan haigh
Of course there is possible compromise -- the nations of Europe use it all the time. It's called democracy. But in the US, abortion proponents ruined this possibility by removing abortion law from democratic control. Like the slaveowners, they claimed that passing laws on the subject would violate "constitutional rights" there were never in the Constitution to being with.
1
Why is having admitting privileges impossible? Abortion is an invasive procedure. Requiring admitting privileges seems a perfectly reasonable medical precaution.
5
@Mkm
Because hospitals don't want the hassles that would ensue.
10
@Mkm it's also unnecessary -- anyone who has outpatient procedures -- regardless of what they are -- can be admitted to an emergency room in case of an emergency.
16
@Mkm Hospitals are consolidating rapidly all over the country, and many are catholic-owned. As such, they deny admitting privileges to any doctor who performs abortions. Outside of large metropolitan cities, there is only one hospital, and if that hospital refuses to grant admitting privileges to doctors who perform abortions (simply because they perform abortions) then it effectively prevents the doctor from performing abortions (an outpatient procedure with less risk than out-patient plastic surgery, which is routinely performed every day without the doctor having admitting privileges). This is the whole point - to prevent access to abortions through regulations on those who provide them.
17
Thank you, Ms. Greenhouse, for keeping focused on this critically important issue. Please maintain this focus throughout the chaos that all these court cases are generating.
Once again, I am reminded of Kamala Harris' question during the Kavanaugh hearing: “Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?”
Equality and equity in legal decisions are the significant issues here. To allow judges to inject their personal beliefs into making such decisions is contrary to the Constitution's tenets on its face.
32
My question on abortion is: "why is the government involved at all ?" We all know that laws that cover every possible case are impossible to write. Accordingly, mothers need to be permitted to do as they wish with their bodies. Some people refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated against diseases, such acts affect us all, such acts are crimes against society. A woman choosing to terminate a pregnancy has no affect on me, and therefore need not be covered by a law, it's her choice. To an individual woman deciding whether or not to terminate a pregnancy may be a difficult choice; let her make it, her decision doesn't affect society in any meaningful way.
What we have here is, plain and simple, a show of power: certain elements of the religious establishment are using this issue as a means of demonstrating their power to exert their will on the rest of us. I grew up in a place in which the Catholic church was dominant and actually served as an un-elected arm of the government. The church powers were determined to tell people how to live, the local government abetting them in their anti-democratic acts. Since then, the church has lost most of its influence but, in abortion it has found an "issue" where it can still assert its power over a liberal society. (The word "issue" is in quotes, because what a woman chooses to do with her body should be of no concern to the government; abortion is a serious concern to a woman, but no issue of the government, thank you).
45
@eclectico
It seems very funny to me that before Roe vs Wade, churches defined life as the ability to breathe. Therefore the baby was only alive if it could breathe air. That is what the Bible describes.
"Genesis 2:7
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. "
And there are 15 more verses that speak about the breath of life.
Suddenly, now it is the heartbeat? Religion is trying to regain control through the GOP.
5
I think you have amply demonstrated the ability of the very conservative movements in this country to take a long view, getting judges appointed to the Federal Bench where they line up for Supreme Court appointments, and moving the country in the direction of a theocracy (my assumption of much of the underlying reasoning for the anti-abortion stance of many of these judges).
The conservatives, as we know, have taken the same long view about education, and a recent decision to allow bible study in public schools shows how successful they are.
Is it possible to roll back this trend?
18
@Marc
Bible study in public schools ?
Is that part of a comparative religion class?
I'm guessing not, but I don't want to give up all hope for America.
1
@Marc Meanwhile, red states continue to lag way, way behind blue states in education. Bible class won't change that.
1
The ongoing subjugation of women by any means possible continues unabated by the conservative male hierarchy.
To not allow women to have reproductive rights, or full dominion over their own bodies is akin to not allowing them to vote.
Considering that women make up more than half the population and the potential voting block, to suppress them is to continue to have a majority in the halls and on the benches of power to make up law, where they have no voice. It is the usual ploy that has worked for so long, but it is about to change.
There is only one way to reverse this trend and that is to vote in Representatives, Senators and Governors that are going to uphold women's rights. Then, with a majority, judges that are going to apply the law fairly and as intended, and not be radical, extreme or conservative can be installed.
