This is a quick post to invite debate. I have my own opinions on Roe v. Wade. I think the majority opinion was pretty lame. I think they did a bad job of justifying their decision. However, in my opinion, they made the right decision. We do have a right to privacy, and I have never seen any proposal for outlawing abortion that would not severely violate a woman’s privacy.
But, I don’t even care if people agree with my opinion about the Roe decision. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t play one in the blogosphere. The main reason I support Roe is that it keeps the abortion issue restricted to the Presidency and the Senate.
In my view, abortion is a poisonous debate that debases our national discourse. I think rich Wall Street Bankers use the issue cynically to attract voters from a lower socioeconomic class.
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe things will change. Right now, it doesn’t matter whether your Governor, your state senator or rep, our your federal rep is pro-choice. They will never have any effect on the Supreme Court. But if Roe is overturned every political office will have a vote on whether your state will allow abortion.
If Roe is overturned I think it will benefit the Democratic Party in most of the country. But it will be a disaster for women’s health in deep red states, and it will be an even bigger disaster for our national discourse.
Tell me why I’m wrong.
I’ve spent the last hour floating through blogs gauging the feel of Democrats and liberals. I wish I could agree with you that overturning Roe would benefit the Democratic party, but it wasn’t that long ago that I came to Booman Tribune because of a fight over this type of issue that tore apart a blog. Tonight I saw the exact same dividing lines being drawn.
The pastry issue was just a precursor of what could happen to the Democratic party as a whole. We have got to stick together on this one or we could lose everything.
about abortion, or the Roe decision. The fact that this site has so many women, and so many women activists is why I invited debate rather than declaring a policy.
I really want to learn what our members think. So, don’t worry about a pie fight, because I am not going to insist that people accept my position. My position is open-minded.
I am more interested in learning about this issue than imposing my opinion on others.
Who cares?
Overturning Roe would mean a return to back-alley abortions, and take us down a slippery slope when it comes to availability of birth control to women.
People will die. People will die. That is why this is such a hot issue. Women will die. Women will be arrested. It will destroy the fabric of this nation. You thought it was bad now? Just wait until the Frist and DeLay types are thumping their chests over the enslavement of women.
Personally I think it’s the most cynical of calculus to say that overturning Roe will benefits Democrats. It’s very Rovian, just like the calculus that rationalized 9/11 as benefitting the Republicans.
I’m sorry, but I find such attitudes horrible beyond measure.
OMG yeah.. i hadn’t even thought about the sickening gloating that will happen after the over turn 🙁
and yes.. despiter an earlier post that i made mentioning a backlash.. i do think in the short term it will hurt a lot of people.
That remind me too much of a similiar analysis made my Ralph Nader.. i voted for that creep the first time around.. then he ran in states that he said he wouldn’t run in.. and later i began reading about his ideas of making things so bad in America that it would jump start the sluggish progressive movement. That made me so effing mad.
What’s the point of jump starting the movement if we havent got an environment, rights, or an economy to speak of, Ralph?
Anyway, all this is to say that I agree… ends NEVER justify means… and if we’re willing to accept a defeat just because we think it “might” gain us something in the end we will eventualyl end up with absolutely nothing
I agree Media Girl, that’s the most important aspect. Politics are lives, not just positions.
On a purely political basis, I also believe it’s faulty reasoning. If Roe were overturned, the battle moves to the STATE level and becomes the next wedge ballot issue. Some will say, but the majority of Americans support a woman’s right to chose. That may very well be true, but that’s not what the ballot will reflect. Rove ain’t dead yet and neither is Dobson’s ilk.
The second purely political consideration is what overturning Roe does to the Democratic brand, as if it weren’t diluted enough already. Some will argue that the fight will invigorate the base. Yeah right, and we haven’t had this internal “throw them under the bus” discussion since the last election. Take a good long look at the way the party is positioning its pro-life candidates and follow that trajectory.
Undoing Roe will SPLIT the Democratic party at a time when there are too many issues that will trump a woman’s right to choose as a swing voter issue. Iraq, national security, health care, jobs…
I have complete respect and appreciation for how you run your blog. I’m so comfortable here that I never even thought about incurring your wrath! My apologies for leading you to think so.
I was just mourning the loss of solidarity the last time this issue was raised, and I really fear that infighting on reproductive rights could damage Democrats as a whole. We could end up weaker if we don’t stick together.
So what do I think? I think that there is no way in hell I will raise my daughter in a country where she doesn’t have control over her body. There’s no way I can do anything but fight tooth and nail on this one. Losing reproductive rights is an all-encompassing, life altering possibility.
I think Roe might get overturned. I’m hopeful that there will be a large outpouring of outrage at that and that possibly the legislature will take up the issue.
One other point is that in many places in the US, abortion is de facto illegal anyway. Just try to get some good family planning counseling in rural Texas, for example. It’s not like Roe hasn’t already been made moot for many, many poor women in this country already.
