One of the most infuriating arguments against Roe v Wade is from people who claim that they’re for abortion rights, but wish it had come from the states, legislature by legislature. The idea being, I guess, that women, trans men and other people who can get pregnant controlling their own body should be subject to the whims of legislatures and not a fundamental right. It always seemed like such a dodge to me.
But now that state legislatures and Congress are proposing and enacting more and more anti-choice legislation, and at least some courts are upholding them, it’s surely time for the people who have been making that argument to step up and oppose these things legislatively.
Because now Texas is pushing TRAP laws and the court isn’t intervening. Now 20 week bans, pre-viability, are sprouting up across the country. Now states are banning medication abortions with consequences. Now, if you care about abortion, but for some ungodly reason think it has to be legislative victories, you can act. Abortion rights are coming under attack, and it’s time, it’s past time, for pro-choice people to fight back.
So sure, in Washington we’re fighting to increase access. But it isn’t like the Reproductive Rights Parity act has passed. Or for that matter that the budget will be anything like friendly to reproductive rights. Of course the main reason to oppose these anti-choice measures is that they’re harmful to the people who live in those states who can get pregnant. But now the people who have been waiting for abortion to be a legislative thing, can finally get in the game. Unless it was just an excuse not to participate in the first place.
“trans men and other people who can get pregnant”
O_o…Umm, wtf?
Fighting it out in state legislatures is a really, really bad idea for one simple reason: These fights will becoming all-consuming and absolutely no other legislative business will get done.
Many people aren’t aware of this, but there’s no explicit right to privacy anywhere in the Constitution. That right was created by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. So that case is about far more than abortion, and far more than abortion is at stake in the right’s fight to overturn Roe v. Wade.
@3 Ummm come again wasn’t that right to privacy established by other cases prior to Roe vs Wade and case just expanded those rights to privacy that had already been established like the right to birth control, or the right to look at a dirty magazine in ones own home.
At the time of Roe Vs Wade the state legislatures could have done just that. In fact most State Constitutions give it’s citizens far more rights than the US Constitution and often te9 justices on the Supreme court wish the states courts would just uphold their states constitution. Unfortunately that isn’t the real world then or now.
The issues in Roe was never so simple. A women with means or with a family of means could always get an abortion anywhere in the US. Some states allowed abortion and some did not. Just like a few states allowed citizens to have contraceptives and others did not. Hundreds perhaps thousands of poor women died every year from back alley abortions or from pregnancies they could not end. Very few women of means who could get an abortion from real doctors had results that included sterilization and death. Rich women could also disappear for ohh about 6 months and return home with no evidence of the little bastard they had had and put up for adoption and generally escape social condemnation for being a loose woman or in other words a slut.
Roe vs Wade didn’t cure all the problems but it’s been a far better solution than the quagmire that existed. And has been a bulwark over the folks who dislike Roe vs Wade attacking any and all forms of contraception.
Perhaps it should be suggested to them in a liberal fashion if you want in our bedrooms you better be available and willing to be in our bedrooms for the full monty. Yes put out or get the hell out of the bedrooms of consenting adults and stop treating us like children.
@5,
I think you got to the kernel toward the end of your comment there. This is now, and has always been about “slut shaming”. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting human life or anything else like that. It’s about patriarchy plain and simple. Just consider how closely linked these state efforts to limit abortion are to state efforts to limit reproductive health care in general, and particularly birth control. Look at the Colorado experience. A 47% reduction in unwanted pregnancies in just a few years. Results like those don’t just change lives, they change society. Tens of thousands of women each year, many of them teens, not faced with an unintended pregnancy. They finish school, they keep their jobs, they continue to move forward with their lives and contribute to their communities. All because they were permitted to make and stick to a plan. And of course the very same people who are fighting to restrict abortion are also fighting to turn back the clock on family planning in CO. Why? Because, ultimately, in their heart of hearts a young woman who is empowered to make a plan for her life and carry it out is “bad for society”.
Republicans want the government enforcing their absurd religious beliefs. Too bad two thirds of voters, including women, don’t give a shit.
@1
Did you figure it out yet? It’s not much of a riddle.
“The doctor was a WOMAN!”
I’ve never been opposed to abortions. I think it’s a good way for poor women to avoid a life of poverty.
@4 Of course there were precursors and the Roe v. Wade court drew on precedents, notably Griswold v. Connecticut, but Roe v. Wade is the leading case and spells out a Fourteenth Amendment right of privacy more explicitly and broadly than any other case. It’s the bedrock case for individual privacy rights; you can’t address the issue without alluding to it, even more than Griswold.
@5 Well yes, it should be remembered there are people who not only want to outlaw abortion, but also contraception, and our society isn’t entirely free of people who favor stoning others to death for adultery and/or being gay. There was a time in our country when marrying a person of a different race was a crime in some states for which they sent you to prison. It all boils down to not allowing such people to make the rules of our society.
Many people aren’t aware of this, but there’s no explicit right to privacy anywhere in the Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment is actually pretty clear on this point:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The right to be secure in one’s person means little if the government can check your body without your permission, and punish you for the exact condition of it.
After watching “The Tudors” on Showtime, I realize that a lot of our individual liberties came from a rejection of the British monarchy and its trappings by the Founding Fathers. Man, Henry VIII was not a particularly nice person, even if he DID break the back of the oppressive Catholic Church in England.
Of course, the resulting official Church of England wasn’t much better, especially under Henry’s reign.
@12 I’m unsure if a specific right to privacy was intentionally left out or if the folks writing the Bill of Rights didn’t feel the need to state there was a right for privacy or took it or granted that such a right existed. Like the air one breaths or the water one drinks.
@11 Still such laws get passed. Often in a moment of panic in knee jerk response to some crises. Sometimes these bills come with a clause limiting the time of their existence often they do not, and it’s hard to get rid of them. Or no one pays attention to some county or local ordinance until some ass actually uses it somehow oblivious to the changes of the past many years since the ordinance was passed in 1927. It’s just not sexy for legislators to do some weeding. The fact state legislators can say with a straight face the many new laws on abortion are constitutional is laughable. It then takes awhile until the courts get involved and typically only after great harm has been done. At least to someone. While the courts are political usually with some boost from the executive side of things eventually the courts to the truth that this indeed more than just a bad bill or a bill that is partisan and can be changed by partisan politics but that the truth is the bill was unconstitutional finally telling the legislators who said it was constitutional fools or liars. Unfortunately often they are dead by that point or out of office long forgotten. Not likely to accept an interview by CNN though maybe FOX. Where they will show a complete misunderstanding of constitutional law and separation of powers.
Griswold v. Connecticut was about contraception. That state’s Comstock law made all contraception illegal, even for married women. Think about that for a moment.
Anti-choice forces want to repeal Griswold as well, they just aren’t open about it. Rick Santorum, for example, has clearly come out against all sex not intended for reproduction or at least having the potential to result in reproduction.