It will take some time to reverse the damage done already, because not only have their been a multitude of radical and extreme right wing judges pushed through (and more to come in the next 2 years), but a Supreme Court seat was stolen as well by republicans.
We must remain vigilant because human rights denied to just one, are human rights denied to all.
100
@FunkyIrishman
Dear Funky, you are right! For 46 years Roe-Wade has denied human rights to a human fetus 60,000,000 times. The human fetus has a right to be born. The mother has no right to take another human being's life, no matter how young.
1
“Judge Sutton, named to the appeals court by President George W. Bush, is a thoughtful conservative whom I’ve long respected. I’ve struggled to understand what led him to his conclusion.“
He is a judge and he wants to ban abortions based on personal belief. Where’s the struggle?
26
@Padfoot Dear Foot, Roe-Wade allowed abortions on a personal belief that a fetus wasn't human until the mother said so.
We now know the fetus has been human from conception to birth ot the life led. Our DNA differs from our mother's.
Each of us is human and our mother has no right to abort us.
4
Um...Because he’s a judge and his personal beliefs should not play a part in this role?
3
@Padfoot
The "struggle" comes from the fact that his personal beliefs are of zero importance. His oath is to the Constitution and its interpretation by the courts above him, not the fascist fringe....
2
It is confounding that those who strenuously oppose public assistance for poor people, who believe that immigration (from non-European countries) should be limited - are the people who oppose abortion.
Affluent women will get abortions.
But poor women will not be able to.
So Republican policy actually encourages more poor children.
84
@LS
'So Republican policy actually encourages more poor children.'
Which leads to more Democrats, not to mention more federal expenditure. These right wing folks may be good on tactics, but are abysmal on strategy.
2
@LS Yes, indeed: cannon fodder. As well as a way to keep not just women, but poor Americans, men and women alike, in their place. "The rich get richer, and the poor get..." -- well, you know the rest.
Thank you again, Ms. Greenhouse.
It seems that the life-time appontment of federal judges is the last thing on most people's minds when pondering a presidential vote. It probably should be near the top of the list, given the long-term ramifications.
It might also be helpful to voters if candidates were pressed to name judges they would be likely to nominate.
Wouldn't that politicize federal courts?
We're already there.
28
@Ralph Averill ~
"It seems that the life-time appointment of federal judges is the last thing on most people's minds when pondering a presidential vote. It probably should be near the top of the list, given the long-term ramifications."
It is certainly near the top of my list. But I think many of those people who just could not vote for Hillary Clinton were oblivious to the potential ramifications of a slew of right wing judge appointments. Their Hillary hatred blinded them to what an ultra conservative Supreme Court will mean for this country.
23
@Ralph Averill - Donald J. Trump promised in his campaign to nominate only those judges who had been vetted by the Federalist Society. So there was full disclosure!
10
Trump’s full disclosure was one reason that he lost the popular vote.
4
Ms. Greenhouse,
A small request. Going forward, would you consider using the phrase "oppose abortion rights" instead of "oppose abortion"? I think it's fair to say that a large percentage of people who are pro-choice oppose abortion in the sense of it might not be something we would choose for ourselves. Rather, we believe that, whether we approve or not, it should be a woman's choice rather than a choice imposed on her by the government. This may seem like a nitpicking request, but as I'm sure you know, words matter and many people out there are not capable (or choose not to) fill in the missing blank (of "rights") themselves. Thank you for your consideration.
81
@Rachel Gartner you are spot on -- which is why I hate the term abortion clinic -- for reproductive health clinic, abortion provider vs doctor. While we are at it, let's be really clear. We don't want to provide medical assistance for women seeking abortions. Because as history has shown, they will have them, and without medical intervention -- they will die.
8
@Rachel Gartner
Dear Ms. Gartner, would you approve of it or not if a mother, tired of raising it, suffocates her own young child? I thought not.
A mother has no more right to abort her child before it was born than after. This is not a nitpicking issue.
All humankind as a right to life, from conception on.
2
@Lake Woebegoner, I disagree with your definition of humanity. I strongly believe that humanity is defined by sense of self, empathy and the connections to others, none of which an embryo possesses. Everyone is entitled to their opinion; I'm just astounded that you think that your opinion is more important than my right to determine what to do with my own body.
