Roe vs. Wade

[Dave Gray]

This whole series of events has given me a stomach ache.

I have to eat crow -- I was very, very wrong about this.  I thought that conservatives didn't really want this illegal, but it was just a tool to rile up a certain voting block and their inability to stop something that was popular would be the golden goose for votes, in perpetuity.

I was incorrect.

What do you think happens now?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

There might be an element of the dog catching the car and going "now what?"

This ruling will hurt republicans and energize democrats.

Open question: how much and how long.

[Spider-Dan]

I am highly skeptical that overturning Roe v. Wade is the One Weird Trick that will cause people to start caring about politics in this country.  If they didn't care when the Capitol was invaded and we were moments away from having our government overthrown, I doubt they'll care about this either.  In 5 months we'll be talking about another caravan of immigrants from Mexico or whatever.

That being said, this will not stop at abortion.  We already have Republican US Senators - not random internet crackpots, but elected officials in our highest federal legislative chamber - claiming that Loving v. Virginia (legalizing interracial marriage in 1967) and Griswold v. Connecticut (legalizing birth control and contraception in 1965) were wrongly decided, saying those issues should be left to individual states to permit or prohibit as they see fit.  And if those cases with half-a-century of standing can be promptly overturned, then obviously, the 8-year-old Obergefell v. Hodges ruling (legalizing same-sex marriage) is circling the drain.

When Trump won in 2016, it was a declaration of open season on any so-called "rights" liberals thought they had won.  This is the incredibly predictable outcome of a Trump victory, and one that the anti-Hillary left completely refused to acknowledge (and many still do to this day).  Instead, we have a bunch of people on the left blaming Biden (?!) for "doing nothing" about abortion being outlawed.

If Democrats had not won in 2020, we would be 6 weeks away from abortion being completely outlawed in these United States.

Elections matter.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I am highly skeptical that overturning Roe v. Wade is the One Weird Trick that will cause people to start caring about politics in this country.  If they didn't care when the Capitol was invaded and we were moments away from having our government overthrown, I doubt they'll care about this either.  

We haven’t had an election since the attempted coup.  So we don’t know what impact that will have.

Antidotal evidence that some people care, I was talking to someone who works in the town clerks office who said in January and February 2021 they had 65 people switch from Republican to unenrolled and 3 from Republican to Democrat.  I asked her how many people switch normally per month.  In a non-election year none.  Typically about a half dozen switch from a party to unenrolled right before the primary deadline.  In my state unenrolled voters can vote in either primary.

But the margins for many races are extremely close.  If just 25% of women who regularly vote republican who had an abortion her family doesn’t know about switched to democratic party it could swing many races.  

In much the same way folks were surprised by Trump’s win in 2016 because some people who voted for him didn’t want to tell their family.  I suspect in red states you are going to see some women voting democratic while telling their husbands and dads they voted republican.  

For me and you abortion is just another political issue.  For 50% of the population its personal.

[Spider-Dan]

We haven’t had an election since the attempted coup.

Yes, we have.  In Virginia, where many people live and commute to DC, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governorship last year.

[CF DolFan]

This whole series of events has given me a stomach ache.

I have to eat crow -- I was very, very wrong about this.  I thought that conservatives didn't really want this illegal, but it was just a tool to rile up a certain voting block and their inability to stop something that was popular would be the golden goose for votes, in perpetuity.

I was incorrect.

What do you think happens now?

I didn't expect this and I don't know how many more changes you will see once it is turned back over to the states but I do completely understand why they would overturn it. They ruling basically created a constitutional right where there isn't one.  Other rulings have been overturned for this same reason.

How many decisions has the Supreme Court overturned?
As of 2020, the court had overruled its own precedents in an estimated 232 cases since 1810, says the library.May 3, 2022

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I didn't expect this and I don't know how many more changes you will see once it is turned back over to the states but I do completely understand why they would overturn it. They ruling basically created a constitutional right where there isn't one.  Other rulings have been overturned for this same reason.

How many decisions has the Supreme Court overturned?
As of 2020, the court had overruled its own precedents in an estimated 232 cases since 1810, says the library.May 3, 2022

Actually there hasn’t been very many overturning of prior precedents on the bases that the court erroneously gave some one a right.  Most of the overruling was cases in which an earlier court denied someone a right.  For example   Miranda, Gideon. 

Please don’t pretend overruling Roe is the same as Brown overruling Plessey.

What comes next has already been spelled out.  Loving, Griswald

[Dave Gray]

I didn't expect this and I don't know how many more changes you will see once it is turned back over to the states but I do completely understand why they would overturn it. They ruling basically created a constitutional right where there isn't one.  Other rulings have been overturned for this same reason.

I'm way past this way of thinking, politically, but I used to think this way when I was younger.

I cared a lot about how laws were enacted, wanted them to be in the right format, etc.  I had a more libertarian mindset.  But as I aged, I realized that this was all a house of cards and these are laws of men, not of nature.  If something it right, get it done....it doesn't matter if it's state/constitution/courts, etc.