That being said, at what point do people say maybe I should move to a more rational country where I’m not hounded by the radical right? There may come a time when reasonable people (the best and the brightest?) decide to move away en masse. Part of me thinks this is the only way red state America will ever “get it.” But maybe I’m just feeling overly cynical today.
Pardon the snark Boo, but this entry is nuanced enough to make John Kerry jealous. I think we fall into the right-wing’s trap by trying to explain and explain and explain this issue. It should be short and sweet: I support Roe v. Wade because I feel abortion is a decision between a woman and her doctor; not something to be decided by Tom DeLay and Bill Frist.
In my opinion, Roe v. Wade is not about abortion. It is not about when life begins. It is about whether or not a women is capable of making decisions about her life and her reproductive choices or whether she is so lacking in intelligence or morals that the state has to step in and make that decision for her.
I think there is a streak of misogyny a mile long in the right to life movement.
It not so much about abortion as it is about who has the power. Does government have the power to tell women what to do or can she exercise her power and make decisions for herself. I wish we could get away from the right-to-life meme and focus instead of the power plays that are going on. Women had to fight for their right to vote and that right to vote gave these women power. Gays are coming out of the closet now and demanding their right to be heard. They are gaining power over their own lives. No wonder that certain segments of the population want these movements stopped. More power for others means less power for them.
I meant AMEN to your comment.
“I support Roe v. Wade because medical decisions are made by a patient and their doctor not the government.”
BUT i do feel that in the short term this is a huge step backwards for women’s rights and it’s a long term turning point.
If Roe v Wade is overturned they will help create a new gender movement that will knock these neanderthal’s right on their asses. This particular issue isn’t an issue that effects the older generation as much as it does the younger. So, all of those uninvolved, uninformed, women will get one big fat slap of a wake up call across their faces and when RvW is repealed I wouldn’t want to be a Republican.
It’s downright Hegelian. There’s an issue framed.. take away rights… then a counter argument will be framed… backlash, baby
Yup, maybe I’m over-optimistic, but it will happen.
I’d be a hell of a lot happier if weren’t even an issue, though.
articulated, I think it’s important to emphasize and make a clear distinction that the Roe v. Wade decision is about “abortion rights”, (and more specifically about the individual rights of women to retain decisionmaking authority vis a vis their own bodies; and not about “abortion” itself.
It’s impossible for me to see how the “diminishment” of anyone’s right to have control over their own body can be good for anyone, least of all a political party.
Sometimes I feel like the Roe v. Wade issue is like a rope around our necks. We don’t dare move too far or we’ll get strangled.
I wish that the pro-corporate and anti-civil rights views of the prospective justices were of equal concern.
It was disturbing to me that some at DKos were for Gonzales simply because he is pro-choice.
(Don’t get me wrong. Roe v. Wade is critically important, but sometimes I feel like I’m getting pounded on the head about it too much. I’ve been reading posts on a Wa state Democracy for America list that condemn Howard Dean because he supposedly isn’t opposed to a pro-life Democrat’s candidacy. I cannot for the life of me imagine what’s wrong with the man’s candidacy as long as he favors choice.)
I have been thinking that Roe v Wade/Pro-life was a very clever way of getting people from the lower end of the economic scale to vote for pro-corporate, anti-civil rights politicians that could care less about them. They get so emotionally unglued over the “baby killer” propaganda, they vote for Repubs every time.
I think overturning Roe v Wade would be a disaster, in terms of women losing their lives and in terms of the loss of privacy rights. I think it would also be a harbinger of women being pushed back into the 1950s…
I don’t think it would be the gain for Democrats that many other people do, but what do I know?
I recently changed my legal/political stance on abortion, as a result of some heart-to-heart talks with someone near and dear to me. I no longer want to impose any legal restriction on abortion, though that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to reduce the need for abortion through other means–prime among them, better sex ed (not this abstinence BS) in schools, promotion of contraception, etc.
But where my view hasn’t changed is on the subject you raise: these Supreme Court nominations are focused entirely too much on the abortion issue. If we could somehow get a constitutional amendment passed that guaranteed, once and for all, the right to abortion, it would free a lot of energy to be concerned with the many other crucial issues the federal appeals courts deal with.
Foremost among those concerns, for me, are basic issues of civil liberties and the rights of the accused in our justice system. These are areas where Rehnquist is particularly abysmal–almost any replacement would be an improvement there, once that evil fuck succumbs to cancer. And I don’t mind admitting that I hope he suffers horribly on the way out, since I don’t believe in an afterlife, and thus think he’ll be spared the eternal hellfire he so richly deserves.
Yes, an amendment would be good.
By the way, as an aside, the type of cancer Renquist has (thyroid) is the same kind that is often caused by radioactive fallout from the radioactive iodine. Maybe he was exposed at one time.