3
The question really becomes a simple one.
What are Progressives willing to concede?
When 75% of the nation wants some restrictions on 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions to protect the sanctity of a viable human being (according to science, no less), it's perhaps time for those on the Left to look to Europe for a model.
In Europe, women are much more empowered than women in the United States when it comes to Sexual Freedom and owning the responsibility for choices made during and after their sexual activity.
In other words, whether a woman intended to get pregnant or not, she has 3 months to decide on an obtain an abortion.
After that, the liberal governments of France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and most of the rest of the EU have a collective voice in the determination of that soon to be baby, requiring 2 independent doctors affirmation even when a mother's physical health is at risk by carrying to term.
So again..what is the left willing to concede to make most of these court cases go away?
Or how far into the abyss do Progressives want to go to insure that the baby in the womb is never considered anything more than a clump of cells?
10
@Erica Smythe OK, if you're going to invoke the liberal European model with regard to abortion, how about invoking the liberal European model with regard to maternal care, child care and maternal leave? These things absolutely go hand-in-hand. Europeans don't mind the government "intruding" in their personal lives. They've got a socialist-capitalist model whereby they agree to give up many individual rights in return for advancing the common good. We don't have that. Here we shout to the skies our love of and belief in the rugged, frontier ideas of "each-man-out-for-himself" and "individual freedom."
As a progressive, I hate all this "individual freedom" stuff. But I say if we're going live by "individual freedom," that freedom applies to women and men equally. Women have a right to be as autonomous as men. Trust women and stop treating them as murderous Medeas.
14
@Erica Smythe Well. OK. But at the next meeting of the "Pro-Birth Society" ask for a show of hands on: Full, unrestricted access to birth control (regardless of means), sex education (not merely abstinence education) requirements nationally; beefed up lifetime social and health care for children born with birth defects and those born to parents without the means (financially or psychologically) to care for them. Be sure to step back as peoples' heads explode. This is the other part of most European systems you conveniently omit.
9
@Erica Smythe Concede what? Everybody knows that the Religious Right wants to eliminate abortion, period. It wants to eliminate the ability of a woman to decide on abortion, period. Progressives (according to science, no less) recognize that a clump of cells is a fetus. The court cases do not address the sanctity or viability of life in the 2nd or 3rd trimester; they deal with any access that might enable a woman to get those independent doctors' affirmation for her own decision. Concede women the responsibility for choices made during and after their sexual activity.
5
I fully support a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions, just as men have the right to make their medical decisions without the state telling them what to do. How is the imposition of state control of a woman’s reproductive health based on the personal religious beliefs of lawmakers not a violation of the First Amendment? Prohibiting abortion for any reason is tantamount to state establishment of religion. The Constitution guarantees freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion.
122
@BG
This is the best and most succinct summary of what is happening. Separation of church and state must be upheld and women must have complete equality under our laws.
5
@BG
It is a violation of the 13th amendment to force a woman to carry out a pregnancy against her will.
@BG: the Constitution says only two things on this issue.
1. There shall be no official state church in the USA (such as the British Church of England, which is headed by THE QUEEN).
2.There shall be no religious test for public office.
And we don't have those things.
It does not say you have "freedom from all religion". It says you have the right to worship as you choose.
Women have the right to medical control over THEIR bodies, but a child is NOT YOUR OWN body but that of another individual, who has his or her OWN rights.
We now have two more conservative justices on the Supreme Court since President Trump was elected. This is the reason many people wanted to see Donald Trump become president. He promised he would appoint judges and justices who were pro life and he has not disappointed. Hopefully justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will vote with the other conservative justices and will support those in the pro life movement. We want to end abortion and with their assistance it looks more probable that this may occur. We will never cease the good fight to stop abortions from taking place in America.
6
@KMW
"We want to end abortion"
The Republicans act as if there were no abortions before Roe v. Wade.
There have been abortions throughout history and still will be abortions if it is overturned, but they will be illegal and so we will return to the era where women will die. See, for example, this:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp1809150
The way to drastically decrease the number of abortions is to help to prevent unwanted pregnancies and, most important, to make it possible for more women who might want to choose to continue an unplanned pregnancy, by supporting them with higher wages, better access to heath care and good childcare.
