Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by adrr 1657 days ago
Banning health care providers from abortion would be unconstitutional. It would be the same as a president banning health care providers from serving muslims. Women have a constitutional right to get an abortion. People don't have a constitutional right to not vaccinate. Government can and has jailed and/or fined people for not getting a vaccine. These SCOTUS approved mandates helped rid America of smallpox.
3 comments

Ehh constructional right is a bit strong.

The supreme court ruled that the 14th amendment[0], has somewhere hidden within it a right to privacy. This right to privacy appearently applies exclusively to abortion, as warrentless wiretapping of every US citizen has been determined not to be a constitutional violation.

I find it funny that they can find a right to privacy in the 14th, but give the thumbs up to civil asset forfeiture that directly contradicts the text and is a obvious violation. They seem to make things up as they go along depending on what is politically expedient.

[0]https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/

The right to privacy is in the 4th amendment, the 14th amendment is used to "incorporate" constitutional rights to the states. Prior to the 14th amendment the rights in the constitution only prevent abridgement of rights by the federal government but states were free to take them away.
> Banning health care providers from abortion would be unconstitutional.

Forcing care workers to take a medicine against their will is constitutional you say?

All medical procedures should be voluntary, or we go back to the times of lobotomy and forced sterilizations of minorities (and that's not as many decades back as you may think).

> Government can and has jailed and/or fined people for not getting a vaccine.

This means being unvaxed is a something only the rich can afford. Pay fines, and have a good lawyer.

> Forcing care workers to take a medicine against their will is constitutional you say?

They are not forced to take the medicine. They are given an choice to take the vaccine or find another job. If they refused to take the vaccine, that is their choice, period. They cannot claimed they are being forced because they are given an choice in the first place. They are given a free will with their decision. Thousands of Thousands people screeching for being forced when they are given a choice. Society don’t have to conform to those people who want to endanger their people and their livelihood.

This is an incredibly weak argument and the courts have already ruled similar issues.

The government can’t violate your right to free speech. They also can’t “ask” a private company to censor you as it effectively the same thing.

Telling someone “its your choice but if you don’t do it you’ll lose your livelihood” is not a choice at all.

Choices have consequences. I have the choice to stop wearing clothes to my job and the consequence of that choice is that my job would fire me.

The ability of the government to establish vaccination requirements is long established. It's only becoming a hot topic now because anti-science folks have been programmed to fear a safe and effective vaccine.

> I have the choice to stop wearing clothes to my job

The difference is you flipped the switch and decided to turn up to work without clothes. You decided to radically change your behavior and actions in the workplace. This will obviously have consequences due to your unsightly naked body offending co-workers.

When someone doesn't flip any switch, but continues to work exactly as they did before, they have not done anything you can label a "choice with harsh consequences".

Unvaccinated people are not suddenly shedding and dangerous, in the way a naked person is shedding pubic hairs everywhere.

The difference is totally irrelevant.

>Unvaccinated people are not suddenly shedding and dangerous, in the way a naked person is shedding pubic hairs everywhere.

Unvaccinated people are inherently dangerous. The change is that we now have the ability for them to become vaccinated people who aren't nearly as dangerous to their clients.

In June 2020, we had no choice but to have unvaccinated health care workers. Today, we do.

It's clearly not an established process since Biden's mandates is being struck down.
The court really has nothing to do with whether or not something is well-established. The judge who blocked the mandate is an ideological, inexperience trump appointee.

I'm talking about 'well-established' in that it's been happening for 200+ years. The conservative right-wing theocratic extremists that trump appointed will destroy our judicial norms for the next 50 years but that doesn't make them right.

You're aware that we've had vaccine mandates for decades, right? Were you also upset about requiring kids get (for example) MMR vaccines before allowing them to attend public school? If so, then congratulations: some diseases we'd thought we'd eradicated have been coming back because of anti-vax nutjobs.

You are not an island. You live in a society, a community of people that requires individuals to give up some personal liberties for the good of the whole. Those who don't like that should go move to an isolated island where their harm to others can be limited.

