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by dangus 1458 days ago
Rather than don our tinfoil hats, let's instead apply Occam's razor.

The Supreme Court is packed with Catholics. Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and even one coming in with a dissenting vote (Sonia Sotomayor).

Abortion is a wedge issue that drives Republicans to polls. It's as simple as that. The GOP is unconcerned about the consequences of this policy. It's only there to get GOP voters to the polls.

Roe V. Wade being overturned also has nothing to do with the viewpoints of any particular party or individual Supreme Court justice changing. The GOP has been anti-abortion for about as long as I can remember. The difference here is that the GOP got three Supreme Court picks in one 4-year presidential term, swinging the court rapidly toward the right. This is the GOP exercising its newfound power to achieve its long-stated, consistent goal.

There are much more effective ways to boost military enlistment than banning abortion and waiting 18 years.

2 comments

Banning abortion will put a lot of already/nearly adult people into rougher financial situations - the kind of rougher financial situations that might make the military a somewhat more attractive employer.
Despite the merits of abortions, the Supreme Court’s job is to determine the constitutionality of laws, not create new laws or twist existing laws to say what they wish they did.

The concept of “legislating from the bench” should terrify everyone in America as it is a sidestep of the checks and balances among the 3 branches of government.

It is the job of Congress to enshrine the right to an abortion into Federal law.

What the supreme's did in practice was look for abstruse excuses to justify changing. First, all the republicans claimed they would follow precedent unless there was a really good reason. The earlier draft which quoted philosophers from more than 400 years earlier as a cause was a laughable example. They now claim the limits of our rights were set in 1868. They ignore precedent, including in the published writing of the founders that describes how to cause an abortion (Ben Franklin). Will they now say slavery is legal except for the 13th amendment, women can be controlled by their husbands, Jim Crow type laws are apparently legal again? Is the Civil Rights Law of 1964 now disallowed, because we didn't have civil rights for blacks in 1868?
> What the supreme's did in practice was look for abstruse excuses to justify changing.

Roe v. Wade was the abstruse excuse to justify the desired outcome. It was effectively legislating from the bench.

> First, all the republicans claimed they would follow precedent unless there was a really good reason.

I think a prior court precedent being unconstitutional is a really good reason.

> They now claim the limits of our rights were set in 1868.

Where did get this idea? From the actual opinion of Dobbs:

> In arguing for a constitutional right to abortion that would override the people’s choices in the democratic process, the plaintiff Jackson Women’s Health Organization and its amici emphasize that the Constitution does not freeze the American people’s rights as of 1791 or 1868. I fully agree. To begin, I agree that constitutional rights ap- ply to situations that were unforeseen in 1791 or 1868— such as applying the First Amendment to the Internet or the Fourth Amendment to cars. Moreover, the Constitution authorizes the creation of new rights—state and federal, statutory and constitutional. But when it comes to creating new rights, the Constitution directs the people to the various processes of democratic self-government contemplated by the Constitution—state legislation, state constitutional amendments, federal legislation, and federal constitutional amendments.

What it says is that the Supreme Court is not authorized by the Constitution to grant new rights. This is 100% correct. Legislative processes are the means that should be employed to accomplish this.

You're giving that comment a lot more effort than it merits.