Ok, I think we agree that people have the right to terminate their pregnancy as part of a right to bodily autonomy. You say that states have the right to ban abortion care.
So, after the next big shooting, the feds pass a law saying you can’t transport firearms across state lines for commercial purposes. And, all the states get together and ban the manufacture of firearms and ban the sale of firearms.
I think you would say that’s all fine according to the 2nd because you still have the right to keep and bear arms, you can even make your own. But, no one can sell them to you or make them for you.
Do I have that correct? This seems analogous to banning abortion care - yes, you have the right to an abortion, good luck getting one.
The right to keep and bear arms is not comparable to the right to bodily autonomy. Apples and oranges. One is a legal right, the other a natural or human right. They don’t exist on the same plane. States have the power to ban abortion care. That doesn’t make it right to do so.
Switching back to the legal side–I have opinions on that scenario, unrelated to the Second Amendment, but what you describe sounds like how we currently handle machine guns.
“Might makes” carries exactly the same meaning as “Might makes Right”
Your entire OP and subsequent posts are an “ought” argument not an “is” one , You’re very much advocating for what’s “right” (and that is kratocracy).
“Right” here is not the same as “moral”, if that’s the distinction you’re trying to draw.
Your entire thread is a normative claim, in that context there are no unalloyed descriptive claims. Every “is” statement carries the thrust of the overall normative agenda.
The hidden part of the statement is “Might makes and that’s how I want it to be”
If you don’t argue that A is wrong/must be overturned/opposed, you’re arguing for A to continue existing.
When you say you want the product of A, that only arises from A, that is you saying you want A - that’s your OP.
You may feel conflicted that you want A, but if you don’t oppose it, you’re for it. There are no neutral parties when it comes to people’s bodies and their autonomy.
Read Graeber and Wengrow, “The Dawn of Everything”. No need to imagine, merely see what has happened before.
Here’s the roadblock I am facing. Given that the weather is cold, I should wear warm clothes. I did not argue that cold weather is wrong. Therefore, I want the weather to be cold.
But I’ll see about the book you referenced. Thanks.
Here’s the functional disconnect in that analogy - Weather is not People.
You’re correct that you can’t argue that weather is wrong. But you can argue that kratocrats are wrong. They are not inanimate forces of nature. They are people - moral actors.
By not opposing them, you may think you’re being as dispassionate about them as you are about the weather. But that is not true. Every choice here is a moral choice.
Shouldn’t natural and human rights be even harder to overcome using state powers? Saying it’s a human right and letting the state effectively take it away from you is equivalent to saying it’s not a right at all.
For about 25% of the US’s existence, it was a protected right and states couldn’t create undue burdens stopping people from exercising it.
On the democracy side, if a national referendum were held overturning abortion bans in the 1st trimester, it would pass easily. In almost every state it has come up in, it has passed. Republican legislatures are blocking democracy from working in other ones.
Is anyone arguing that an abortion is “demanding treatment from others?” What we’re talking about is not “someone must perform this procedure on me,” it’s “my doctor and I both consent to this procedure, but the government is preventing us from doing it.”
Obviously the fact that the whole subject is not a slam-dunk either way speaks to the difficulty of resolving the issue. Controversies are controversial.
It’s a slam dunk, it’s just that the anti-abortion side only cares about hurting women so all the hand wringing about morality and religion are beside the point to them. They don’t care if they are factually in the wrong or what their religion or the law actually says; they just care that as many women as possible suffer and die.
You are correct, natural and human rights should be harder to overcome, but in the U.S., human rights are not legal rights. The law of the land does not recognize human rights except incidentally. I think the point of disagreement between us may be that you think that is somehow impossible, or if it is true, it is worth it to sort of continue pretending it isn’t.
Something really interesting happened a couple years ago. A court in Alabama ruled that fertility clinics which destroyed fertilized embryos were liable for wrongful death suits. I think that was the correct decision, legally speaking. State law made said embryos legal persons. The decision was manifestly unjust. Within days, fertility clinics ceased operations in the state due to potential liability. But it was legally correct. Within weeks, public backlash forced legislature amended the law and and make fertility clinics immune to such wrongful death suits.
Forget about the federal Constitution for a minute. Assume for the sake of argument that the federal Constitution does not prevent Alabama from making fertility clinics liable for dropped embryos, if it so wishes (which is the current state of the law, and I believe the correct one). Assume the legislature has not amended the law to make clinics immune. The question de jour is a moral, not a legal one. I assume the law exists as it does now. I ask, should I break the law? Should someone else break the law? Under what circumstances? What consequences should lawbreakers face?
You already have my argument, and my conclusion. What is yours?
Since the law in question is has no motivation beyond bigotry and cruelty - and directly leads to women being imprisoned for miscarriages and worse - it should be broken at every opportunity by anyone who can. And the lawbreakers deserve no punishment at all.
The people who passed the law and those who enforce it deserve a lifetime of hatred and ostracism as enemies of humanity, on the other hand. They are sadists and murderers.
The question in your OP was “should”. I think the 9th “should” protect women’s right to bodily autonomy and to privacy, and therefore abortion. For many years, SCOTUS agreed to me in most cases. I think states “shouldn’t” be allowed to ban abortion care, because that makes the right I think is protected moot.
I don’t think this should be left to democracy, whatever that means, because Republican legislatures routinely override the will of the people, at least when it comes to the first trimester. They do this by ignoring or trying to overturn ballot initiatives, gerrymandering so that they get many more seats than they should given the population, etc.
I was thinking about this further as I walked the dog, so too late to edit.
As a straight white guy (old-ish), I really need to be careful about what privileges I don’t worry about. I’m not worried that a state will pass a law mandating live organ donation, because the legislatures are filled with living people who want to keep their organs, and so is SCOTUS. So, if some state passed that, SCOTUS would overturn it.
Mandating the continuation of a pregnancy (or banning abortion care, same difference) is essentially that, but legislatures aren’t filled with pregnant women, or even women who have had abortions, so I have to think, is that a privilege that should be protected, even if it doesn’t affect me directly?
I’m glad that SCOTUS stepped in an overturned anti-SSM laws. Left up to democracy, gay marriage, which seems like a fundamental right to me (given how laws treat married vs. unmarried people), would have stayed illegal in most of the country. And, most legislators aren’t gay men with an interest in protecting that.
So, again I ask you to consider what rights you are taking for granted as part of some dominant class, rights that would never be trampled (such as live organ donation) and whether those other rights should be left to democracy on a state-by-state basis. If not live organ donation (surely the state has an interest in keeping people needing organs alive!), then why abortion?
Yes, I understand that, but you aren’t really responding to the question I asked. I know we disagree on the correct way to interpret existing law. Presume the law is against you: pretend a federal constitutional amendment says “the several states shall have the power to prohibit abortions”. In 2024, Nebraska voters added the following text to their state constitution:
Except when a woman seeks an abortion necessitated by a medical emergency or when the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimesters.
Dr. A provides a woman with an abortion early in the second trimester, there is no medical emergency, no sexual assault, no incest. The woman sought an abortion as soon as she learned she was pregnant. According to Nebraska state law, providing such an abortion is grounds to have A’s license revoked. The board revokes A’s license (A being a repeat offender).
I believe you disagree with the laws in this hypothetical and think they should be changed. The only fact in this hypothetical that is unrealistic is the federal constitutional amendment. In real life, we have Dobbs instead. But it is unclear to me what you think should happen in this situation, where there’s no room to argue the laws should be interpreted differently. Because this is the space where I make my main argument.