A mote of light in an otherwise bleak week of encroaching darkness.
But learn the lesson, Dems/liberals: All politics is local. The battleground must now be the states and THEIR constitutions. It should have been all along, but you lived up to the GOP’s accusations of being overly focused on commanding a powerful centralized federal government, allowing them to undermine everything by controlling most states.
Do you hear it too? That’s Tip O’Neil yelling “I fucking told you so” from his grave.
Iowa Solicitor General Jeffrey Thompson, who is defending the law for the state, argued that . . . the waiting period provides time for women to consider information about the procedure that abortion providers are required to provide, including an opportunity to view an ultrasound or hear a fetal heartbeat.
Pretty sure that the conservative bloc on the US Supreme Court just declared that compelled speech about abortion violates the doctors’ free speech rights. May the law of unintended consequences bite them in the ass.
So when does the Iowa senate start calling for impeachment of judges?
I’m guessing immediately.
The gop’ers kicked out the judges who gave us statewide gay marriage right quick. You know, cause that was somehow going to cause the end of civilization. Which at the time was depicted as hellfire raining from the sky, but what they meant was cake-baking issues.
Woman’s body, woman’s decision. Sick of these legislators thinking they are allowed to interfere with women’s right to have control over their reproductive choices. I fear for my granddaughters.
Oh, about eight years ago.
Crikey mate!!
My 23-year-old daughter walked into the house on Tuesday in tears because of the Kennedy retirement. She has every reason to LITERALLY fear for her future as a young woman in this country. It’s a very real, very visceral fear for young women.
Then last night my SO and I engaged in a long discussion of how long we should wait before launching a plan to move outside the U.S. Do we wait to see how the midterms and 2020 elections go? Start now, just in case? How will we get medical care/Medicare if we’re not in living in the U.S.? How much does healthcare cost in other countries without Medicare?
Yeah, that’s how we now spend our leisure time together.
The right wing SCOTUS majority won’t care about consistency. Keep in mind that in a one week span they chided Colorado for a few commissioners questioning the nature of the beliefs of the Masterpiece Cake anti-gay baker and turned around and ignored Trump’s repeated public statements of anti-Muslim animus.
It was a 5-2 ruling, BTW, so they’ve got their work cut out for them. Not that I don’t expect them to try.
Want to reduce abortions in Iowa?
Require a 72-hour waiting period for human-human copulation in Iowa.
My condolences to the pigs of Iowa.
I know. They’ll have no choice but to acknowledge that both cases deal with compelled speech but will easily distinguish them. The compelled speech in the Iowa law protects innocent life while the compelled speech in the California case was an incitement to commit murder. As Justice Holmes so clearly stated in 1919, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”
Not that I’m depressed about the radical change in Constitutional interpretation that is about to begin.
Just wanted to add a clarification. 1) Yes, three justices were voted off the bench in 2010 following the Varnum decision. But, the four remaining justices, who were part of the unanimous decision on same-sex marriage, were retained in subsequent elections in 2012 and 2016, 2) One of the justices appointed to replace the three ousted justices agreed with the majority in today’s decision. 3) A couple years ago, a unanimous court declared an Iowa Board of Medicine rule designed to make the use of telemedicine procedures for medical abortions impossible unconstitutional. 4) While impeachment has been suggested on occasion by a legislator or two, it’s never gotten very far because the Constitution restricts impeachment to “misdemeanor or malfeasance.” Generally, the retention elections are what is used to determine whether a justice or judge is ousted from office.
When you are too much of a rightwing assh*le for the iowa supreme court…
Do I understand it correctly that, because this is the Iowa constittion, this is the end of the line for the case?
It should be. In a similar situation even Justice Alito would not agree to review the Pennsylvania redistricting case that was based on the state constitution.
Oh, I hear it. Beyond even state courts (which on non-state-constitution matters are still subject to slapdown by the SCOTUS – which, however hard we fight, looks likely to be lost for decades [hurt to type that…]), we finally need to take the lesson of the right’s decades-long ascendancy, and work like hell to elect Democrats at all levels of government. This case, after all, is about a law passed by the Iowa legislature; change the legislatures, you change the laws. There’ll still be court fights, of course, but that’s the imperative. Our side finally seems to be focusing on that; we can’t let that focus fade after this cycle, even – especially – after potentially demoralizing turns like the illegitimate seating of another Trump justice.
Dear Iowa,
Pass a 72-hour waiting period to have sex after taking Viagra and we’ll talk.
Love,
Ken in MN
(P.S. I’ll still tell you to stick it where the sun don’t shine, but we can talk nonetheless…)
We had that same discussion including how to get our retirement funds out of the US without suffering massive tax penalties since I am damn sure Trump will try to alter the law that lets expats receive SS and money from their retirement accounts without massive tax penalties. The little bit I have read seems to suggest the medical care isn’t that bit of a problem depending on where you go. But, yes, our discussions lately have been peppered with statements like “how will we know when it is too late”. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine thinking this.
Good to know we are not the only ones. I have been fighting my SO about moving to California (she believes at least we will have health insurance there). We considered Canada, but there are more than a few financial requirements, and we probably would have to pay significantly for health care.