I agree with your feeling pounded over the head too much about it. We’ve allowed the right-right-wing to define the debate, and we’re off message by accepting the narrow focus of the Roe v. Wade aspect of our platform.
What do civil rights, human rights, reproductive rights, religious rights, privacy rights, gay rights, workers rights and fair competition all have in common? Equal rights, opportunity and justice for all. That’s the American dream and the promise of our Constitution.
A government by, for and of the people. All people.
I agree in that I think the two biggest problems with Roberts are his previous work on behalf of Operation Rescue AND his overwhelmingly pro-corporate stance. Unfortunately, I think there’s at least some chance of people being radicalized around Roe v. Wade but very little chance of the same happening around the further march of corporatism.
point taken.
I don’t want you to think that I want Roe overturned because it will benefit the Democratic Party.
But I do think that it would hurt the GOP in most of the country, because being anti-choice would suddenly matter. And very few jurisdictions are really anti-choice.
But just because it will hurt the GOP doesn’t mean it is a good trade. In deep red states they will outlaw abortion and it will have a disastrous effect on the quality of health care for women in those states.
So, I’m not rooting for a overturning of Roe. Far from it. I think the federal law is correct, even if the decision is sloppy. And I don’t welcome abortion being raised to a higher level in our national discourse. It’s bad enough as it is.
Booman, in several deep red states, they’ve limited the access to abortion so severely, outlawing it would merely be a formality. Moiv wrote an excellent diary on the subject awhile back. A must-read IMO.
a long time ago I saw a study about Pennsylvania. It showed that most women in PA have to travel several hours to have the procedure done.
Some more specific stats from guttmacher.org (excellent source of info!):
In 2000, 75% of Pennsylvania counties had no abortion provider. 39% of Pennsylvania women lived in these counties. In the Northeast census region, where Pennsylvania is located, 14% of women having abortions traveled at least 50 miles, and 4% traveled more than 100 miles.
In Pennsylvania, 7 metropolitan areas lack an abortion provider: Altoona; Erie; Johnstown; Lancaster; Scranton-Wilkes-Barre-Hazleton; Sharon; Williamsport.
Here in ChesCo, it isn’t so bad; you just cross the state line to Delaware to avoid the 24-hour waiting period post counseling that necessitates multiple trips to the clinic. Thank you Casey, Sr.
but blue states like Pennsylvania (see other posts) and my state of Wisconsin. Where we once had fifteen clinics (before the early ’90s assault of the Missionaries for the Preborn and the like, in the case recently yet again before the Supreme Court and still not over), we now have five. All are in one corner of the state, with two in one city. In 80% of the counties in the state, there are no clinics. And with the 24-hour waiting laws, requiring costly travel and housing beyond the budget of most women — including working women who cannot miss work for so long — that puts their alleged reproductive rights out of reach.
The time for the battle for Roe v. Wade was more than a decade ago. NARAL said so, NOW said so . . . but with a party run by men, the Dems weren’t listening — or perhaps didn’t think it mattered with all the focus on the White House.
The rest of us still live in our states, where legislators matter more than the White House or Congress when it comes to reproductive rights.
But I do think that it would hurt the GOP in most of the country, because being anti-choice would suddenly matter.
Not to most males. Because the GOP and the Religious Right has skillfully avoided any real consequences for men when it comes to the reality of unwanted pregnancies and even any in depth discussion of male responsibility. Indeed, in the RR view it is the job of women to control male sexuality. When men consider the consequences of overturning Roe they worry about a lack of available sex partners, not supporting children they’re just as responsible for bringing into the world as the woman involved.
And not to ‘pro-life’ women either. That’s a whole other issue.
The people who would be hurt are the same women the nation gleefully piled on during that last decade’s discussion on welfare deformation. And Democrats no less than republicans are more than willing to ignore or demonize them. It will become a giant orgy of bi-partisan debate amd agreement about ‘personal responsibility’. Don’t forget, we’ve already decided that single mothers can raise children on their wages from (and I quote the most recent Democratic President) “Burger King” and without access to health care. Don’t forget that since ’96 their situation was gotten much worse and that housing is now a severe problem.
I think that those who believe that the Dems will benefit from overturning Roe fail to realise the widespread bi-partisan loathing of both political parties amongst the affected population. A population which, unlike the GOP, the Dems are reliant on for their political future. I believe you fail to comprehend the depth and extent of the rage many of us feel. I stand with the poor (most of whom are women) and am fully aware that neither political party offers them any viable solution. This ‘pro-life’ coup will exacerbate the difficulties of their circumstances immeasurably.
you’re behind the times, because what you predict is already here in many states, where abortion is not available to most women because of state restrictions — restrictions enabled by the Supreme Court with O’Connor on it.
