LIVE STREAM OF ABORTION CASE that Could OVERRULE ROE

For some people Cutting Spending, Reducing Taxes, and following the U.S. Constitution is "extreme".

Note: Those are the ONLY 3 elements the TEA Party stated they supported.

 

I don't like abortion personally, with that said I don't think criminalizing it is the way to go. I'm a firm believer that a person's body is their's to decide on. You start making those choices for them then you're saying that they are nothing more than property themselves and have no right to personal claim. We're either free or we're not.

 

Thanks, both of you, for adding the legal analysis for we civilians. That said, from the small part of the proceedings which I have, so far, heard, it seemed much more to me (in contrast to the analysis of ScotusBlog) that Amy Coney Barrett was just looking for some excuse to uphold this Mississippi law (and perhaps go further), while Kavanaugh, even if he might wish to discover a viable path, so to speak, towards ruling in favor of the state, did seem to be concerned with the legitimacy of the argument for his obvious preference, namely, the SCOTUS taking a neutral position on abortion, supposedly mirroring law at the time of the Constitution, and allowing the states to decide for themselves. It seemed to me, at any rate, that the pro-life side was shooting some real holes into that argument (which actually originated with the state of Mississippi's legal team).

 

I doubt the GOP national leadership is driving this. MS passed this ban, it's being tested in the Courts, I guess you think SCOTUS should have refused to hear it on political consequentialist grounds? That's pretty much exactly what a Constitutional Judiciary does not do.

Jon Turley:

"Kavanaugh just asked Prelogar how you can accommodate both the interests of the fetus and the woman "when you have to pick" between them. He asks why this Court should be the "arbiter" of that question as opposed to political representatives."

Why indeed?

"Roe held that “the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.” The court embraced a trimester system of escalating state authority, with little such authority in the first trimester but considerable authority — including possible bans — in the third trimester when a baby is viable outside of the womb."

15 weeks is 2nd Trimester.

Casey "dispensed with the trimester approach in favor of the current “viability” standard. Under this approach, a state could protect the “potentiality of human life” through legislation once a fetus has reached viability “except where it is necessary … for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.” That line was viewed as around 23 or 24 weeks"

The United States is extraordinarily extreme on this measure. Only seven out of the world’s 198 countries allow abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.

It is widely viewed that the Court should have never entered the fray and should have allowed the people to peacefully work through this with our Representative Legislatures. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a critic of Roe, seeing it as too sweeping in supplanting state laws. She blamed the case for reversing the trend toward more pro-choice states.

The arguments to uphold Roe seem to consist mainly of stare decisis, the doctrine that the court should stand by even previous errors in judgment. Weirdly, the folks demanding that cases even wrong decided not be overturned also are demanded overturning cases like Citizen’s United and Heller, so there seems to be some unstated flexibility on the subject.

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/11/...st-still-viable-as-a-constitutional-doctrine/

The balance of this Court doesn't strike me as one that wants to make a big splash though they may see a need to adjust "the relative authority of a woman and the state" and tug it a bit more toward quickening than viability. One advantage of this is greater certainty as quickening is fairly fixed whereas viability is dependent on medical advances.

Hopefully the result of the Court's work will be greater clarity and greater authority for the elected representatives that serve at the will of The People.

 

I did agree with your assessment of Kavanaugh (see my previous post). I actually did not yet hear any of Roberts' questions. In the quote you took from my OP, I was just including all the Justices that I knew were already reputed to be more anti-abortion than the current standard, which I believe the Chief Justice is, even if his MO, according to experts, is that he prefers gradual change. Kavanaugh, I had not known of his proclivity on this issue, though hearing his questions made it quite clear that he would prefer to have the Court separate itself from the matter, and toss the decision back to the states (or Congress). Also, as one of Trump's nominees, which Trump had promised would all be against Roe, this seemed a reasonable expectation of his starting point.
Lastly, at some point during the hearing, I saw that Kavanaugh had been the judge who had prevented a 17 year old, in ICE custody, from getting an abortion.

What is Gorsuch's history, on the record?

 

I see this court as a solid one to address this issue. Roe v Wade has been a bad ruling from its inception. The SCOTUS took away states' rights and the power of the Legislative and Executive branches all in one shot with it. Regardless of whether it supported or hurt abortion availability, it was simply bad law.

 

Sure. Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch are textualists. They see their role as that of an unelected umpire, they don't write the rules but they declare plainly compliance and violation of the rules written by the elected representatives. Gorsuch wrote a fairly quick read after his first year on the Court, I downloaded it from Amazon for $7, if I remember correctly, and he's quite a stickler on this. Though not plainly stated, I got the impression that he is tired of sloppy unclear writing by Legislatures because he thinks it's unjust in that a Free People need fair notice, so that those that chose to do so, have a fair opportunity to lawfully order their lives. Because of this, he has real aversion to judicial rewriting of legislative text and seems more comfortable rejecting it for lack of clarity or constitutional compliance and having a rewrites be competed by elected legislatures rather than unelected judges. Interestingly he brings this same view point to Administrative law, that is, essentially legislation by unelected members of the Executive Branch. I think the other two tend to share this view, but, I focus on Gorsuch because he is next gen and will be a force for several decades, where the other two are well into the end stage of their careers.