And, of course, those who really care about young lives
[as opposed to using abortion to manipulate voters (like the Republican Congressman from PA who was running anti-abortion ads while telling his mistress to get an abortion)] decrease the slaughter of born children with universal background checks for gun purchases.
12
Abortions will never end in America. Safe abortions for poor women will end in some states. And combined with restrictions on contraception, family planning by poor women will end in some states. And combined with cuts to healthcare assistance, public education and other forms of public assistance, decent lives and opportunities for social advancement will end for poor women and their burgeoning families in some states.
Face it, where they control the voting booths, the religious right is waging unrelenting war on the poor, using poor women as their weapons. You might think that poor children are collateral damage, but they are actually the intended victims. Christian values? In what alternate universe does God favor the wealthy over the poor and men over women?
This is about Red State Christianist sharia, pure and simple. And some people decry the self-segregation of people with differing social and political perspectives - really?
6
@KMW -- Laws will not end abortion. They will only curtail providing medical assistance for people who will seek to have abortions anyway. Your bad laws will needlessly put families in grave danger by denying the women they love with the healthcare they need when they are most vulnerable.
8
At least since the George H.W. Bush administration the litmus test for admission to the federal judiciary (except in the very bluest states) under Republican presidents has been opposition to abortion. And now the numbers are telling.
What the Democrats need to do when the control both houses of Congress and the Presidency is to (a) expand the number of District Court and Court of Appeals judgeships significantly, (b) require a three-judge court in the districts if the constitutionality of a federal or state statute is at issue, and (c) expand the panel size in the Court of Appeals from three to five. (Expanding the Supreme Court would be a last resort, and used only if at the time the Democrats took control the conservatives had a six vote or greater majority, with most of these Justices under 60 years old.)
16
Ms. Greenhouse's analysis is right on the money.
That said, it neglects to address the fundamental issue that in democratic systems there are no absolutes, and that jurisprudence reflects contemporary politics and culture. To imply otherwise elevates Judges and Justices while at the same time denigrating the democratic process.
Legal and Constitutional niceties aside, the next election will quantify Supreme Court jurisprudence for the next thirty years.
...which is something everyone, particularly Democrats, might think about as they go through the process of nominating their candidate.
12
Unfortunately, the Constitution gives the minority of voters in the USA control of the Senate and, through the electoral college, the presidency. That recent GOP presidents have won with a minority of the popular vote is not a bug, it’s a feature. That Red State voters, a minority nationally, control the Senate is not a bug, it’s a feature. And because of these Constitutional features allow an increasingly extremist GOP to control our politics, the federal judiciary is being slanted to the right. Combine these Constitutional features with an unprincipled GOP’s eagerness to subvert Constitutional safeguards of state voting rights and federal advise and consent (yes, you Neil Gorsuch), and it’s easy to create a tyranny of the minority - the GOP dream.
It takes wave elections, not just electoral majorities, for liberals to win nationally. Maybe we will have another one in 2020, depending on Donald Trump’s unerring ability to inflame the opposition. But as the article describes, much long term damage has already been done to the federal judiciary. Just as extremist GOP state legislatures have recently poisoned the well to deny legitimate power to lawfully elected incoming Democratic governors, the GOP has poisoned the well of the federal judiciary for a generation to come. And with two more years of Trump and McConnell, they’re not done yet.
1
@Mike Iker
To the extent that is true, it's interesting to note that liberals have won many elections. For decades Supreme Court rulings reflected their social and political views.
If they don't want the present trend to continue they must expand their constituency.
If, in face of the gravity of the situation, they can't bring themselves to do that, they will be faced with a conservative if not reactionary court for the next several decades.
I wonder how many of these young women, who describe themselves as “pro life” would actually choose not to have an abortion is she knew that financially she couldn’t support a child, or if she were raped or if she would be giving birth with severe mental or physical disabilities. Would she also choose to continue with the pregnancy if Trump has his way, and The Affordable Care act is abolished and she is on her own for both the cost of pre natal care and the birth and life long medical care for the uninsurable born with a preexisting condition. Nor would there be help for childcare and housing.