What you may see is more states like mine. And then, when your state also gets an F for lack of access to reproductive rights, as mine already has in the national measures (by NARAL, by NOW, by Feminist Majority, etc.) . . . you’ll realize that the South won states’ rights, after all.
All we can fight for now is the few women who still have access, so it exists somewhere in the land for those who can afford to get there.
I bet that’s why so many of the “red” states have higher divorce rates, higher teen pregnancies, worse health care and lower educational attainment. It all stems from the lack of reproductive rights for women.
So, going by that, the US will have more divorces, more teen pregnancies, even worse health care and more illiterate people.
as, yes, I agree — reproductive rights are a sort of gateway to so much else in women’s self-sufficiency . . . since the real gateway is education, from which income and so much else flow. And unexpected pregnancies were a major reason for an early end to many a woman’s education. Even more significant, of course, for planning pregnancies was the pill — which is why the cause and phrase to fight for is not abortion but reproductive rights, since birth control also is on the agenda to be taken from us with the “conscience clause” bills in legislatures now, including mine in Wisconsin.
Because the road back to economic substantive due process (i.e Lockner reborn) begins with Griswald and is marked with wayposts at Roe and Casey.
Unless of course someone would like to protect choice by means of the more sensible, but greusome, 13th Amendment argument.
you have a responsibility to give us a more clear assessment. Dammit.
Okay, pro bono-
“substantive due process” is a cathchall phrase for extratextual constitutional rights. Basically the Court has a history of overturning “substantive” legislations for being, well, totally unfair. (E.g. incompatible with any sort of “due process of law”.) If you want to be all fancy about it, substantive due process prohibits laws incompatible with “ordered liberty”.
That’s pretty much the holding in Roe- however horrid abortion is, women can’t fully enjoy the fruits of ordered liberty if abortion is prohibited by the authority of the state. (Casey is basically about Justice Kennedy coming around to that rather libertarian point of view, IMHO).
Likewise Griswold said there’s just no way a civilized government can regulate the reproductive choices of married couples- even to the point of protecting the commerce necessary to deliver birth control to such couples.
But substantive due process does not begin with Griswald, rather its heyday was in the time before FDR and the New Deal, when for a generation the Court overruled every child labor law, minimum wage or consumer protection they could get their hands on- because the right to dispose of one’s property or labor as one saw fit was essential to ordered liberty.
the more things change…
the more they stay the same-
Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Bryer, Stevens.
Actually without having to appease O’Connor for a sixth vote, I can actually see this group pulling back from the limited regulation allowed in Casey and Roe to an even more protective stance.
The danger lies in Bryer and Kennedy joining up with some combination of Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas and/or the new guy hijacking the opinion in an abortion related case to create an 8-1 or 7-2 decision that begins the serious restoration of economic substantive due process.
‘Bout time the durned kids got jobs and started to pay rent- the boy is six and the girl, well she’s tall for her age.
In general terms I think you are right.
While abortion is a divisive issue, polls show that the majority of Americans support a woman’s right to choose. I also know a lot of people that do not support abortion but do support a woman’s right to make her medical decisions with her doctor and not the government.
I also think this points out strongly how important local and state offices are. For most of the country this year is local election year. Next year it is state elections and federal elections. We need progressive Democrats in all those offices… for this and other reasons.
Women’s health care, health care in general, privacy rights, etc. need a state by state strategy. We need to win these battles on the ground in each state.
It could have been worse but the first thing that strikes me from his resume is that this guy is a Bushie from beginning to end.
Exactly… I think we need to be state by state on every issue, regardless of whether it is threatened federally or not.
is about so many things, beyond abortion, that it’s difficult to imagine what would happen should it be overturned. It’s like one major underpinning of an entire structure, whose loss would bring down a whole bunch of other things with it.
Maybe not right away, but you can bet the right wing … where they have not already prepared and sent through legislation and initiatives further limiting not only a woman’s right to privacy, including abortion rights, but also contraception, anti discrimination laws, allowing pharmacists and hospitals not to treat women, and so on… they are waiting in the wings to get right off the mark. Also, as you say, every state politician having their views on abortion rights scrutinized (I think they should be already, though), and every state and local election having to deal with the entire issue .
Could we fight this off (again)? Yes, I think so.. there are more of us than there are of them. But I also believe it would be a tougher fight, after years of the indoctrination (from even some on the left) of women and men, young and old, that this is a public issue, not a private one. People actually believe they have the right to view the medical records of women, and to have them take pelvic exams, secret AIDS tests, force them to have C-Sections and other medical procedures… because they are women.
And it would be a way more destructive fight, as well, I think. Too many waverers, who seem unwilling to stand and fight for the rights of women, minorities, labor, etc.
We are not that far from the days of forced sterilizations and other methods of controlling those who others felt had no control of themselves.
There is a lot riding on this, I believe.
