Official Thread for Abortion Demagoguery

[tx 3 putt 78725]

further proof the current judicial system is a complete joke 

[TwiceHorn 32091]

10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

It’s not a good court. And it’s gotten worse.

Haven’t seen the order yet. Did they write anything? I’m expecting not.

Supposedly an "administrative stay."  Whatever it's called, I'd assume nothing substantive.

[Captainant 28575]

4 hours ago, M12BH said:

So, this is a story by my cousin.  I never knew any of this.  Just wow.  https://forward.com/news/476361/my-abortion-story-because-its-true-and-we-should-not-be-afraid-to-talk/?fbclid=IwAR3_BxiRd_ulHCrqYmH8XtH-_CnEWLNaduL1VIj-XIelLVwkDVLn0rTqgSg

Wow that's a powerful story. An excerpt that stuck out to me was:

Quote

A friend whose son was born with a neurological condition pulled some strings to get Gary and me a meeting the next day with the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Columbia, Dr. Neil Feldstein. He told us that if we continued the pregnancy, the baby would likely need an operation within 24 hours of birth, and several more after that. He wasn’t trying to convince us either way, but he made the situation sound pretty grim.

“Who keeps these pregnancies?” I asked.

People who believe abortion is murder, is the blunt answer I remember Dr. Feldstein giving. And, he added, those are the parents who would be your peers as you raised the child.

Really worth reading. As someone who grew up reading nothing but evangelical propaganda about abortion, it's a completely different worldview that shares a firsthand experience. Thank you for linking it

[Anastasis 23724]

When my sister was pregnant with my youngest nephew, they saw a neurological developmental defect during the imaging. She did multiple rounds of imaging and was counseled that the chid would be mentally handicapped and have no quality of life. The recommendation was to terminate. I wouldn’t ever want to be put in the position to have to make that decision. 
 

He just turned nine. Healthy and happy. A bit on the high energy side of things, but a fun kid. 

Edited October 9, 2021 by Anastasis

[CooterBrown 18289]

My wife’s aunt was pregnant with triplets. One fetus had such issues there was a strong chance that it would miscarry and there was a risk it would cause all three to miscarry. Options were a selective abortion to save the viable fetuses or put it in god’s hands and risk losing all three. First option was the obvious choice but currently illegal in Texas. Luckily this was 30 years ago and in PA.

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19307]

When my sister was pregnant with my youngest nephew, they saw a neurological developmental defect during the imaging. She did multiple rounds of imaging and was counseled that the chid would be mentally handicapped and have no quality of life. The recommendation was to terminate. I wouldn’t ever want to be put in the position to have to make that decision. 
 
He just turned nine. Healthy and happy. A bit on the high energy side of things, but a fun kid. 

It's a very personal choice and one the government and other people need to stay the fuck out of.

[South Austin 53233]

On 10/8/2021 at 10:08 PM, TwiceHorn said:

Well, in a surprise to no one, the goddamned, godforsaken Fifth Circuit stayed Pitman's order.

When did Priscilla Owen become Chief Judge?  How is that even possible that a succession of pinchfaced cunts become Chief Judge of our federal appeals court.

Christ on a cracker.

I interned for her my third year of law school. She was always pleasant to me, but had the reputation of being an absolute bitch to everyone on the court. At the end of my internship her briefing attorney told me that if I applied for a clerkship in her chambers I’d mostly likely get it. I said no thanks.

A few years later I was at a Christmas party at her house, and I wandered over to look at all the books on her bookshelf. (That’s one of my things – I’m fascinated to see what books people display on their shelves.) Holy shit, it was like an application for a political appointment, filled with a bunch of far right-wing crap, including a book with the title along the lines of – I shit you not – abortion being murder.

I’m not at all surprised at this ruling.

[Bama Chick 28596]

Oh man. I’m cackling.

Plus, again, WHY HIS FACE LIKE THAT?????

