Hey, c'mon, it's now paradise! No clean air to breathe, no right to privacy, no right to marry who you choose, and best of all, way more ******* guns in public!

No bodily autonomy. (You don’t need two healthy lungs, do you?)

Sure there is. Win elections. Get the laws you want passed. Amend the constitution if it's sufficiently important.

What you really mean is that you can't achieve your policy goals through ordinary democratic methods because they aren't actually sufficiently popular.

I assume you are referring to the current Republican strategy?

Yes, because the GOP now is the party which stands for "ordinary democratic methods".

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No, it's not starting to happen. Even the headline should have clued you in.

St. Luke’s Health Kansas City said in a statement Wednesday that it would resume offering the medication known as the morning after pill, a day after it told The Kansas City Star that its Missouri hospitals would halt emergency contraception.

It did so after the state's attorney general issued a statement stating unequivicolly that emergency contraception is not illegal under an abortion ban that was enacted minutes after Friday's U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The Missouri law bans all abortions except in cases of medical emergency.

I don't know. There doesn't look like any possibility of anybody having the support to resolve this by changing the constitution. There seems to be an increasing push to not accept the legitimacy of laws from the other side. There seems to be an increasing trend to accuse the other side of cheating to win the election. It'll all work itself out somehow, but "how" is going to be interesting.

This isn't about parties. It's about you. Do YOU believe in democracy? dudalb apparently doesn't. If you only believe in democracy when you're winning elections, then you don't really believe in democracy.

Well, yes. Because no side is sufficiently popular right now.

Which is precisely why this issue is better handled by the legislature than by the courts.

I don't think that that is going to do much to relieve the pressure overall. The whole game since the 60s, maybe even the 30s has been to push social change federally. That has built up a heck of a lot of expectation and power. If we are looking at it in isolation of the forces and pressures involved, I agree with you. I am not altogether sure that that is going to be an acceptable answer.

Too out there for a response? How about forced blood donation?

Sorry, at that point, it wouldn't be a "donation".

How about forced blood harvesting to save people having surgery or suffering from some form of traumatic blood loss? Since Dobbs strikes down unenumerated rights based on Due Process, American citizens no longer have a right to bodily autonomy. If you can save one or more lives by forcing another individual through a procedure they'll probably live through, where is the legal or constitutional boundary?

Didn't we go through this with Covid vaccines? The federal government seemed to be relatively able to put people under a lot of pressure to accept medical procedures that violated their bodily autonomy in the service of the greater good.

Sure, and there is an argument to be made that, under emergency conditions, rights can be temporarily suspended so the country can deal with the crisis. Even then, no one was forced to take a vaccine. They could opt to not take one, but were then limited on where they could go and what they could participated in.

This isn't that. This is the permanent removal of the right to bodily autonomy. If one's state makes a law that abortion is illegal and that it is illegal to go across state lines to have an abortion, a pregnant person has no legal option.

Well, the GOP has pretty much abandoned Democrcy anyway...

The US has been in a state of emergency since 1979. That is business as usual. You think, if they what ever their reason for wanting to do something like this wouldn't also be an emergency, continually extended like covid was? Implementing it through government would be the hard way though.

People were losing their jobs over the vaccine. We are living in a world now where government and global corporations work hand in glove. There is little need for the government to force you to do things, when they can just say how nice it would be if your employer threatened to fire you, or maybe close you bank account, if you don't do what they want.

I'm not sure that a state could make a law saying you couldn't cross state lines to do something that was legal in another state.

In the latter case it is potentially worse, if officials look to prevention. It is, after all, unknown what a person's reason for travel is, unless it is monitored and controllled. A pregnant person or even a potentially pregnant person could be denied what we have cmplacently considered common freedom, which is not explicit.

We have always assumed that the Constitution guarantees the right to travel between states without search, seizure and intrusion, but like many such issues it is not explicit. The fourteenth amendment seems to suggest it, but a raging originalist might find it not really there., and though the abolition of slavery ended the need for Black people to show papers, the mechanism is not explicitly abolished.

Ha ha ha, couldn't happen here....!

People were losing their lives fighting over the vaccine, but you're missing the point: There is no longer any Constitutional barrier to blood or organ harvesting. The right that protected us from actions like that was the foundation of Roe and it is now gone. If the state decides it needs one of your kidneys or your body after you die, nothing prevents them from codifying it into law and making it happen.

He gets the point. He's only pretending not to (partly because he's perfectly fine with it).

Maybe. Do all protections have to be federal and tied to constitutional rights? If it's a big issue, it might well be much easier for the states where it is an issue to ban it.

My predictions of massive violence amounting to a second civil War are not so crazy now, are they?

I never thought I would say this, but I would support BIden saying, vis a vis the EPA decision:

"Mr Roberts has made his decision. Let him enforce it".

What predictions? States with anti-abortion laws are already forcing people to use their bodies to save “individuals”, as Zig puts it, who aren’t even legally people.

Great... all the democrats have to do is overcome the gerrymandering and voter suppression taking place in various red states, limit the influence of "big money" campaign donors, deal with an electoral college that seems to give more preference to cows than people, and magically keep countries like Russia from interfering in future elections.