Over 4000 years of recent history has brought a steady diminution of the power and status of women in society. And it’s only been really in the last 200 years or so that (what passes for) civilization has broken free of enough of the powertripping religious authoritarianism that kept women in subjugation to the will of men.
Now the religious fascists are trying to send all this recent progress into reverse, going retrograde back to a pre-Victorian era where women were little more than property and had no rights at all.
Not only is this reverse evolutionary effort by the evangelical wingnuts anti-democratic, it’s anti-human, and giving in to these repressive ideas needs to be resisted with all the energy we have.
How can we possibly have a free and open and enlightened society and fellowship if we’re not all able to have undisputed control over our own individual bodies?
I may be nuts here but as I see it it is about a woman’s right(s) on many issues. NOt just abortion. If they take our right away for determining what we as a woman can do with our body, then they will determine what we will do with our vote/voice. I presume they want to simply take many of the woman’s rights away..
Not only that if they really wanted that issue off the discussion board, then and only then will they have not one damn thing to damn us with. As far as I see it is is not a democratic or republican issue. it is all of our issues. The Christians have determined their charge in life to tear us all apart and this is they way they think they can do it.
Woman getting abortions are not political, they come from all backgrounds and political parties, ecconominal backgrounds, walks of life and different ethnics in life…etc. It is about woman’s issues as I see it. (with the SCOUS)
All this is very personal to me as well, as an intersexed individual. I see all this in a very “slippery slope” manner. These fanatics are chipping away at homosexual right, trying to redefine marriage, tinkering with our childrens education re; creationism, and Reproductive rights.
My liberal friends think it’s neat that im both sexes.. but my conservative aqauntences look at me sideways as if my person offends them and they “advise me” that i should pick a gender and stick with it.
I can see it all now.. I’ll be permanently marginalized, at best, not allowed to discuss my vert existence in a black and white world. All because we didn’t say no to these asses when they started taking rights away.
“intersexed individual.”
I’d heard it before, but thanks for reminding me.
I’d be afraid that allowing it to be overturned would drive away a lot of pro-choicers, especially pro-choice women. Seeing the party not put up a fight on something so basic and fundamental to human rights (I believe it is impossible to be for equal rights and individual rights without being pro-choice) would do more damage than any dozen Kerrys or Gephardts.
The flaw in the traditional approach of the pro-choice (and, IMHO, pro-freedom, pro-human decency) faction is a reliance on a Supreme Court decision revolving around implied rights. There is no clear and unambiguous right to privacy in the Constitution — which would be legally shaky ground anyway — and certainly no right to abortion.
The only long-term solution will be a constitutional amendment establishing, once and for all, abortion as a fundamental right.
With anything less than that, we will always be at the mercy of the composition of the courts.
The suggestion made in some quarters that the topic can be approached indirectly through a formalized right to privacy is utter, ridiculous nonsense. Privacy has never protected the commission of crimes in private. A formal right to privacy would be a great thing, don’t get me wrong, but it has no relation to legalized abortion.
As we see from the support of invetro fertilization and the opposition to stem cell research (and we’re not just talking taxpayer funding), opposition to Plan B, which is contraception, not abortion and the right to refuse to dispense birth control, the issue is who controls reproduction, at what point and for what purposes?
The right to privacy is stare decis.
GRISWOLD v. CONNECTICUT, 1965
The foregoing cases (Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Meyer v. Nebraska, NAACP v. Alabama, Board of Education v. Barnette) suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers “in any house” in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender tohis detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described… as protection against all governmental invasions “of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.”
We have had many controversies over these penumbral rights of “privacy and repose.” These cases bear witness that the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one.
I’m afraid that you’re wrong there. The Constitution is not an enumeration of the rights of the people, but, rather, an enumeration and limitation of the rights of the government. The “no right to privacy” jargon is Conservative double-speak. There is a right to privacy, because the Constitution doesn’t say there isn’t. Remember, all rights not specifically conferred to the government in the Constitution are held by the people.
First of all, I have never understood why reproductive consequences is seen as a “women’s issue.” None of us ever got pregnant through immaculate conception. Can anyone point me to any pending legislation geared towward holding men equally responsible for unwanted pregnancies?
We’re not only talking about womens health. We’re talking about women’s basic civil liberties, and our right to have sole authority over what goes on inside our own bodies: the same right men are automatically granted via their gender.
If we give up the right to abortion, and to contraception, (because that’s the next thing they’ll attempt to control) you effectively make women into baby making machines again. We are well aware that it is us who risk pregnancy with ever act of sex, and that it’s our bodies, our lives that will be forever altered by an unwanted pregnancy whether we choose to create that child for nine months with the stuff of our own bodies till it’s born, then parent for 18 years, or whether we give it up for adoption, and always know our child is “out there” somewhere, or whether we risk our lives aborting it, legally or illegally.