Do any of these women ever even occasionally consider what would happen if they got their wish and abortion were totally banned in this country and the consequences to not just strangers but to their friends, sisters and themselves? Are they that uncaring or unaware. I suspect that many now would do like what has been documented by abortion providers, who say that they’ve provided abortion support to women or the daughters of women who are outside the clinic the day before the abortion protesting and return to protesting the day after, claiming that they are different than the other women who are there for abortions, not ever acknowledging their hypocrisy. Some of these same “pro lifers” also say they strongly support the 2nd amendment, apparently not worried about the repurcussions of unfettered gun access in this country. What a perverse meaning of being pro life they have.
159
@Miriam As someone else in this newspaper said, a better term is "pro forced birth," not pro life. I wish I could remember who to credit with this improved term. "Pro life" is a silly term, I mean, who is "anti life?" Pro forced birth tells it like it is. Women as state property, as chattel, children as collateral. And since so many of the "pro forced birth" contingent are also pro death penalty and are so supportive of the gun lobby, I find that term "pro life" to be an oxymoron.
34
@Adelaide Paul
I wish I could hit recommend 100 times on this one.
They are:
Pro guilt,
Pro gun violence,
Pro female suffering, and the kicker is as you say,
Pro forced birth
7
@Miriam: nothing about the ACA would affect the genuinely poor on Medicaid welfare.
Can't support a child? Then don't have unprotected sexual intercourse, because THAT IS HOW BABIES ARE MADE!
Or you can give that child up for adoption to one of the many thousands of infertile couples desperate to adopt.
Only 1% of ALL abortion are done for rape, incest, health of the mother or fetal abnormalities -- ALL TOGETHER -- and those are normally exceptions to any anti-abortion laws.
99% of abortions are done on healthy normal women with healthy normal pregnancies. This is a fact, even Planned Parenthood acknowledges this.
The solution? Make the man who GOT THAT WOMAN PREGNANT financially responsible to HER ... to the pregnancy .... to the child, for 18 years.
1
As a public interest attorney representing abused and neglected children, I have no difficulty in understanding Judge Sutton. I have watched as our elected circuit court judges trim their rulings to more clearly align themselves with the state Court of Appeals tendencies. When the higher court leaned more towards the rights of children to be free of abuse - they ruled that way more often. When that shifted away from children and towards the parents' rights to raise them however they saw fit (at bottom, property rights in their kids), they started to lean that way. Judge Sutton sees the way the Circuits and SC is headed - he changes accordingly
2
It’s not that I’m for abortion, I’m against religion’s interference
in the lives of Americans.I am a strong advocate of the separation of Church & State.I am for keeping religion in the Churches, and not in our bedrooms.What is most agitating about the effort to absolve religion, it is being supported by men dominated religions.This is where women’s choice comes in, Until men go through the pain of bearing children, they have no right to restrict anything pertaining to women,
80
@Independent1776 This is especially clear when we consider that the answer to being against abortion is not to have one. The deep-seated drive of anti-abortion fanatics to force this opinion on others has always mystified me, which is why I don't recognize the category, "abortion debate". There is no debate, just an army of obsessives with unmitigated boundary issues.
9
@tony zito
well put!
2
I'm a physician and there is one thing about the requirement for doctors who perform abortions that they have to have admitting privileges at a hospital that perplexes me. As someone who has had to deal with the misdiagnoses and overdiagnoses of my patients who have gone to a walk in clinic at the local grocery store or drug store, why don't those doctors or nurse practitioners have to be required to have admitting privilege at a local hospital? If they refer someone for chest pain or stroke, why don't they have to manage the patient in the hospital instead of whoever is on call?
87
@Ernest Ciambarella
What if the local hospital is a religiously affiliated hospital?
The ability of a physician to obtain privileges may not be simply a question of competency, licensing, etc, but may simply be a reflection of the personal opinions of the hospital board regarding abortion. When privileges are withheld on the whims of others, what is the abortion provider to do?
5
@Ernest Ciambarella
Interesting question, and one for a whole article, one I think many would like to read.
I think we know why it has been made a rerequirement for abortion providers though.
3
@Ernest Ciambarella
Um, because a GP who doesn't treat stroke patients has no business managing a stroke patient? Neurologists should be treating stroke patients. Cardiologists should be treating individuals who cardiac concerns. Surgeons should perform surgery. We have specialists for a reason, how on earth is this confusing for you? I honestly can't tell if you're kidding.