[Js1 87219]

Gonna be hard to motivate those single issue “abortion bad” voters 

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 34106]

well, trump told them not to vote so we should be ok 🙄

[mchookem 16778]

that graph is pretty amazing

[Anastasis 23724]

4 hours ago, Js1 said:

Gonna be hard to motivate those single issue “abortion bad” voters 

 

 

From a data science and statistical analysis perspective this is fucking hilarious shit. 

[Anastasis 23724]

Sorry, forgot that the political sciences are soft. 

[Fudge Nuggets 19466]

Whoever did the curve fit on the blue line should be shot. Is that a 5th order polynomial with an R^2 of 0.0000001?

[TwiceHorn 32091]

Look at this bitchass shit.  https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/21/21-50949.2.pdf

Quote

The emergency motions to stay the preliminary injunction pending appeal are granted for the reasons stated in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, 13 F.4th 434 (5th Cir. 2021), and Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, 141 S. Ct. 2494 (2021). Judge Stewart dissents. The appeal is expedited. The Clerk will schedule this case for oral argument before the same panel that will hear the appeal in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, No. 21-50792.

If it is the procedural issues that dominate this case, then Whole Women's Health is virtually irrelevant, as it presents a nearly entirely different set of procedural circumstances and considerations.

At the time the Supreme Court declined to enjoin SB 8, I thought I kind of got it in that the procedural issues needed to be fleshed out in the lower courts.  While that is, no doubt, true, the dubious constitutionality of the law, and the maintenance of the status quo ante demand that this pile of shit be enjoined immediately, before it went into effect, preferably, but ASAP.  The Supremes fucked the dog.  No doubt intentionally, but they went balls deep in the pooch.

Ho is a Trumpkin jackass.  Catharina Haynes should know better.

Edited October 15, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[wildcat09 29595]

I think it's time for you to join us out here on the Law=Calvinball ledge.

[Satchel 6983]

We need to airlift women out of Texas:

The Dallas County mother sensed something wasn’t right with her young daughter. A trip to the doctor revealed the truth: The 11-year-old was pregnant.

The girl was too young to comprehend her medical condition — or to understand that the terrifying and secretive “game” that her father had inflicted on her for months was rape.

It’s understandable if you feel you can’t bear to read any further, but this 11-year-old and the many others like her deserve our attention now more than ever…

…In just one recent month, seven pregnant 12-year-olds and their caregivers sought help at the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center, which handles the most serious criminal sexual abuse cases in the county and where victims first share the atrocities in which they have been trapped.

“You go down and meet with them for the first time and they look every bit 12 years old,” Mindy Jackson, director of support services. told me. “They’re small, young, in a cute little T-shirt and rainbow shoelaces.”

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/commentary/2021/10/15/the-most-innocent-victims-of-texas-abortion-ban-children-forced-to-carry-their-abusers-baby/

[wildcat09 29595]

The next step is for Republicans to start locking up women who miscarry:

Quote

Brittney Poolaw, then 19 years old, showed up at the Comanche County Memorial Hospital in Oklahoma last year after suffering a miscarriage at home. She had been about 17 weeks pregnant. According to an affidavit from a police detective who interviewed her, she admitted to hospital staff that she had recently used both methamphetamine and marijuana.

A medical examiner cited her drug use as one of several “conditions contributing” to the miscarriage, a list which also included congenital abnormality and placental abruption. Poolaw was arrested on a charge of manslaughter in the first degree, and because she couldn’t afford a $20,000 bond, jailed for a year and a half awaiting trial.

The trial finally took place this month and lasted one day. According to a local television station, an expert witness for the prosecution testified that methamphetamine use may not have been directly responsible for the death of Poolaw’s fetus. Nevertheless, after deliberating for less than three hours, a jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to four years in prison.

From the detective’s affidavit, it seems possible Poolaw’s entire ordeal might have been avoided had she had access to decent reproductive health care. Poolaw, the detective wrote, “stated when she found out she was pregnant she didn’t know if she wanted the baby or not. She said she wasn’t familiar with how or where to get an abortion.”

Poolaw’s case is an injustice, but it is also a warning. This is what happens when the law treats embryos and fetuses as people with rights that supersede the rights of those who carry them. And it offers a glimpse of the sort of prosecutions that could become common in a world in which Roe v. Wade is overturned, one we could be living in as soon as next year.

