Originally published at: Top Republican On Platform Writing Committee Gives The Game Away On Abortion
Now that pillars of the Republican Party platform have been officially adopted, one of the leaders of the committee that wrote it has let it spill that the party’s supposed softening on abortion that many reported on last week is (as we and a handful of other outlets suggested at the time) not exactly accurate.…
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“It’s got protections for pro-life. Don’t let anybody tell you there’s not protections for pro-life,” Martin said, as first noted by Mother Jones. “There’s not as many words describing it, but there’s protection under the Constitution, that life is protected.”
The remarks appear to suggest that the language of the platform would allow for 2024 Republicans to embrace a federal abortion ban, without saying that explicitly.
OR . . . he could be lying about it.
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I thought the Republicans on the Supreme Court already had done this.
But true, perhaps some people are not paying attention.
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“federal abortion ban”
If Roe, a ruling that granted a federal right to abortion, was “decided wrong” because it violated the Constitution’s “up to the states” language then how is a federal ban OK?
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And I thought the r’s only cared about the 2nd amendment. Seems they are also finding the 14th amendment useful as long as it can be twisted as a means to control women and their bodies.
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I wish someone in the media would discuss what exactly it means to “leave abortion up to the states”.
Does it mean if you live in a state that bands abortion you can leave and get an abortion in another state? If yes, you have made abortion a class issue because if you have some means, obtaining an abortion would be as difficult as visiting a friend or relative.
Does leaving it up to the states mean if woman lives in a state that outlaws abortion it is a crime for her to leave that state and get an abortion? If yes, how would that be enforced without first testing every woman leaving a state at every airport of just road crossing. For example between Indiana, a state that has outlawed abortion, and Illinois that has passed laws to protect a right to it, there are literally hundreds of roads the cross the border. Would Indiana need to have checkpoints to test every women leaving the state on all those roads?
That is “leaving it to the states” means you have either imprisoned every woman who is a resident of a state that outlaws abortion or you have merely put extra burdens on poor women.
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No, they just said that Roe was decided incorrectly and threw it back to everyone to figure out. They didn’t actually ban abortion, and they left the door wide open for any kind of ban regardless of the health of the mother. Republicans are trying to be coy in their efforts to put a federal ban in place, because about 2/3 of Americans don’t want one…it’s almost guaranteed that they will dump the filibuster and force one through if they get the trifecta.
Because it will do what conservatives want, so of course it will past Constitutional muster. It’s only things that go against conservative or Christian wishes that needs to be shot down. Didn’t you read the memo? I think it’s called Project 2025…
It means each state gets to determine how abortion is handled within their borders. If they want to execute women who have abortions, they are free to pass laws to do so, and if they want to allow free abortions and contraceptives they are also free to do so. States get to choose, as there is no federal law guiding it…this doesn’t stop the feds from passing a law to do so, which you can bet the SC will rubber stamp as fast as they can.
Your list of the effects is accurate, states could decide to close their borders to women until they prove they aren’t pregnant. That might not stand in court, interstate commerce probably covers the ability of people to move freely between the states, but the SC can take care of that. And, there are already many more pregnancies happening in red states…I think it was 26k more in Texas due to women having to have babies, plus more women going to other states to get abortions, and many stories of women nearly dying while waiting for a hospital to decide they were close enough to qualify for a “health of the mother” exception (blame the way the laws were purposefully written for that).
You can bet that this will all get so much worse if Trump wins and Republicans get Congress. Blue states are preparing for it, stockpiling abortion medication and shoring up their laws, but it may not matter if Trump decides he wants to force states to do what he wants.
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You just failed your Originalism test, pal.
It’s OK as long as it’s what the Federalist Society originally wanted.
You also failed the mandatory extra-credit assignment, which is to show what excuse you would use to circumvent the obvious logical contradiction. You didn’t cherry-pick aberrant historical cases, or say that this wrong ruling is fine because it only applies to this one case. And to add insult to your already-terrible scholarship, you didn’t even have the chutzpah to simply declare that the underlying problem no longer exists, obviating the need for a remedy.
You are never going to make it into the black-robed priesthood, and they would have no use for you anyhow. You’re the kind of sap who goes along with precedent because you just don’t want to dictate the laws badly enough to bother trying.
Sad and weak.
/s
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Strong the snark is in this one…
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More BS aimed at fueling the righteousness of people incapable of having children of their own. They are the backbone of the antiabortion effort.