Doubt you're a physician if you can't figure this out. (Also nurses don't have admitting privileges.. surely you know this.)
Likewise, a doctor who performs an abortion is not a surgeon. If surgery is required after an abortion, a surgeon should be involved.
3
If a state abolishes the right of a woman to end a pregnancy, even by roundabout ways (such as tha 18 hour ultrasound requirement mentioned In the article), the state should be responsible for the medical costs of having that pregnancy continue. And should the woman who has been forced to continue the pregnancy not desire to keep the child, the state should be responsible for the costs of raising that child, providing them with good preschooling, diapers, food, etc. This should be especially true if the woman was taking precautions to prevent a pregnancy and those precautions failed.
The states might claim that this puts an undue burden on the taxpayers. However, the state’ has to act to enforce their restrictions, which also creates an undue burden on the tax payers who support the woman’s right to end her pregnancy.
47
Texas will suffer if Roe is found to be unconstitutional even in increments. There is no way our state will legislate abortion at any stage.
However, I suspect that these courts will be strategic and slow at chipping away at the right.
Eventually, these red states will no longer have clinics offering abortions. The women with means will be able to travel across state lines to a progressive state for the procedure, but the poor women who cannot care for a third or fourth child, will be helpless to do the same.
Thanks to Linda Greenhouse for her forthright depiction of what lies ahead.
Trump and McConnell have done their damage but we must be vigilant and vote.
56
These judges are the anti abortion equivalent of Antifa. Their legal contortions and rationalizations clearly reflect a desire to make law, not interpret it. In other words they are “activist” judges.
For critics of Roe, it does reinforce that the better alternative would have been to have legalized abortion passed legislatively instead of through the courts. It just gives a back door channel to contest it.
8
@Jonathan Sanders -- "the better alternative would have been to have legalized abortion passed legislatively"
If it could be done, the legislative branch is always the better place to do it.
The courts can define our rights only in terms of the absolute minimums below which we cannot be driven.
Rights are not best conceived of as nobody should be allowed more. They are meant to be minimums, not maximums. The Founders did not intend that the government would take away everything it could possibly take away.
5
@Jonathan Sanders That's the problem with Roe. It permanently silenced the people. When the people are silenced, dangerous tensions can build up. Better to give the people a voice. That's what democracy is all about.
@Mark Thomason Seriously! This was a court ruling that that upheld a women's right to equal protection under the Constitution. There is nothing that forces the religious right or anyone to get abortions. What we are looking on here is the imposition of religions with neanderthal beliefs that we will all have to abide by when they finish their crusade on women.
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For decades, Democrats have politely accepted the Republican fiction that judicial nominees have not been asked about their stance on abortion. They know perfectly well that, if the claim is true, it is true only in the most sophistic way. All of the Republican nominees have shown themselves in one way or another, to be opposed to abortion both morally and legally. When Democrats have been the nominators, Republicans have allowed so many judgeships to remain open, rather than allow someone who would probably accept abortion into the judiciary. We simply have a Republican orchard that's been planted over decades finally starting to bear fruit. In ten years, abortion will be unobtainable in the south and central states. Probably NY times subscription maps will be a good predictor of where you can still get one.
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From your lips to God's ears. I sure hope you are right.
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@DKB
As an aussie I find it completely mad that your judiciary is the place where it is decided that a women may or may not have an abortion. Even more so
since most judges are male(?).
I hope the readers also read the gerrymandered article, and get out and vote, and encourage and help others to do so as well.
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@DKB Whatever a judge's personal opinion, it is a woman's right to self determination: her choice is here, not some stranger's or the state.
How many of judges who oppose women's rights simply want to dominate something, someone, a girl or a woman? What are their true motivations? Why do they perpetrate a Republican War on women?
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Whatever my particular beliefs about abortion ideology, the author seems furious that the court is ideologically aligned center-right. The author seems livid that conservative presidents have appointed conservative justices just as liberal presidents have appointed liberal justices.
But for the past fifty years, the court has been ideologically aligned center-left. There have been basically no legislative instruments supportive of abortion in that time - it's been the result of an activist court. Even when poll data showed that about 60% of the US population supported abortion at some level, there was never an effort to enact laws to enshrine that belief, rather there were more judicial pronouncements and executive orders. Now that the pro-life position is in the majority, the states and fed are proposing laws to enshrine that majority opinion. It would seem that's what's supposed to happen.
