Chuck's abortion thread is (rightly) focused on the ethics of the recent SCOTUS decision, but for those interested in the decision itself, the link to it on the SCOTUS site is HERE. The syllabus is 7 1/2 pages, and not a difficult read.
I got around to reading the other concurring opinions. Thomas is mainly arguing against substantive due process, how it differs from due process and was an invention of the court. Ok...
Kavanaugh writes largely a reiteration of the problems with the Roe decision and about stare decisis - but adds a paragraph on how he sees no legal problem with people traveling to another state for an abortion (i.e.: the state of residence can't pass a law to forbid it due to the interstate commerce clause) - I assume to temper some of the backlash of the decision.
Roberts seems to mumble about judicial restraint, and how the court could have left the abortion "right" of Roe in effect, but ruled Mississippi's 15 week law was not contradictory with Roe. Basically continuing the same problem Roe (and Casey) created - a set of goal posts whose position is not only ambiguous, but easily moved if a new ambiguous location needs determined.
Most disappointing though was the dissent from Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. After a brief history of Roe and how it was rightly decided, and how "...the Court struck a balance, as it often does when values and goals compete."
It continues with:
"It held that the State could prohibit abortions after fetal viability, so long as the ban contained exceptions to safeguard a woman’s life or health. It held that even before viability, the State could regulate the abortion procedure in multiple and meaningful ways. But until the viability line was crossed, the Court held, a State could not impose a “substantial obstacle” on a woman’s “right to elect the procedure” as she (not the gov- ernment) thought proper, in light of all the circumstances and complexities of her own life. Ibid.
Today, the Court discards that balance. It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of."
That lack of precision of language and/or hyperbole seems inappropriate for a Supreme Court Justice. The dissent seems more like an argument a lawyer would present to a judge, and not something delivered by one. Can women no longer own property? Vote? The use of that language is lazy at best, and irresponsible at worst.
In related news, Thomas seems to be a big target over all this and the "N" word is being used liberally. I have no idea what that's all about. Celebrities and other "checkmark" people are excoriating him. Samuel Jackson, for example (comparatively mildly) says "How’s Uncle Clarence feeling about Overturning Loving v Virginia??!!" (Loving v Virginia legalizes interracial marriage). Calls for assassinations are reportedly spreading.
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