So, frankly, when I hear liberal men discussing whether to fight to protect Roe vs Wade or not, in terms of how it will affect the party, I want to just scream, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??!! Why are you even putting this up for discussion?! WHY AREN’T YOU AUTOMATICALLY STANDING FIRM, ARM IN ARM WITH US?
The most shocking thing I have discovered since I began frequenting the liberal blogs is the willingness of so many of my liberal brothers to consider trading away womens freedoms in order to win elections. It feels like betrayal to me, and it makes my blood boil. If liberal men wish to trade freedoms for political victory, the let it be their own freedoms, not ours.
Note: this is not solely in response to your words, Boo, but to this whole damned mess. I never would have believed that in 2005, I’d be fighting this same war all over again, and it’s made me very, very angry.
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I don’t think I am guilty of what you are diagnosing.
I have an opinion about what the effect of banning Roe would be politically. But that opinion doesn’t translate to me having a “willingness…to consider trading away womens freedoms in order to win elections.”
>>> But that opinion doesn’t translate to me having a “willingness…to consider trading away womens freedoms in order to win elections.”
I understand that, Boo. From what I’ve read of you, I believe you would never intentionally support that stance.
One reason I am glad for this thread was that you stated you wanted to know what your readers think of all of this. You want to hear it. To me this indicates someone whose mind is open to all perspectives,and I admire this.
If some of this lifetime of accumlated anger and frustration came out seeming as it was directed at you personally, I can no longer even find it in me to apologize for that, Boo. I can only ask you accept that it’s there and it is becoming very hard to surpress. Nor can I find it in me to to praise you for running a forum that is extremely inclusive of women, because there is another voice in me now that demands to know WHY? WHY do I need to feel grateful to any man for treating me as an equal?
don’t you just know, scribe! me either. It is getting exhusting for me here and I find it rather telling of the men on the court process and political process as well. I am so damn sick and tire do them telling us what we can(not) do about any old thing. if I want their ideas on things, I will ask…
And black voting rights. And homosexual civil rights. And the list goes on and on.
Boo’s not on this list, of course. But many “partisan Democrats” see no problems with sacrificing the very values that supposedly differentiate their party from the Republicans in exchange for victory. After all, none of the “necessary sacrifices” proposed ever seem to affect them – white straight males, with a few exceptions – in any significant way.
Another example of the pathology of privilege. There is a keynote speaker that talks about that on FSTV that hits that nail on the head.
Keynote: Tim Wise “The Destructive Pathology of White Privilege” Explores the meanings and consequences of “whiteness.”
It’s almost impossible to communicate the feeling of having no control over your life to someone that has never felt that. There are many white males (and some females, for sure!) of both parties that have never experienced not having any control over what happens to them. I’m thinking they are the ones that just don’t get it. That’s why so many younger women don’t understand how bad it can get.
That’s an interesting way of looking at things, and it seems accurate. I’d think that almost anyone who had been bullied during their primary schooling would understand, but many “geeks”, for example, seem to see no problem with oppressing others for their own gain. It’s an unfortunate lack of empathy.
There are laws in the queue or laws already on the books ready to be revived in over 30 states that would outlaw abortion in either all or almost all cases. The laws that Roe overturned will, as I understand it, automatically be restored if Roe is reversed.
I do not agree that reversal would benefit the Democratic Party. To the extent that the party tried to rally for abortion rights, it becomes the party of abortion.
Given the party’s abominable inability to defend,let alone advance reproductive rights at the national level and in all but a handful of states, I do not see how the overturning of Roe will have any effect but to give antiabortionism a permanent moral and legal highground.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think the GOP has any desire to actually overturn Roe v. Wade. If Roe is overturned then the abortion fight will go to the states – the blue states will immediately legalize it and the red states will outlaw it. The fight will be in the purple swing states. Where the fight goes, the money and volunteers go. Thus, overturning Roe will deprive the national parties (Democrats have a vested interest in keeping this at the national level as well) of a significant source of funding and volunteers as National Right to Life and NARAL focus their resources on the purple states. The other problem that this raises for the GOP is that the state parties in the purple states tend to be more moderate than the ‘Bama & Texas boys – they’re the moderate wing of the GOP that they’ve been trying to kill over the past generation. A massive infusion of cash and volunteers to that wing of the GOP could resurrect the Rockefeller Republicans, and I don’t see them ever letting that happen.
Like I said, I could be wrong but it’s a theory.
That may come up. (I lifted them from someone else and have them on my hard drive just for occasions like this.)
Who is responsible for ensuring the continuation of the pregnancy, who is to be held responsible if the pregnancy ends (for whatever reason) or if the outcome of the pregnancy is bad, how will we allocate responsibility and how will we punish people?
Should all pregnant women be required to register their pregnancies and monitored to be sure they carry them to term?