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@Ryan: I gather from your comment that you view the courts as just another venue for partisan politics. There are "liberal" judges and "conservative" judges who decide cases in accordance with their political ideologies and not on the merits or out of respect for legal precedent and the Constitution. I grant that judges can act this way. Moreover, I would agree that of late Republican judges too often do. But I dispute the contention that all judges do. Respect for precedent and for the Constitution have long been norms central to the legal profession and vital to maintaining the rule of law in our country. If these norms become widely disregarded, a lot more than abortion rights will be at stake.
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@Ryan
''Now that the pro-life position is in the majority''
An overwhelming majority of the population prefers to keep abortion safe and legal. According to the latest Marist poll 55 to 38 with 7 percent undecided.
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"ultrasound can detect a heartbeat — at as early as six weeks, when the embryo, not yet even considered a fetus, is one-quarter inch long"
I did not know that. We've had three kids, followed them on ultrasound, and still I did not know that.
Linda's work here is important because she brings us hard fact and a sound explanation of hard law. The public space needs this, desperately needs this.
We can only explore reasoning, only offer "yes, but" to ways of looking at it, after we know what she offers here with things like this fact.
I wish there were more like her, many more like her, instead of the screaming we read instead.
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The real question here is the application of Federalism. Some states; New York, California, Massachusetts, Washington, Virginia, Oregon and Colorado will have laws that allow for unrestricted abortion rights. Other states like Texas and Louisiana will restrict or prohibit abortions.
This is no different than states that have liquor monopolies (Virginia and Pennsylvania) and states that allow liquor to be sold by anyone with a license (California and Kentucky). The right of the states to regulate abortions, will return to the states. There will be no nation-wide right, because abortion is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
This application of Federalism will not end or prohibit abortion, but only allow abortion in states where the practice has significant public support.
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@John Quinn -- "This is no different than states that have liquor monopolies"
Yes, it is different. That is liquor sales. This is fundamental rights, to control one's body and make reproductive choices.
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@John Quinn
There is no right to be born. Birth is a gift.
The 10th amendment to the Constitution reserves powers not given to the federal government to the states and to the people. A woman ought to have power over her own body.
The moment the state passes a law to force a woman to carry a baby to term against her will, that is involuntary servitude which is prohibited by the 13th amendment.
No individual has a right to another person's body, or to another person's pain. Neither does the state.
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A right does not have to be explicit to be in the Constitution. Amendments 3&4 refer to privacy and 9&10 expressly says that. The right to regulate which is present in every state including NY does not include the right to prohibit it. It is not unrestricted in ANY state.
It is not in the constitution to deny health benefits to the children of employees as an expression of freedom of speech as the rediculously hypocritical decision made in the case of a bigoted Hobby Lobby. Roe v Wade was 7-2 with many Republicans in favor. It was expressly limited the interests of the State.
No, legislating from the bench is the cry of Republicans but is exercised mostly by Republicans and refusing to fill judicial seats is an abuse of power by Republicans. A failure to uphold their oath of office overstepping their power by failure to do their job.
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Many of the policies embraced by the ultra right are not majority popular ones. The Republicans have the nasty habit of doing whatever they want and finding approval from the judges they appoint. They will take away peoples rights (think voting, abortion ) and are more than willing to treat groups within America as second class citizens (think minorities, Muslims, the LGBTQ community). And they are more than willing to accept guns into our culture like it was 1775. But the vast majority of Americans don't agree with their views. They want gun control, they believe in the rights of the LGBTQ community, they believe every American has a right to vote, and so on. They don't believe corporations should be treated as individual people. Eventually what goes around will come around. And the ultra conservatives will lose power. The judges will be replaced because eventually they all leave the court. Conservatives can only rule by limiting democracy so they can maintain power. The problem for the conservative movement is they don't recognize that imposing their will on the majority and bowing down to a despot for president will not lead to America being great again. It will lead to a dictatorship. Something the majority of Americans ( and I think some conservative judges as well) recognize is going a bit too far.
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@Walking Man
Maga is a rally cry only, they don't believe it or even care.
