Time for Roe to go - let states decide
The 10th Amendment should have stopped this decision 50 years ago.
On May 2, Politico obtained a copy of a draft decision by the US Supreme Court, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, supported by 4 others.
The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. …”
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”Justice Samuel Alito
Long past time!
Who leaked, and why? That’s really a distraction, if this is true. Tho it pushes the 5 to not change. Most think it was some Dem/ Lefty clerk, tho it might have been a Justice, and also perhaps some printer or computer support person; perhaps even a conservative.
I’m assuming it’s true, but know that I also hope it’s true. Lots of posts & comments, about the decision and the reactions & protests against the decision. Like at Althouse
What the Court's opinion draft said about the reliance factor as it analyzed whether to adhere to precedent.
"Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in a statement Tuesday that the leaked draft opinion that proposes overturning Roe v. Wade is authentic but not final..."
A witty comment at WaPo: "It’s almost as if the Supreme Court believes it has a right to privacy….
"'Take to the streets and fight as one, this is how Roe was won,' they chanted throughout Downtown."
"How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?"
with my comment » one can love women and still call whiny white yelling protesting women "over-educated and under loved."
I'd guess the facts are (using "protesters" but could also restrict to millennials):
a) avg educational level of protesters is higher than national average (or age adjusted national average), thus "over-educated" is true.
b) avg number of married protesters is less than (age adjusted) avg number of married women nationally.
b2) avg number of sexual intercourse sessions by protesters is less than (adj.) avg women nationally. Thus (b or b2) "underloved", also true. [is there a better factual measure of underloved?]
Neither Gaetz, nor reality, is showing misogyny - hatred of women.
Abortion kills an innocent human fetus. It does allow hot young women to have as much sex as they want, with hot and/or rich guys, on a more equal basis.
But biology is not equal, and equal promiscuous sex without kids in peoples' 20s does not lead to equal life satisfaction in their 50s.
Looking at the last few decades of annual March for Life protests, most of those protesters are women, more often married with kids ("overloved"? "undereducated"?). The pro-abortion folk more often insult such women - but I suspect you, Ann, haven't focused on insulting but likely-true characterizing of anti-abortion women as misogyny. Nor on likely-false insults.
Roe has always been bad, unconstitutional law.
The USA will be better when states, democratically, decide the rules of abortion within their jurisdiction.
Another great blogger, NewNeo, also had some longer posts:
politico-publishes-scotus-leak-on-overturning-roe
It’s another giant step down the road to the ruin of the tacit agreements that allowed this country to function in a relatively peaceful manner. First we have the leak of Alito’s alleged majority opinion overturning Roe, and then the publication by Politico …
Goals? Intimidation of conservative justices: check.
Inflaming of Democrat voters: check.
Will overruling Roe matter politically?
Commenter Jeanne writes: “I am having a hard time believing this will not annihilate the Republican chances of taking back the houses in November and the presidency in 2024.”
Certainly it’s a fear of a lot of people on the right, and a fervent hope of a lot of people on the left. …it doesn’t “annihilate” the GOP chances. It may not even affect them all that much, for the simple reason that the people who are already so wedded to abortion in every single state via Roe were not going to be voting for the Republicans in 2022 anyway. Those who are against Roe will be even more energized to go to the polls, if anything (in fact, I was wondering prior to the leak whether a failure to overrule Roe would be the thing that discouraged a significant number of people on the right from voting in 2022). Those in the middle are probably more interested in the economy and matters of that sort.
The decision should come down in June, and if Roe is overruled I believe that the pro- and anti-abortion energy will shift to the states, where it belongs.
Comment Ackler describes a large group of women:
“they have been appalled by Trans extremism and the push for CRT in the classroom. They also feel the economic pinch of runaway inflation and are very concerned by it. This group was crucial in electing Glenn Youngkin.Here’s the thing: a large majority of this group are strongly, steadfastly pro-choice.”
» On the political effects, while Neo is mostly right, Ackler is certainly right with some number of soccer moms who are pro-choice but, with Roe intact, vote Rep in 2022 based on inflation and/or CRT or Trans junk; instead w/o Roe, they vote Dem.
Is this 1%, 2%, 5%, 0.5%, 0.2%? My guess is ~1% (which creates a 2% difference) (neither I nor anybody I know of has reasonable data on this).
I guess a good number of Congress seats will be decided by 2% or less – those that Dems win, they win in 2022 because of Roe being overturned. A smaller Red wave.
I think without Roe being overturned, the pro-life Reps who don’t vote because of this is less than 0.1% — many Trump supporters won’t vote because Trump isn’t on the ballot, with or without a Roe change. Lots of pro-life folk held their noses to vote Trump in 2016 – but were happy to support him in 2020 (like me!).
Thus the biggest change with Roe overturned is that abortion becomes far less a point of disagreement for Presidential politics. That would be good for America and democracy.
Neo links to:
Glenn Greenwald on overruling Roe, and the arguments pro and con
The Irrational, Misguided Discourse Surrounding Supreme Court Controversies Such as Roe v. WadeThe Court, like the U.S. Constitution, was designed to be a limit on the excesses of democracy. Roe denied, not upheld, the rights of citizens to decide democratically. …
Each time the Court invalidates a democratically elected law on the ground that it violates a constitutional guarantee — as happened in Roe — those who favor the invalidated law proclaim that something “undemocratic” has transpired, that it is a form of “judicial tyranny” for “five unelected judges” to overturn the will of the majority. Conversely, when the Court refuses to invalidate a democratically elected law, those who regard that law as pernicious, as an attack on fundamental rights, accuse the Court of failing to protect vulnerable individuals. …
Thus, the purpose of the Bill of Rights is fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-majoritarian. It bars majorities from enacting laws that infringe on the fundamental rights of minorities. Thus, in the U.S., it does not matter if 80% or 90% of Americans support a law to restrict free speech, or ban the free exercise of a particular religion, or imprison someone without due process, or subject a particularly despised criminal to cruel and unusual punishment. Such laws can never be validly enacted. The Constitution deprives the majority of the power to engage in such acts regardless of how popular they might be. …
It was bizarre to watch liberals accuse the Court of acting “undemocratically" as they denounced the ability of "five unelected aristocrats” — in the words of Vox's Ian Millhiser — to decide the question of abortion rights. Who do they think decided Roe in the first place?
Neo notes that Reps can be consistent against Roe, and against the Court deciding instead of state majorities.
“The left, on the other hand, is saying that the SCOTUS justices (“unelected judges”) are allowed to find such a phantom right in the first place but are barred from finding that they were mistaken at the time and that such a constitutional right does not exist.”
Reps should always say it’s the Dems, not the never-on-the-ballot “left”, which is being illogical, or inconsistent. The political problem is too many Dems elected, not “the left”.
I pray that Roe is overturned, and more states make abortion more restrictive.
AND that more states enact policies to support marriages.
Methinks you do not quite understand what is going on here. It really isn't a question of the power to decide being moved from the judiciary to the state legislatures. What Alito would do is actually take the power to decide away from "the people" (the actually pregnant individual women) and give that power to the government.
Social conservatives are all potential tyrants. They love to use government power to enforce behaviors. Libertarian conservatives favor a severely limited scope of government power.
Who should decide? The people. The persons. Not the government.