​

The Consequentialists are Beyers, Sotomayor and Kagan. Beyers is unflinching in his consequentialism and wants to get to the just result and will adopt the reasoning necessary to get there. This deals with Beyers approach fairly well. I tend to find Beyer's opinions well worth reading. He's one of my favorite justices, even though I tend to see Consequentialism as the Court arrogating the role of the Legislature. https://slate.com/news-and-politics...nterpretation-finally-gets-its-star-turn.html

The remaining 3 are difficult for me to predict. As nearly as I can tell they watch the press far too much. There are times that I could swear that Roberts deliberately sides with the block on the Left so that he can join the Right on the next case and then stand back and say "see, I'm right down the middle." I think the other two follow him. I'm really not sure what to make of these three. But, as they continue to write decisions we learn more about them.

 

This gives a good case for why it may be very difficult for them to uphold the MS law:

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/11/30/undue-burden-in-dobbs-a-revolution-disguised-as-a-tweak/

 

Great....I'm Yes/Yes.... guess I can sleep tonite!!!

 

Don't worry, they aren't going to do away with abortion. At most, it may be restricted somewhat so that a baby in the process of actually being born doesn't get killed by a doctor who deliberately crushes its skull....

Aside from something like that, no huge changes foreseen, but libs will have apoplectic fits over it anyway....

 

I try, generally, to use my terms for their literal definitions, rather than for adding unsavory connotations. Anyone in a minority faction, out of the Party's mainstream (i.e., leadership's view), qualifies to be classified as an extremist part of that Party. The Squad, for example, is an extremist faction in the Democratic Party. Tea Partiers-- while the mainstream Republican politicians were glad to have their numbers-- were not obedient Republican soldiers, were hard for leadership to control, and as such, were a bit of a headache for Congressional Republican leadership. They were not part of the mainstream, and they were a minority faction which, to me, makes extremist (they did have more extreme views than the mainstream) a legitimate term to use.

Compare how this criterion would likewise apply to supporters of Pat Buchanan, without being a slur against them; but WOULD make it an appropriate depiction of their views, compared to the main of the GOP, at that time, as being extreme, on various issues (e.g., immigration). This made them an extremist faction, literally, back then. Now, however, many of the views that were once at the extremes of Republican philosophy, are the prevailing views of the mainstream; the numbers of Republicans who have gravitated towards these views, have grown over time. They are now part of mainstream Republican thought. Am I mistaken, in my basic conceptualization of this?

 

Your post is completely divorced from reality, albeit due to what is clearly your intentional use of hyperbole.

There was, BTW, nothing in my OP that suggested panic, at least to my mind; yet you are not the first to express this, "calm down, breathe, relax," sentiment. This is just a very important, political (and societal) issue, certainly worthy of our attention, on the forum. I am sympathetic to the pro-choice argument, up to the point of fetal viability; but that does not seem justifying of this exaggerated response from pro-lifers. I am just curious about it. It seems unwarranted but, other than requiring what I see as unnecessary typing, I have no problem with it: I'm taking it as an expression of your concern for me, which is, kind of, touching.

 

I find it hard to call someone who is anti-abortion an “extremist”. I’m in the middle with the abortion debate. I think it’s okay under certain circumstances, but I also think the majority of time it’s being done is when girls just want to run around having unprotected sex with Lord knows how many partners. It’s as if personal responsibility (abstinence, condoms) doesn’t even occur to them.

 

You speak erroneously. No fetus is viable at 15 weeks. Just try Googling that to find an example of one. With really extreme, unrealistically expensive, state of the art (i.e., not universally available) medical equipment, I believe the earliest surviving premature birth is at 21 weeks (in Hawaii, IIRC). This does not mean that the vast majority of deliveries, at that point, even with those drastic, life saving measures, would not actually perish.

But, to consider this from the practical viewpoint of this case, absolutely no one (but you) is suggesting that the Justices might keep the viability standard, but update it. If there is to be a change from 24 weeks, all say that the viability standard would need be scrapped, for a new one.

Remember, also, that the role of the Court is not to rewrite the law. They are ruling on one specific case, Mississippi's new 15 week cap on abortion. If the Justices believed that medical science has now made viability feasible, two or three weeks earlier than the old standard, that translates as a ruling AGAINST Mississippi's law. I think it would be rather unusual to change standing law, in a decision which is essentially upholding that same established standard. Do you follow? Usually, the SCOTUS changes current law by ruling against the law, as it currently stands. Makes sense?