It's about a small elite with a lot of money and power, regardless of the state of the country.
For a comparison, think about the wealth and ease of the Russian Tsars while their people suffered.
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@Walking Man True. But remember, the anti-democratic forces are pushing through federal judges in their thirties and forties. These judges serve for life. These partisan judges, many of whom lack sufficient qualifications, experience for temperament for the job, will influence policy in these United States for the next forty years. We are about to see what happens when, We the People, are denied judicial redress. Abortion and reproductive rights are just two of the many issues that they will adjudicate. What happens to us when they tackle labor rights, access to healthcare, voting rights, etc.
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@Walking Man i seriously question your assertion of " the vast majority of Americans..." support anything, much less gun control or homosexual special rights...your ideas come from selected polling where the poller will have a demographic that agrees with that person's beliefs, ie "torture the data long enough, it'll admit to anything"...the same goes for conservatives who espouse their opinions with polls...
In all honesty, this is what Republican women have been voting for for decades so maybe they (and their daughters) deserve to get their ban on all abortions and get it good and hard. After a while, this may help remind them why the rest of us stand for choice and bodily autonomy.
One problem is that this isn't coming along with a ban on "interstate travel for the purposes of obtaining a termination". That addition would be very helpful in ensuring that even well-off Republican women (and their daughters) understand the consequences of their votes.
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@Atlant Schmidt
Oh, yes! But, if we can't make a blanket restriction for all states, maybe we can do it on a state-by-state basis by imposing residency requirements.
I remember when Mitt Romney pulled out every century-old law on marriage looking for a loophole so he could prevent out of state gay couples from coming to Massachusetts to be legally married. He didn't want us to become "the Las Vegas of same sex marriage." Even our Catholic state Attorney General at the time, who himself was not that keen on same sex marriage, was appalled at how far Mitt would go to put his religion above the will of the residents of Massachusetts.
He didn't succeed, but that doesn't mean it can't work. I would vote for a bill that put state residency requirements on abortions should Roe v. Wade be overturned. Every state in this country that believes women have the right to choose should do the same thing. I'd feel sorry for the pro-choice residents of states where abortion is prohibited, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.
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@CF Don't punish young girls -- define an age limit from say 25 years and older.
@Atlant Schmidt
Well off republican women will always be able to get (and will get ) abortions the way they always have, despite their 'beliefs,' and how restrictive the laws are.
They need to be reminded that guns also kill children, sometimes even their own. If you're 'Pro-Life,' start working on restricting guns.
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"expressions of outright contempt for the Supreme Court. In this age of norm-collapse, something has been unleashed here"
That is better seen as contempt for what the Court was. These opinions are seeking to grab attention of the current Court for reconsideration. They are not insulting the current justices, they are appealing to them.
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Abortion is homicide. Something dies, and that thing is human. All the debate about the "right to life" and the "right to choice" are irrational political camouflage. Right to lifers legally take human lives in other issues, and right to choicers eagerly take away choice when they find it unacceptable.
The only real question should be, is it justifiable homicide?
If we argued that as the issue, we might be able to make a rational law over this issue.
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This framing begs the question of when protection of life under the law, or life itself, begins. The answer is a matter of opinion.
The real question is whether the government should enforce the consequence of one opinion. There are strong convictions on both sides of this issue, and it is appropriate to debate whether abortion is morally right or wrong, but it goes against the principles of freedom and liberty to enact laws to enforce one view on every individual.
We should defend an individual’s choice, lest one day our choices on other matters may be reduced by the convictions of others.
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@Diogenes -- "Something dies"
Does it?
When is it "life?" When does an egg and sperm become "a baby?"
The Court answered that, and you don't like the answer. Just asserting that does not make it right, does not frame the question to be answered in your way.
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@Diogenes Read my earlier submission, above, for
a more expanded view.
Our system of government is broken. No president or party should be able to stack and bias the court system. If we do not create strong counter laws regarding all attempts to destroy the foundation of our legal and governmental system, we are headed for more trouble than we can handle. Trump always was a criminal and he uses fear to control his arena. But I am surprised at the number of sellout judges and lawyers. Once the courts are stacked current laws on abortion will go down. Republicans are going to win because we let the likes of a Trump into the Oval office.
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