There is no constitutional right to protect you from a shitty racist who denies service to you because you're black.  So, in a black & white world, you just have to hope people do the right thing.  But since they don't, the court found a loophole to make it against the law, by using interstate travel laws or something.  It's not a clean constitutional amendment, which it probably should be, but we rest on precedence.

And sure, maybe Roe is an overreach in a technical sense, but it's a necessary one.  It should be a clearly defined constitutional right, but since it's not, you protect it at its current place.



You must vote every Republican out of every office in the land, even if you're a conservative.  Unfortunately, even the good ones have allowed this to happen and they are beholden to a corrupt master that's pulling the strings against the will of the people.  They all speak out against these things behind closed doors, they're on record and recorded, and they just deny, lie, and ask us to forget once they're pressed.  Once things level out and rights are restored, democracy protected, and a government is again representative of those who live in it, let the party build back with whatever ideas it has.

Right now, a vote for any Republican at any government level is a threat to the core tenets of democracy.

I hope that some of the conservatives on this site see me as someone they disagree with, but at least find to be a reasonable voice.  I'm telling you, your party is tearing down the core tenets of this country.  They are tricking you into fighting a culture war with other poor people so that the rich can steal from you.  I fear that many will never realize this and will die blaming the other side.  ...you saw this with COVID....a million dead, blaming the libs for a fake hoax until their last breath -- blaming doctors, hospitals, China, the vaccine, etc.  But those of you that eventually realize that you're propping up an authoritarian regime, I fear that it will be too late to get the power back into the people's hands.

[Spider-Dan]

They are tricking you into fighting a culture war with other poor people so that the rich can steal from you.

Dave, do you think Democrats are "tricking you" into attacking the rich?

I used to think like you seem to: lower- and middle-income white voters, especially in rural areas, are "voting against their own interests" because they are being distracted from the real issues.  But 2016 made it crystal clear to me: their "interests" simply aren't what you and I think they should be.

There's a reason why Trump easily conquered the GOP, while plutocrats like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have been flailing around trying to maintain control for decades.  You should consider what makes him different from those two, and which of the three were trying to "trick" their base.

[Dave Gray]

I think that everyone, in general, is looking for a better life for themselves and their families.

This is even bigger than tax policy.  Conceptually, there is money to go around for us all to get what we need.  But a very, very small portion of people have enormous, disgusting, criminal amounts of wealth.  Such a society should not be able to exist.

In order to prop that up, yes -- there is drummed up fear over someone else taking your job, someone else getting something for free that you paid for, that the cause of your strife is because of a lack of morals normalized by someone else's behavior -- that it's somehow a risk to your family.  ...all that shit....  Those people don't care about those things.  They create this insane environment of us vs. them at every turn so that we're fighting for crumbs.

[Spider-Dan]

Do Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel care about the culture war?  Probably not.
Does the Republican base care about a gay couple moving in next door, and kissing each other goodbye on the driveway in the morning when there are children outside?  Yes, very much so.  And it turns out that they care about this a lot more than tax policy!

There remains a level of wealth worship in the Republican party, even among the non-rich.  But there's a MUCH LARGER amount of cultural resentment.  And winning the culture war just feels better than some arcane tax policy bullshit.  You can't even compare the conservative feeling of victory from a thread like this one to a similar thread about the Trump tax cuts.  There are liberals all over the country crying over this!  This is the kind of winning that Trump promised and delivered.

[Dave Gray]

Does the Republican base care about a gay couple moving in next door, and kissing each other goodbye on the driveway in the morning when there are children outside?  Yes, very much so.  And it turns out that they care about this a lot more than tax policy!

Oh, definitely.  The Republican base isn't the rich I'm talking about.  I'm talking about the "fuck you" rich.  The kind of rich that makes rich people jealous.

1% of the people have 99% of the money.  And it ain't because they're hard workers.  (This number is hyperbole.)

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

USA is not acting like a democracy.  The vast major of Americans want abortion to be legal.  The majority of Americans want stricter gun control.

The republican platform is to raise taxes on the poorest half of Americans, lower taxes on the the ultra-wealthy and freeze the minimum wage.  Democrats want to lower taxes for the majority of Americans, raise taxes on the ultra wealthy and raise the minimum wage. Yet minimum wage earners vote republican. 

[Spider-Dan]

"It's a republic, not a democracy" is the rallying cry of the 40% of Americans that want their unpopular policies to be enforced around the country.

[ArtieChokePhin]

I didn't expect this and I don't know how many more changes you will see once it is turned back over to the states but I do completely understand why they would overturn it. They ruling basically created a constitutional right where there isn't one.  Other rulings have been overturned for this same reason.

How many decisions has the Supreme Court overturned?
As of 2020, the court had overruled its own precedents in an estimated 232 cases since 1810, says the library.May 3, 2022

Next step will be for them to overturn gay marriage.   And they should.   Not because of civil rights/social justice, but because the right to decide whether or not gay marriage is legal, belongs to each individual state.   Some states voted in favor of it, and some didn't.  Then the Supreme Court trampled on the decisions of all the states when they shouldn't have. 
But they should add one caveat:   If a gay couple marries in a state where gay marriage is legal, but then moves to a state where it isn't, that state is required to recognize their marriage.