I'm sure the supreme court would be more than willing to help with some of those. Oh, wait, they already had their say, and their response was "go ahead and suppress all those minority votes and gerrymander away. We don't care."
At the risk of speaking for dudalb, I rather suspect he DOES believe in democracy. He just seems to have problems with elements of the American system that are currently being exhibited, which is no longer characterized as a 'full democracy' and is rapidly going down the toilet.

In related news, the SC didn't take up NY vaccine mandate order.

Clarence Thomas, on an abortion-related roll, diseented:

I seriously think Thomas has jumped the shark.

ETA: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...abor-rcna36156

First of all, the fact that the a hospital (an organization that probably has decent legal experts on staff) was concerned about dispensing the morning after pill should make a rational person a bit nervous, since it indicates a law that is vague.

Secondly... why should anyone trust the Attorney general? He's a Republican... a member of the party that has decided that women cannot control their own bodies. It certainly would not be out of character for them to change their opinion in the near future if the members of Y'all Quaeda raise a big-enough fuss.

Could you explain how he is wrong? The only quote they have from him in the article is "because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children". The article goes on to explain "The fetal tissue used in these processes came from elective abortions that happened decades ago. But the cells have since replicated many times, so none of the original tissue is involved in the making of modern vaccines.".

They add in a claim that the cells that are currently being used are from foetal tissue and debunk his statement based on that. Their quote from him doesn't make that claim though. They also equivocate from his statement of "developed using" to "manufactured from".

This is pretty typical of the way fact checkers operate where they debunk a claim that is more specific, or otherwise altered, from the statement that they are ostensibly debunking.

Does he actually make the claim they debunk anywhere?

WTF are you talking about?

Have you been living under a rock for the last 25 years? The GOP is the better marketers and horrible legislators. The Democrats are terrible marketers and they can't get much passed the party of 'blocking every ******* thing whether it was originally their idea or not and whether it is good for the country or not'.

Mitch McConnell has been as bad for the country as Drumpf.

Perhaps you could describe this magical democracy you believe is possible when the minority is running the country.

Yeah..no. Do you mean the majority just doesn't have a big enough super-majority to get past the minority?

That's good for the EPA crap but I believe it may be working for the Alito in charge of abortions too.

There is at least one prosecutor in TX balking at enforcing the abortion ban. Remember the sheriffs that wouldn't enforce mask mandates? Instead of a civil war what we might end up with are police departments selectively enforcing laws. With a disrespected SCOTUS we are closer to that kind of breakup of the country.

Think about it, his wife has come out publicly professing CTs. I'm not the least bit surprised to hear that he believes any number of ignorant things.

I see your point.

However, the plaintiffs were OK with vaccines developed in the same way; the cell lines were using in testing the mRNA vaccine, not in manufacturing it. So explain how this should qualify for a religious exemption?

Spoken like a true Stalinist. "How many battalions does the Pope have?"

Florida judge rules state's 15 week abortion ban violates the "privacy" clause of FL's constitution. He'll issue statewide injunction. DeSantis' office says it will appeal to state's conservative SC to reverse existing precedent regarding FL' right to privacy.

Looks like reversing he right to privacy has become the GOP's baby.

Because he's the attorney general. And by making this public statement, he has committed his office to that position. He cannot prosecute people for doing what he said was OK.

Because their "sincerely held religious belief something something."

Judgement in favor of the plaintiff.

Case dismissed.

many religious groups, Jews among them, have the sincerely held religious belief that they should be able to get an abortion if it's the best for the pregnant person.

The SC doesn't give a **** about any religion but their own.

The reference is to a remark attributed to Andrew Jackson.
https://quotes.yourdictionary.com/author/quote/567967

Jon Stewart's podcast was very informative today. His guests are three female law professors and they know a lot about the history, this court, the religious right, and more. It's close to 45min long. I found every bit of it interesting.
The link in case you want to watch it outside of the forum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twb_v78C1q4

If you want to watch it here or just sample it, here you go:

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

As soon as RBG turned out to not be a highlander this is where it was heading. Packing the court was the best option, but that time has far passed in part because we listened to people who are way too emotionally invested in the sanctity of the Supreme Court and who failed to comprehend that it's now gone fully rogue and back and forth packing and repacking making the court way less coherent is still a win.

The only thing that requires the other branches to listen to the court are the same sort of norms the GOP has been using as toilet paper to their ends. Which is why they need to do this. They probably half-assed do this as to abortion in that abortion meds are FDA approved and there is some issue with state statutes that make FDA approved medicines illegal. They will be similarly cute with regulations somehow. Supremacy clause, etc.

This will eventually come to naught because we are effectively Iran; a political structure operating under the approval of a council of religious extremists mostly concerned with maintaining their group's hegemony over their people. It's just developing slowly but will speed up as dark money pacs ramp up and go full speed at manufacturing cases to get issues in front of the court.

This was always the danger of framing Supreme Court justices as priests handing down received wisdom as to the meaning of the constitution.

It's the lying media as usual. Thomas was quoting the petitioners:

And that particular claim isn't exactly incorrect, even according to NBC News:

So they were derived from abortions, just many years ago and they've since been replicated, so it doesn't really count?