GOP Sen Suggests Abortion Laws Should Be ‘Turned Back To States’ As Roe Comes Under Threat

Right. How many women who have never left the county they live in, have such friends or relatives? It’s not a realistic option.

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Safe and easy medical abortion in the first 10-12 weeks is an option women in previous generations didn’t have, and it’s going to be a major pain in the ass for “pro-life” advocates trying to block abortions.

I’m not saying every woman will have access to it, but it’s going to be a factor in the way this will play out.

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Bring Back? It left?

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There is already a solution in the 14th Amendment guaranteeing the equal protection of the laws. If a woman has the right to control her body in some states and not others, the 14th Amendment is violated.

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Here’s an opinion:

Braun is a sadist.

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The irony is that this could impact those anti-vaxxers who parrot the line “my body my choice.” If they overturn Roe on the basis that we don’t have the right to privacy concerning our own bodily autonomy it’s anyone’s guess where this all goes. I’ll assume it won’t be anywhere good.

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Shush - First rule of the Underground Railroad is that you don’t talk about the Underground Railroad…

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The analogy is of course compelling. But in fact the public health measures being imposed to prevent the spread of Covid rely on individuals to protect society as a whole by either getting vaccinated or wearing a mask or both. They have no right to infect others, and they can and should be prevented from doing so. When we break it down like this, we see that Covid mandates are really not the same as imposing on every woman a duty to carry out every viable pregnancy. No public health purpose is served by restricting abortion, although many Republican legislators pretend to be concerned about women’s health. Clearly they are not. Nor does having or not having an abortion have a public health component, except that to the extent abortion is held to be illegal, many women will have unsafe abortions and suffer possibly dangerous injurie or death. Which suggests that allowing abortions benefits public health generally.

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I called this in to our local paper in response to that very comment:

“To the caller who does not understand the difference between a pandemic and a pregnancy: The distinction is rooted in the concept of the social contract. Vaccination significantly reduces the risk of infection from and the spread of COVID. A pregnant woman does not expose the people around her to the risk of an unwanted pregnancy.”

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You would be talking about Indiana

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…which is, of course, why the GQP will inevitably push to ban abortion nationally: after all, some babies will have a “right to life,” and others won’t, depending on the zip code their potential mother lives in. Where’s the equal protection in that?

I used to think that, but the number of deaths from gun violence they can turn blinders to may hint otherwise.

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Elephant in the studio: Roe decision has abortion—the right to privacy—as a constitutional matter. The US Constitution. Did no one bring this up? You can’t send federal constitutional rights to the states. If you can, then let’s send gun rights back to the states as well.

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Has anyone been arrested for the mail service portion and has it been challenged in court?

I don’t see how they hope to enforce this without using the same deputization of the entire pro-life populace of Texas.

Will they search every pair of knit socks in the US mail into Texas?

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People get prescriptions sent to them by faceless pharmacies all the time: I recently received something from a drugstore hundreds of miles away in Indiana, so that’s not an issue. The issue will be setting up a network of doctors and RNs who can write these prescriptions, and pharmacies willing to fill them.

I wonder if Border Agents will start searching cars for birth control pills, IUDs, and Plan B? I bet Canadian and Mexican pharmacies are going to make bank once at least a third of the country loses reproduction rights.

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This male dumbass cannot grasp that abortion is a MEDICAL PROCEDURE.

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Thank you. This whole thing makes me so angry. I thought this issue was settled in the 1970s. FatAss and the GQP have been turning back the clock on social and environmental issues.

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Let’s be very clear about what kind of person we have here in Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) … he is vile

If given the wide open and clear yes/no opportunity … to support or oppose
… he absolutely & without hesitation - Would support, endorse and vote for laws that:

  • Would make it a felony to have a child out of wedlock

  • Would Criminalize homosexuality

  • Would establish an official religion of the USA

  • Execute drug addicts

  • Criminalize poverty - create “work-houses”

  • Make Divorce virtually impossible … unless the wife cheated … or got old

What about equal protection in terms of abortion? We’re talking the 14th Amendment.

IANAL, but surely the founders, and subsequent modifications to the Constitution, considered and/or addressed whether states could have laws so different that people in one state could be prosecuted while others would not, particularly when it comes to something as truly universal as pregnancy.

From wikipedia:

" …A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the guaranteed right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War. …"

The 14th Amendment reads as follows:
" All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws . [emphasis added]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause (accessed today)

My bet is that Roberts will come down on this side of things. However, it will be a heavy lift to get Trump’s gang of nominees to do anything other than what they were chosen to do.

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