Abortion opponents often insist they have no intention of imprisoning women who end their pregnancies. When, as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump said that there should be “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions, he was widely denounced by mainstream anti-abortion activists: Peggy Nance, head of Concerned Women for America, called him “the caricature that the left tries to paint us to be.”

But for years now, the anti-abortion movement has been working to change state laws to define embryos and fetuses as “people” or “children.” This has resulted in women being punished for things they do, or don’t do, while pregnant. Often, these prosecutions target women who take drugs; ProPublica reported on a case in Alabama in which a woman was charged with “chemical endangerment of a child” because she twice took half a Valium when she was pregnant.

In 2013, a peer-reviewed study by National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a reproductive justice organization, found 413 cases from 1973 to 2005 of women arrested or otherwise deprived of liberty because they were accused of endangering or harming their fetuses. Since then, the pace of prosecutions has escalated; between 2006 and 2020, National Advocates for Pregnant Women identified 1,254 such cases.

“The effort to add fetuses to the Constitution is increasingly an idea picked up by prosecutors to justify essentially removing the constitutional rights of pregnant people,” said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which has reached out to Poolaw and could represent her on appeal. What we’re seeing as Roe becomes more vulnerable, and claims of fetal rights increase, she added, is that “prosecutors feel liberated to use a variety of criminal laws to arrest women in relation to their pregnancies and pregnancy outcomes.”

An Alabama Supreme Court judge made the anti-abortion ideology underlying these prosecutions clear in a 2014 opinion. Voting to uphold the conviction of a woman who used cocaine while pregnant — before giving birth to a healthy baby — he wrote, “This case presents an opportunity for this court to continue a line of decisions affirming Alabama’s recognition of the sanctity of life from the earliest stages of development.”

Because of Roe v. Wade and the 1992 decision that upheld it, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, only a small handful of cases of women prosecuted for pregnancy loss involve those who intended to abort. “For now, as long as Roe and Casey remain on the books, women who have abortions have some protection from prosecution,” said Paltrow. “The women who are not intending to end their pregnancies do not have that protection.”

But if and when Roe falls, prosecutors will have free rein to go after women who decide to terminate their pregnancies. Paltrow’s organization worked with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on a recent report about what a post-Roe legal landscape could look like. It found “more than 4,450 crimes in the federal criminal code, tens of thousands of state criminal provisions — including criminal abortion laws — still on the books, as well as state conspiracy, attempt, and accomplice statutes that could subject a wide range of individuals to criminal penalties if Roe is overturned.”

The end of Roe, said Paltrow, “will unleash vigilante prosecutors to apply the criminal law to people who seek to end their pregnancies, and we know that because we’ve already seen it for all the other cases National Advocates for Pregnant Women does.” According to the detective’s affidavit in Poolaw’s case, she was surprised to find herself under investigation. Apparently, she didn’t realize that Oklahoma would consider her catastrophe a crime. How could she have? What happened to her still isn’t normal. It could soon become so.

Republicans: poor and minority women who miscarry should be locked up because life is precious, but conservative white men should be allowed to spread a disease that has already killed at least five million people around the globe because freedom.

[HenryJames 67428]

 

[mchookem 16778]

motherfucking Gilead for real. that OK story is absolutely horrifying. jfc.

[Jive Turkey 13014]

Oral argument today at SCOTUS on the Texas abortion law. 

 

[Js1 87219]

 

 

 

 

[wildcat09 29595]

Worthless prediction: they'll grant the stay requested by the providers, basically punt on the government's case, and execute Roe with Dobbs. 

[Captainant 28575]

in case yall haven't seen this week's SNL...
 

 

[mchookem 16778]

pretty raw and brave of Cecily, imo

[David Dennison 19563]

So is Roe getting overturned with this Mississippi case or will SCOTUS hold off on completely overturning 50 years of precedent?

[Neonmoon 38130]

Just now, David Dennison said:

So is Roe getting overturned with this Mississippi case or will SCOTUS hold off on completely overturning 50 years of precedent?