Given that 1/3 of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion, should women whose pregnancies end be under suspicion of unlawful termination? Should they have to clear their name? Should there be a trial?
If a woman fails to seek proper medical care, or if medical care is denied her because she is too poor, and a pregnancy loss results should she or her doctor or the state be held accountable for an “abortion?”
Given that we know that more women choose to have abortions when their financial situation or health care is precarious (under republican governments like bushes) is there something else that government should do to help women carry pregnancies to term other than simply forbidding abortion? If not, why not?
If a woman does have an abortion when abortion is illegal should she be punished by death? If not, why not? Should the doctor be punished by death, if not, why not? Would you be comfortable with a law which held the husband of a woman accountable for her abortion but not her? That put both husband and wife to death for the crime of committing abortion and left already existing children orphans? If not, why not?
What about ectopic pregnancies and dangerous pregnancies?
As ya’ll can see, it is likely to get really complicated if everyone starts getting into the act, and women will go back to being considered pretty much “pets that make babies” who have their decisions made for them in many places of the US. Talk about going backward!
Even more interestingly… If, as many wingers are pushing for, purposeful termination of a pregnancy is classified as 1st or 2nd degree murder… Would accidental termination of a pregnancy be classified as 3rd degree murder? What standard of proof would be applied for the woman to prove that it was, indeed, accidental? At what point does the termination of the pregnancy count as murder? What about the astonishingly large percentage that spontaneously abort within the first few weeks? Surely, if abortion is murder, then women must be legally liable for these deaths.
The position that abortion is murder or should be banned makes no bloody sense.
Not being from the US, I’m unfamiliar with the reasoning behind Roe v Wade. From what I understand the main argument for why abortion currently can’t constitutionally be prohibited arises from a right to privacy implied by the due process clause. Is this understanding correct?
If so, then how Roe is overturned will be critical. Removing the right to privacy will result in contraception, gay rights and a host of other protections against unreasonable intrusion and authoritarianism being totally wiped out. On the other hand, if blastocytes/embryos/foetuses are all deemed to be constitutional “life”, would that not effectively make abortion and some contraceptives equivalent to murder throughout the US, regardless of state law?
Or is it more likely that individual judges vote will differently, resulting in a anti-abortion exception to privacy rights?
Actually, the reason it can’t be overturned is because it was decided by the highest court in the land. The due process clause and the right to privacy were two of the reasons that they came to this conclusion, but no other courts have the authority to overturn it.
The legislature can write a law that mostly overturns it, but it will then be challenged on constitutional grounds and may end up back in the Supreme Court, at which time the make-up of the court is critical.
In theory, the legislature writes laws, the executive branch enforces them and the courts decided whether or not they are constitutional. The Right has argued that in this case, and it’s predecessor Griswold v. Connecticut, that the court made up the right to privacy out of whole cloth. Well, they sort of did, but who wouldn’t believe that this right is inherent in our society?
Griswold, btw, was a case in which the police in CT went into a married couples bedroom, seized contraceptives and threw them in jail. CT being predominantly Catholic at the time. Would we really want this right overturned???
The wiki on Roe v. Wade is a good place to learn the history of the ruling.
I agree with you. As I see it, there are two distinct issues: the legal opinion of Roe v. Wade, which was not a great opinion and the right to have an abortion. On the first issue, the reasoning, while correctly decided, in my opinion, was not great. It was based on the old time method of dating pregnancies by trimesters and the “quickening” (when the mother can feel the baby move, roughly toward the end of the second trimester). As we know now from medical research, this is a total fallacy and pregnancy is a continuum in which the “quickening” actually starts almost immediately. So, in the first trimester, an abortion is totally ok, in the second, depends on the situation and the third, ostensibly when the baby was viable outside the womb, not ok. That’s not totally accurate but roughly the way and the reasons the court drew the lines in Roe the way they did.
Several other things: We have failed in reframing this issue as a choice issue. You are either pro-abortion or anti-abortion. I, for one am pro-choice, but anti-abortion. I think women should have the option of a safe, legal abortion, but to quote Clinton, it should be available, safe and rare. I could not imagine having an abortion while in my 30s and 40s. I do know that if I had been faced with this decision in my teens and 20s I would have had one and never looked back.
If anyone still doubts that abortion MUST be legal, watch the movie “If these walls could talk”. Three vignettes of women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant and how they deal with it,in 1952, 1974 (just after Roe) and 1996. I do believe that this decision would have been better decided by the legislature, who has the much better ability to frame laws than the Supreme Court, but it was their failure to do so which landed the issue in the high court in the first place.
I do think that it is an issue that is tearing us apart as a country. I do not know what to do about that. The Christian right has hijacked this issue above all others and has created such a one-issue campaign on it, that I am really concerned. I know several people who weren’t big Bush supporters that voted for him for this issue alone.