Greater good of society out weighs people's individual rights. These are basic constitutional tenets. Why you can't yell fire in a crowded theater even though you have the right to free speech. Why the SCOTUS has ruled vaccine mandates are constitutional.
Schenk was overturned because it was a bad decision. In general, “fire in a crowded theater” is my heuristic for “this person doesn’t know what they’re talking about”.

This is the top Google result for “fire in a crowded theater”: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

Use the more modern version it and yell “I have a bomb”.
You got the premise wrong, not the phrasing.

With firecodes what they are today, a bomb is a more comparable danger to what a fire was 100 yrs ago, anyway.

You actually can yell fire in a crowded theatre and no, the the US doesn’t automatically weigh the “greater good” over individual rights.
Society is a cultural framework and does not in any way supercede individual rights. There is no greater good. The SCOTUS has ruled that states have the authority to mandate vaccination not the federal government. The federal government is extremely limitited in its authority by the Constitution.
"Greater good" has been the justification for the worst atrocities committed in history.

Be careful about so willingly giving up your right to self-ownership.

You may not ever get it back.

Greater good is what it makes it possible to have individual rights. Imagine if you had an absolute right to free speech. You could write or speak anything without legal recourse. Trademark law and copyright law wouldn’t work. Fraud wouldn’t be prosecutable.

Apply that to other rights like the right to bear arms. If government couldn’t set standards and people could procure any weapon, how does society function? How does air travel even exist with people owning anti aircraft missiles.

That’s why our founders made our constitution a living document with courts interpreting the constitution and balancing individual rights with our collective rights.

I see the "living document" argument made a lot, and I don't think it means what some people think it means.

The founders were purposefully vague in several areas of the constitution because they absolutely did want circumstances to determine interpretation, however they were not vague at all about delegated and reserved powers. These things are not "living" in a sense of judicial review.

By "living" document, it was intended that the constitution could be modified by an amendment process. There was never a provision for judicial review.

In fact, then entire concept of judicial review arose from Marbury vs Madison [1] where the court claimed this power.

The purpose of the U.S. Constitution, and one of the things that makes it unique in history, is to limit the powers of the government. The founders believed that individual rights were innate (granted by God), not granted by government and certainly not granted by the federal government.

All powers other than those specifically Delegated to the federal government are reserved for the States - the 10th Amendment makes this clear.

It is not the role of the federal government to decide on "greater good" mandates, those powers are very specifically reserved for the states, who are constrained on what they may do by the Constitution and its amendments.

We, as a country, have allowed the federal government to overstep this in many areas. The DEA, for example, only exists because of a very bad interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, which arose from a bad Supreme Court decision (Wikard vs Filburn)[2] about whether or not you were allowed to grow your own wheat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

you can indeed yell fire in a crowded theater.
Then just ban men from having them as well.

> Women have a constitutional right to get an abortion.

Do they? Where is that written?

EDIT: the vague "life, liberty, or property" clause as interpreted by Roe vs Wade. This is such a blank-cheque it may as well not be in the constitution as in hands all power to the interpretation of the courts.

" the vague "life, liberty, or property" clause as interpreted by Roe vs Wade. This is such a blank-cheque it may as well not be in the constitution as in hands all power to the interpretation of the courts."

If you read federalist papers or any of the writings of founders on the constitution. The constitution is a living document that is decided by the courts. It is really hard to have a fruitful debate without people having even basic knowledge on this subject.

No, it’s not a living document open to the whims of interpretation or flavor of the month.

That’s how you end up with Russia taking over Odessa due to “national security” reasons.

If it’s a living document it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

I didn't say the courts couldn't interpret the constitution, but "living document" doesn't need to imply vague - RvW carved out a limited clarification without supplying a general rule of what is and isn't covered. The courts shouldn't have the power to totally skewer the constitution, ad-hoc.

> having even basic knowledge on this subject

That's your opinion. People debate in echo chambers all the time, if that's what you'd prefer.