Proposed: Dobbs will NOT overturn same sex marriage, contraception, et al

Great Debates
61

But “we the people” rule in a modern democracy. Unless you can point to something that says that a prior thing takes a decision away from the people, we get to vote on it. Roe (and Bruen, see the other thread) horribly failed to convince even scholars who supported legal access to abortion to support the decision.

That is troubling. It is a hard sell to say that 240 old shit should still rule today. Maybe it should because we are in a transitory phase where we want to restrict liberty and the wisdom of those who came before us should prevent us from doing it. Roe did not articulate that well.

62

Except when we don’t get to vote on it. Some states are using a state-wide ballot initiative to allow the people to decide. In other states, the legislatures have blocked such a state-wide vote because they know they’d lose and one thing we’ve all seen these past few years is that Republicans hate to lose, to the point they will deny losing and even resort to violence (see the Jan 6 insurrection).

People in Kansas get to vote on this issue when they go to the ballot box. People in my state do not. I question if that is actually democracy.

63

You vote for representatives who vote for you. This isn’t Athens.

64

I know someone whose doctor wouldn’t write her a prescription. And it was primarily for treating cramps and such.

65

Right… we are in districts gerrymandered by Republican legislatures to preserve Republican seats. Voter rolls are purged. Self-appointed “guardians” carrying long guns stand outside ballot drop boxes and polling places glaring at people coming to vote,

I used to live in Gary, Indiana, a predominately Black city. Last couple elections I voted there we had White men openly wearing long guns just hanging out on the roads leading to the polling place for my district. You don’t think having to drive between pickups full of armed men isn’t the teeniest bit intimidating? You fail to see where Black people having to drive past armed White men might be a little frightening?

I now live in a more mixed neighborhood. Since 2016 every election I’ve had to pass a gamut of people wearing Trump and Republican attire in the parking lot yelling “You’re going to vote Trump, right? You’re going to do the right thing, right?” And some far more offensive things beyond that.

Funny, though - these guys are never in the White neighborhoods, the wealthier neighborhoods, the not-mixed ethnic neighborhoods, I’m sure that’s just coincidence…

Which is why more people want to vote via absentee ballot - it’s not JUST the pandemic. But Republicans in my state want to abolish absentee ballots. They want people to have to walk through a crowd of shouting, often armed people in order to vote. They don’t care that it’s going to also scare away little old White ladies who write checks to the Republicans, too - the point is to discourage, strongly discourage, anyone who isn’t in their camp from voting.

That’s not democracy.

They say they’re doing it to protect the vote but I don’t feel at all safer. I get in and out as rapidly as possible because I truly do fear at some point someone is going to open fire. I feel I have to vote in person because of all the efforts to throw out absentee ballots or declare them invalid - if I want to vote I have to steel myself to walk past shouting people wearing guns trying to intimidate me.

(It never seems to occur to these people that I can simply lie to them to get them to leave me alone then go in and vote however I please. Which is exactly what I do, except when I can simply remain silent.)

Maybe none of this is going on where you live. (Probably not the racial tension - West Virginia is what? 90%+ White?) Bully for you. But where you live is not representative of other places. People really are getting death threats these days over these issues. The US Capitol was attacked by sore losers. None of that is democracy, it’s thuggery.

I don’t think you’re one of the crowd that would resort to violence (you seem to enjoy verbal sparring, not actual fisticuffs), but it’s not secret that abortion clinics have been bombed in the past and doctors performing abortion targeted for murder or attempted murder. And for some reason all of these violent people have been from the Republican party. That does not, of course, mean all Republicans are violent - the vast majority are not - but I get extremely frustrated with the constant denial that there is a fringe (which may not be as fringe as we’d like) in the Republican party that is violent and desires to control the intimate lives of other people and interfere with the medical decisions of other people.

66

Apologies if it’s a hijack-can you clarify this sentence for me?

67

Except that they used the same argument about abortion. “Oh, sure, they talk about it, but they’ll never actually ban abortion, because it’s too good an issue! They want to keep the cash cow going, and keep all the anti-abortion voters on their side!”

Except, not so much. As soon as they had the power to ban abortion, they did it, cash cow voters notwithstanding.

So this argument has lost all credibility.

And it’s worth noting that the people pushing the abortion bans are doing so not just against the will of a majority of the general population, but also against a majority of Republicans.