Yes. 

confirming the court is indeed a political tool.
 

Welcome to the downfall 

[Anastasis 23724]

Would be interested to hear the board legal commentary on the arguments today.

[Chuckie Finster 23093]

34 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

So is Roe getting overturned with this Mississippi case or will SCOTUS hold off on completely overturning 50 years of precedent?

Susan Collins is so concerned right now.

[wildcat09 29595]

We're going to get a weird split of concurrences, but with a majority to overturn Roe/Casey.

Kavanaugh will write separately about how he isn't voting to outlaw abortions and is really a nice guy who cares about women and please won't everyone at the country club be nice to him after this. Roberts will write about how concerned he is about overturning Roe and how he thinks it would be preferable to just abandon the prohibition on previability restrictions, but that he thinks Roe was wrongly decided so it is actually good to overturn it. Thomas will write about how he's too scared to ask his lunatic wife for a divorce so thinks we need to invalidate the entire line of substantive due process cases going back to Loving. 

[Anastasis 23724]

2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

We're going to get a weird split of concurrences, but with a majority to overturn Roe/Casey.

Kavanaugh will write separately about how he isn't voting to outlaw abortions and is really a nice guy who cares about women and please won't everyone at the country club be nice to him after this. Roberts will write about how concerned he is about overturning Roe and how he thinks it would be preferable to just abandon the prohibition on previability restrictions, but that he thinks Roe was wrongly decided so it is actually good to overturn it. Thomas will write about how he's too scared to ask his lunatic wife for a divorce so thinks we need to invalidate the entire line of substantive due process cases going back to Loving. 

Do you have any legal analysis of the arguments?

[elfenix 34756]

strong because you have the ability to exercise other rights you don't need to exercise this right energy coming from amy coney barrett and the state SG. 

[wildcat09 29595]

3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Do you have any legal analysis of the arguments?

I have better things to do with my time than pretend that this case is about the strength of legal arguments.

[Anastasis 23724]

9 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I have better things to do with my time than pretend that this case is about the strength of legal arguments.

So you believe the ideal is that the case would be decided on its legal merits, and not in terms of the potential policy impacts, correct?

Edited December 1, 2021 by Anastasis

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19307]

If Roe is overturned, THIS is tyranny by the minority.  Over 60% of Americans DO NOT WANT Roe overturned.  I am so grateful I live in a state that will protect a woman's right and access to abortions.  I, like many women in the United States, had one when I was younger (I was on the pill and had been since I had gotten on it to regulate my cycle AND we used a condom), and it was absolutely the right decision for me.  It is the right decision for a lot of people.    

Edited December 1, 2021 by PenelopeWitherspoon

[mchookem 16778]

3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

So you believe the ideal is that the case would be decided on its legal merits, and not in terms of the potential policy impacts, correct?

i believe he's saying that the actual legal merits are irrelevant bc the outcome is pre-determined based on ideology of the majority.

 

[wildcat09 29595]

12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

So you believe the ideal is that the case would be decided on its legal merits, and not in terms of the potential policy impacts, correct?

Keep going, this is funny. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

The problem with the Roe v. Wade opinion has always been that from the start it was a policy based and outcome oriented opinion and that the opposition to it could always make the argument that the court invented something in the constitution that just isn’t there and was legislating from the bench. Which they of course have done for decades now and are now doing. 
 

Whether you agree with the opinion or not it has deeply politicized the courts more so than any other opinion. The civil war took care of the dred Scott opinion. No such reckoning from Roe. 
 

It’s hard to say what will happen because the republicans know that if they completely overturn it they have then lost a huge wedge issue that they have successfully used for 40 plus years to get a bunch of judges on the court who protect the powerful interests that control this country at the expense of the majority. 

So yes. The legal arguments are largely irrelevant.

[TwiceHorn 32091]

6 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

The problem with the Roe v. Wade opinion has always been that from the start it was a policy based and outcome oriented opinion and that the opposition to it could always make the argument that the court invented something in the constitution that just isn’t there and was legislating from the bench. Which they of course have done for decades now and are now doing. 
 