The rest of it is being able to call Democrats ‘baby killers’.
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wait, my pizza from comet pizza is here… really special toppings…
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Does anyone know of any instance where any of these “pro-life” bigots have been forced to undergo an abortion? Then I do not see any problem with the rest of us getting along with our lives and making our own choices. I do not believe (and am supported by science) that a mass of cells is a baby until it is viable outside of the womb. So…If I choose to have an abortion and I do not believe in that premise that is the “religious” basis for this whole argument , am I going to hell just because THEY think I have murdered a baby?? I wish they would butt the hell out of my life. If you do not believe in abortion…do not have one. I will never interfere with YOUR choice. Do not presume to interfere in MINE.
Why is that such an impossible concept for these priggish busybodies to understand?
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It’s a game of pointing fingers. That’s what they are selling down at the church - moral superiority.
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I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, but before I do, I want to unequivocally state that I am 100% pro-choice and have always been.
Imagine that your neighbors have dogs, and they are bad dog parents who physically beat their dogs, all the time and without mercy, to the point that it’s really just a lazy form of torture. Is that situation made acceptable to you just because you aren’t being forced to also beat dogs?
What if it’s not torture, but simply murder? Your neighbors adopt strays and rescue dogs all the time, wait for them to go to sleep, and then snap their necks quickly and efficiently. Is that acceptable? Can you agree to disagree? If someone came to your house with a petition to declare those neighbors permanently unfit so they can’t ever have dogs again, would you sign it? Why not??
Religionists believe in souls. Once you believe in souls, it follows almost inevitably that anything which terminates or even derails a life must necessarily also snuff the soul you believe is associated with that life.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Melania Trump
Anti-choice folks will follow the sound logic of Dr King’s wisdom into a bizarre place because they anchor that logic onto a bullshit fantasy about souls. (And remember that souls are also the currency of their Manichean worldviews (e.g. God vs the Devil competing for souls).)
“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – very Melania Trump
The absurdity is the ghost. The atrocity is the dead women and girls, the abominable forced gestations, the labor-at-gunpoint, and the exploded doctors.
The anti-choice folks are wrong. But we won’t defeat them by pretending to not understand the rationale that they have cobbled together. It’s quite the opposite: if we’re going to defeat them, we need to understand their wrong ideas well enough that we can help other people avoid falling into the easy traps of sloppy thinking and caveman animism that they have fallen into and no longer wish to escape.
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Were you expecting consistency or logic of any kind?
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It’s only a matter of time before abortion is outlawed in the US. This time next year the choice will be gone.
This time next year, President Biden will be getting lambasted by Samuel Alito in some oligarch’s rag for working with Congress to impose term limits and an enforceable code of ethics on the Suborned Court.
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Just read Josh’s take on Vance and menstrual surveillance. So quick question. Vance has been married since 2014. If he is so insistent that women must have children, that contraception is evil and that abortions, IVF, etc. must be outlawed, how come he only has 3 kids? Ditto for Hawley, MAGA Mike, and all the other forced birthers - where are all the kids that are the natural result of no contraception and no abortions?
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Josh writes just now that:
This Spring HHS finalized new regulations under HIPAA to limit law enforcement access to medical records tied to reproductive health. The rule was first proposed in aftermath of the Dobbs decision as a way to limit the ability of state and local law enforcement agencies to access medical records to stymie or criminalize access to legal reproductive health services, most specifically abortions but not only abortions. It also applies to contraception and the full range of other endangered reproductive care.
Isn’t this rule-making exactly the kind of thing Roberts neutralized not three weeks ago by “overturning” Chevron?
The first time this goes to court, the Suborned Court will intervene and declare that “reproductive health” doesn’t mean what Congress thought it meant, and really only refers to ways to become pregnant, and that detecting or monitoring a pregnancy are not protected by HIPAA. They’ll say HHS was clearly in error by construing HIPAA to contemplate abortion, and that it was insane for HHS to imagine that medical privacy could ever outweigh law enforcement’s legitimate needs pursuant to the sovereign rights of state legislatures to dominate their populations however they see fit. (After all, those very citizens voted for those legislatures… in crooked elections that were administered in criminally incompetent ways, amid a hurricane of election disinformation paid for by whichever idle billionaire took an interest that cycle.)
Then Barrett and Alito will don their “Get A Better Statute” hats and strut home.
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