 

Right, you mean the MS Law. The pre-Roe standard was quickening and it appears to me that the balance of the Court may not be hardliners on viability. MS Law is consistent with the Quickening standard and as Robert's pointed out, it's essential an argument over nothing more than 7 weeks. Roberts tends to be hesitant to reverse the elected Representatives if he has the means to find consistently with them, he may feel like 7 weeks doesn't justify overturning law properly drafted and passed by a representative legislature.

Kavanaugh listed off several cases "He presented a list of cases in which the court had overturned long-held precedents and said that perhaps the best solution for the court was to be “scrupulously neutral” on an issue about which the Constitution is silent."

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archi...gests-shift-in-abortion-law-jurisprudence.php

That's consistent with the tendency of Roberts toward Judicial modesty.

I suspect Roberts would like a center of the road opinion that doesn't overturn Roe and Casey but gives the Elected Legislature the space they need to hammer out the compromises necessary to pass legislation that has broad based support within that 7 week middle ground of Quickening and Viability, afterall advancing medical science is already moving Viability toward Quickening. Such a move would help the Court back out of an area that should probably be the purview of the elected legislatures and Roberts tends to be pretty effective in getting one or two of the other justices in the middle to join with him. If in addition, the 3 Justices on the Left concurred that would give the Chief the ability to save both Roe and Casey.

 

Since basically NO ONE refers to a person as being an "extremist," just for being anti-abortion, there is nothing unexpected about your statement. What's next: your informing us all that you find it hard to call someone a "murderer," just for killing an insect?

Also unexpected, after one conversation with you, is your arriving at your opinion totally in lieu of any independent facts, but merely because of what you IMAGINE is true.

 

I made a general statement in this thread. I wasn’t talking to you, replying to you, anything. Go away. You annoy me and I have nothing in common with you.

 

I agree. Overturning Roe could be very detrimental in 2022. If the SCOTUS sides with the Mississippians and throws out Roe V Wade, women will come out in droves to make sure no more right wing judges are appointed.

 

Could you give a definition of, "the quickening?" Is this when a fetus starts to move (kick, etc.)? Is this a threshold that can be absolutely determined, other than by the word of the mother? Would one jostle the fetus, to see if it reacted? Or was this point fixed, historically, at some point of pregnancy, like at 15 weeks?

BTW, the current standard is 24 weeks, which is 9 weeks more than 15 weeks. Proportionally speaking, those 9 weeks represent 60% more than 15 weeks, so it is a mathematically ridiculous statement that Roberts makes, when he contends that there isn't much of a difference between the two.

 

Do you not understand the way a debate forum works? Do you not realize that when you post, you are opening up the opportunity for any other member to reply? Well that's the way that it works. If I wish to reply to your post, I do not need your invitation, to do so. If you wish to avoid my replies, you have various options. One, obvious one, to at least make it less likely that I will even see your post-- because I guess this was not apparent to you-- would be to NOT post in threads that I start.

But what most do, is either just pay no attention to posters they care not to engage with, or, if that is too difficult for you, there is a function, on your main page (I momentarily forget what it is called) where you can, "ignore," other posters, and you will not see any more of their content. I will still see yours, and can still reply with commentary, if I wish, but you will not see my replies.

You're welcome.

 

And you keep going….

 

Thomas was a babbling idiot.

 

SouthernFried87 said: ↑
I made a general statement in this thread. I wasn’t talking to you, replying to you, anything. Go away. You annoy me and I have nothing in common with you.

Do you know what "hypocrisy," means? I replied to your whiney complaint about not wanting to read my posts, informing you of my right to reply, regardless of your druthers; but also trying to give you some helpful advice, if you were not yet familiar with the, "ignore," function. To anyone who did not want any more of my replies, and who was not medically brain-dead, the clear next step was anything EXCEPT to REPLY directly to me, as you just did, here, in response to my reply to your bitch-sob, about your not wanting me to reply to your posts.

Not only does your need for posting a Parthian shot, belie your claim to wish to avoid my attention, but to then make your post-- which is completely without substance, that is, serves no practical purpose-- a criticism of ME, because I, "keep going," would be rich irony, if it weren't so gaudily obvious.

So I guess I now have my nickname, from you: "Purposefully Going." And that would make you: "On & On, with NO Purpose."


So are you gonna finish up today, the same as you did yesterday: by informing me that you didn't bother to read my post, that you were quoting and, to which, you were, there, replying?

 

And you still keep going. Truly astonishing.

 

This is obviously a case with severe ramifications.

If the statists have their way, and politicians and bureaucrats are empowered to dictate to women in such personal decisions, rather that respecting their privacy and the right to control their own bodies with the advice of trusted family members, spiritual and medical advisors, that presages an intense battle to restore freedom.

GOP Sen. Susan Collins supports codifying Roe v. Wade abortion protections into law
​