Whether you agree with the opinion or not it has deeply politicized the courts more so than any other opinion. The civil war took care of the dred Scott opinion. No such reckoning from Roe. 
 

It’s hard to say what will happen because the republicans know that if they completely overturn it they have then lost a huge wedge issue that they have successfully used for 40 plus years to get a bunch of judges on the court who protect the powerful interests that control this country at the expense of the majority. 

So yes. The legal arguments are largely irrelevant.

That's about as honest and accurate a perspective on it that I have ever seen.

And "legal arguments" at the Supreme Court aren't like legal arguments in lower courts because the Supreme Court doesn't have to follow precedents, it can overturn them.  They are more like "prudential" arguments with a basis in legal reasoning:  don't make this policy decision because  . . . .

Edited December 1, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[Chuckie Finster 23093]

1 minute ago, JimmyJames said:

The problem with the Roe v. Wade opinion has always been that from the start it was a policy based and outcome oriented opinion and that the opposition to it could always make the argument that the court invented something in the constitution that just isn’t there and was legislating from the bench. Which they of course have done for decades now and are now doing. 
 

Whether you agree with the opinion or not it has deeply politicized the courts more so than any other opinion. The civil war took care of the dred Scott opinion. No such reckoning from Roe. 
 

It’s hard to say what will happen because the republicans know that if they completely overturn it they have then lost a huge wedge issue that they have successfully used for 40 plus years to get a bunch of judges on the court who protect the powerful interests that control this country at the expense of the majority. 

So yes. The legal arguments are largely irrelevant.

And the second they "send this back to the states" every fucking Democrat politician needs to make it their new wedge issue.  Every Governor race, every state legislature race, every fucking city comptroller race needs to be about how voting blue is the only way to ensure that [insert state X] keeps the right to abortion.  

Sure, some states will be hopeless, but I think this is the one hope to wrestle back control from some of the states that are purple by population but currently deep red politically.

[Longhorn_Fan68 34106]

Fucking Mexico has decrimmed abortion and weed, and yet we hold ourselves out to be the leaders of the free world? laughable, at best

[wildcat09 29595]

Roe is fine, actually. Most of the discussion that has arisen about Roe since it was decided is largely bullshit on top of bullshit, with people taking positions not because they really believe them but because they think it's the best position to publicly stake out.  Roe was actually pretty well reasoned and written, surprisingly well so given that it was authored by a group of old men who almost certainly knew absolutely nothing about pregnancy. I'll challenge anyone to actually go back and read Roe and tell me what parts of the decision they find weak. 

[Storm the Field 5367]

Viability as a measuring stick seems absolutely done after this. Conservative bloc on the court clearly wants to overrule Roe/Casey and seem content to let states enact any level of limitation, possibly up to an outright ban.

Roberts seems inclined to allow a 15-week limit, but somehow avoid overruling Roe/Casey and preserve a much more time-limited general right to abortion up to some point (15 weeks at the latest), but methinks he's grasping at straws. 

Future cases will be a doozy without some kind of viability test. No idea how a future court can conclude that 15  or 12 or 10 weeks is OK, but 8 or 6 or 0 weeks isn't.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Storm the Field

[wildcat09 29595]

4 minutes ago, Storm the Field said:

Future cases will be a doozy without some kind of viability test. No idea how a future court can conclude that 15  or 12 or 10 weeks is OK, but 8 or 6 or 0 weeks isn't.

Which is why Mississippi argued that an undue burden standard would be unworkable and they should just overturn Roe and Casey instead.

[JimmyJames 12271]

5 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Roe is fine, actually. Most of the discussion that has arisen about Roe since it was decided is largely bullshit on top of bullshit, with people taking positions not because they really believe them but because they think it's the best position to publicly stake out.  Roe was actually pretty well reasoned and written, surprisingly well so given that it was authored by a group of old men who almost certainly knew absolutely nothing about pregnancy. I'll challenge anyone to actually go back and read Roe and tell me what parts of the decision they find weak. 