I have no answers. Just observations.
…in Casey v. Planned Parenthoood. In Casey, the Court threw out the trimester test to be solely replaced with a viability test for the fetus. The point at which the fetus could be considered viable, i.e., able to survive outside of the womb is the point at which the state has an interest in the fetus that will allow the state to pass law that can trump the privacy right of the woman in making an abortion choice.
Justice O’Connor has pointedly stated that Roe v. Wade is on a collision course with science as medical developments could result in the viability of the fetus at earlier points in pregnancies.
and yet second trimester abortions are still harder to get than first trimester ones.
I hardly feel qualified to make a comment on this subject, and I’m certainly not the most articulate person in the world, but I’ll attempt to express how important I think reproductive rights are in this country in order of importance for women first, the country second, and the “party” last. Before I do that though, I want to say that I hate the idea of ending a potential life as much as anyone, and having been the partner in that decision twice, and witnessing the anguish and sadness that comes from making the decision to end a pregnancy, I doubt that there are many women who make this choice lightly. It is a profoundly sad process to witness from the outside looking in. I can’t begin to imagine how it feels to a woman, and therefore would never presume to have the right to tell any woman what she should or shouldn’t do about it.
First of all, I believe this is a human rights issue. In fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade, the pro-lifers seek to give a embryo more rights than the woman. When this happens, the woman is lowered to the status of a simple vessel for the embryo. It does not matter to them if the pregnancy might endanger the health or life of the woman. It doesn’t matter to them what the quality of the lives of the woman and/or the child will be after the birth considering the economic situation of the woman, or other factors the woman may be experiencing like drug addiction, or being in a situation of domestic violence, health issues, or a whole bunch of other reasons not to bring a child into a bad situation. No matter what, if or when Roe is overturned, an embryo, or even an undefined cluster of cells will be given more rights than the woman, and that’s wrong any way you look at it.
This country is so far behind the rest of the world on issues of so called morality, and religion’s place in public and government discourse, not to mention how poorly children and mothers in bad situations are supported by our society. Right to lifers will howl in self righteous protest against abortion, while out of the other side of their mouths, because they tend to be overwhelmingly socially and fiscally conservative to begin with, see to it that mothers and children get little, if any support in their struggles to survive daily life in this country. This is the biggest hypocrisy of all. They themselves conveniently discard those children after they are born, and I see that as a far less moral position than the woman who chooses not to bring a child into a miserable existence to begin with.
I believe that the government should provide assistance for women who’ve made the choice to have an abortion, but only in the case where that woman has no resources of her own and is left with no other alternatives. I also believe however, that that woman should be required to undergo at least some sort of counseling before hand just as a last effort to determine if there is truly no other direction that can be taken, but only in situations where the government will provide the medical services. I know that is shaky territory, but personally believe it should be required, not as an effort to reverse a decision to have an abortion, but simply as a way to exhaust all other alternatives. And if the ultimate decision is to go ahead with an abortion, then a I also believe that the government should support that woman through the whole process, and further should see to it that the woman gets general assistance as a way to improve her circumstances which hopefully in the future would lesson the need for further abortions if only because she would be able to support a child better if given better opportunities.
As far as the Democratic Party is concerned, they can’t talk the talk when they need votes, and not walk the walk when those rights are threatened like they are now. As far as I’m concerned, they better goddamned well fight this nomination and any other like it. Women’s rights and American’s rights in general are not only being threatened but have been under assault forever by the right wing but especially since 1994 when the regained the majority in the House, and it’s gotten worse and more tenuous since then. This is no time to compromise, or weigh the importance of reproductive rights and women’s rights against the importance of other issues. We are under assault from many directions and unfortunately will have to fight back in many different directions, but this one fundamental right should be defended first and most vigorously. This issue doesn’t lower or cheapen the level of public discourse. It is cheapened because the right makes it so, and it is for the left to keep it at the top of the list of rights we must defend, because as far as I’m concerned, if we can’t defend our mothers, sisters, and daughters, then anything else we do is a hypocritical lie.
To over turn Roe is only the first step in a long long list of things that this government wants to change. In and of itself I think they could care less but it is helpful to them that it keeps the religious in line and the rest of us in a snit-fit using up time and energy.
I don’t think young women today have the slightest idea what it like to not have the freedoms they have today. It wasn’t that long ago that woman had few rights to anything. Woman out number men and so they need to be put back in a position of having no legal rights. It is quite handy to use the Christian religion to help this along.
I don’t want to be a doomsayer and I hope I am very wrong. But I don’t think any of this bodes well for not only women but men.
the Democratic party will die… point blank.
Just because we will look like the biggest bunch of losers in the political history of the United States.
But I guess that is the real purpose…
there is no crawling out of this hole.
If Roe goes…so does the Democratic Party.