I didn’t say the decision was wrongly decided. I think that can be argued both ways for the most part. Although the trimester discussions in the opinion is pretty iffy at best under constitutional law in my opinion.
 

My post was focused on the effects it ultimately had, which in my opinion really cannot be disputed. Right or wrong it injected a poison into our politics that is still there to this day.
 

And it would be naive to think this decision will be decided based on the strength of the legal arguments on either side. It will ultimately come down to whatever the Republican Party thinks is best for them politically. Only Thomas and Alito are true ideologues. 

[TwiceHorn 32091]

5 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Roe is fine, actually. Most of the discussion that has arisen about Roe since it was decided is largely bullshit on top of bullshit, with people taking positions not because they really believe them but because they think it's the best position to publicly stake out.  Roe was actually pretty well reasoned and written, surprisingly well so given that it was authored by a group of old men who almost certainly knew absolutely nothing about pregnancy. I'll challenge anyone to actually go back and read Roe and tell me what parts of the decision they find weak. 

Well, it was a conservative court that decided it.  And the reasoning, extending rights of privacy and autonomy at least implicitly recognized in the BIll of Rights and elsewhere, is seductive.

But, it does suffer from the creation of a fundamental right that is only barely hinted at in the Constitution and beyond the comprehension, for the most part, of the Constitution's drafters.  It is also frail in that it is dependent on ever-changing medical science to measure the right granted.  That is, if medical science could make viability earlier than first trimester, Roe would apparently have to yield to that science.

Of the more blatant departures from the text and structure of the Constitution, I like Roe v. Wade, along with the related "privacy interest" cases, like Griswold,   They are solid examples of that type of interpretation of the Constitution.

I don't disagree with Roe v. Wade.  But doctrinally speaking, some of the criticisms leveled at it are valid, as far as they go.

[Biff Tannen 46184]

So for the non lawyers here, is abortion about to be outlawed in Texas?

[elfenix 34756]

not until june

[wildcat09 29595]

55 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, it was a conservative court that decided it.  And the reasoning, extending rights of privacy and autonomy at least implicitly recognized in the BIll of Rights and elsewhere, is seductive.

But, it does suffer from the creation of a fundamental right that is only barely hinted at in the Constitution and beyond the comprehension, for the most part, of the Constitution's drafters.  It is also frail in that it is dependent on ever-changing medical science to measure the right granted.  That is, if medical science could make viability earlier than first trimester, Roe would apparently have to yield to that science.

Of the more blatant departures from the text and structure of the Constitution, I like Roe v. Wade, along with the related "privacy interest" cases, like Griswold,   They are solid examples of that type of interpretation of the Constitution.

I don't disagree with Roe v. Wade.  But doctrinally speaking, some of the criticisms leveled at it are valid, as far as they go.

I don't think there was ever any other way to write a decision protecting a woman's right to an abortion. If there is indeed a right to an abortion, any case reviewing whether a restriction on that right is acceptable must weigh the woman's right to an abortion against the state's interest. That's hardly novel to abortion cases, that's implicit or explicit in every case involving an impairment of someone's rights. Where that line is drawn must be somewhat arbitrary, so I don't really have a problem with drawing it at viability. If it wasn't viability, it'd be something else and people would be arguing over whether that was the right place to draw the line. This isn't a question with an objectively clear answer. The trimester framework may seem clunky today, but I think it was a perfectly reasonable approach to take at the time and there was no clearly better approach to take. 

I'm mostly uninterested in debates about the Constitutional source of the right to an abortion and whether the Court should've more clearly stated that the right arises from a specific amendment. The only criticism that is leveled at Roe that I really give any respect toward is the argument that the state's interest in protecting unborn life is so strong that it must always prevail over a woman's right to get an abortion. I disagree with it vehemently, but at least it's a serious argument. The more popular argument on the right though, that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution at all, is utter nonsense. A right to privacy is inherent in multiple rights guaranteed by the Constitution and Constitutional interpretation requires more than hitting Control+F and searching for "privacy."

[wildcat09 29595]

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

So for the non lawyers here, is abortion about to be outlawed in Texas?

Abortion is currently outlawed in Texas.