In 2009, Gallup reported that 66% of Republicans agreed that abortion should be legal in some (54%) or all (12%) circumstances.[2] A Gallup poll in 2011 found that 27% of Republicans identified themselves as “pro-choice”.[3] However, 42% of Republicans support legal abortion during the first trimester.[4] In 2017, Gallup released polling information showing that 36% of Republicans identified as “pro-choice” and 70% agreed that abortion should be legal in some (56%) or all (14%) circumstances.[5]

In 2018, an NBC/Wall St Journal poll found that 52% of Republicans supported the Roe v Wade Supreme Court ruling and did not want said ruling to be overturned.[6]

So talking about how “only a fringe” of voters want something stupid isn’t really a comfort. It only takes the fringe to screw things up.

68

She is a member of a charismatic Catholic group called People of Praise. I consider this “tight knit religious community” to be cult.

Some people might think that this group doesn’t qualify as a cult, they don’t appear to be in a thrall to an individual and they don’t seem to do much recruiting. But this is typical of generational cults, especially religious ones. The devotion is to a set of principles or a covenant rather than to an individual, and they don’t need to recruit new members, they can make their own.

Amy Coney Barrett’s parents were leaders in this group and her husband is a member.

But why is this a cult rather than a really strict religion? For me, the biggest reason is that the group does not allow single adults to live on their own, they must reside in the homes of married couples……ACB lived with the couple that leads the church prior to her marriage. There are other reasons, like the fact that each member is assigned a “headship”, a personal spiritual advisor.
These kind of arrangement is about control and maintaining control, and if you belong to a church that doesn’t let you get your own apartment and remain a member in good standing, and doesn’t let you and your spouse live alone after marriage, and assigns another member to keep watch over you, you’re probably in a cult.
And if you’re in a cult, and decide on a career path that involves becoming a Supreme Court jurist, you probably did not make that decision on your own.
And when you consider the fact that the group is politicized, I don’t think my allegation qualifies as an extraordinary claim at all.

69

And when living n Los Angeles there was no way the Republican would ever win in my district. Basically the current district system ensure that almost every district general election is a fait accompli and that the real election is in the primary.

70

And when Obergefell and Lawrence and all the rest get overturned, we’ll hear “What are you complaining about? They were always in play!”

Republicans RIGHT NOW are engaged in an active pogrom against LGBT people RIGHT NOW and are passing laws RIGHT NOW that impose greater and greater restrictions on LGBT people that are causing suffering RIGHT NOW. And women and ethnic and religious minorities are already seeing their rights eroded and their lives restricted in all sorts of similar ways.

So perhaps white heterosexual right-wing Christian men might forgive those whose rights, well-being, liberty and sometimes lives are in the balance if they’re a little wary when Republicans say “Sure, we said we want to turn you back into second-class citizens but we didn’t really mean it!”

71

Sorry. I meant that the dead hand of the past may have a benefit to stop a fleeting fancy in the present. If these dead old white guys thought something was so important that they put it in a constitution, then maybe we should think twice about wanting to do away with it.

I don’t remember any Republican ever saying that. It is what the left continually said to mock us like we were chumps for supporting Republicans and they were just playing with us on the abortion issue. You cannot seriously say that since at least 1980 that nearly every Republican has made it their open and unabashed goal to see Roe overruled. This cannot be seen as a shocking thing.

72

We thought it was simply politics. You know, how political parties put things on their public platform to keep the checks from old ladies flowing, but since the issue is dead, we didn’t think the effort was ‘serious’. We thought you guys lost and pre-Roe wasn’t coming back. We believed that nobody will stop anyone from getting an abortion, and boy did that turn out to be wrong.

Ok, I’m done paraphrasing your earlier posts about rights that are totally secure from Republicans who have said they’re interested in taking them away.

73

I’m not seeing the gotcha. The argument to overrule Roe was present for 40 years. It was serious and we all said it was serious. You could look at my posts back from 2007…yes, that is what we wanted. It is what killed Bork’s nomination. Yes, we were dead straight serious.

We were also serious in our same sex marriage debate, but as Alito said, as time goes by, that issue doesn’t involve life or death issues so it is different and I personally would not overrule Obergefell, nor would Alito, and definitely not Kavanaugh or Roberts. Clarence would; I’ll give you that… But you have an 8-1 safety net there. I don’t see the reason for fear.

74

The hell it doesn’t.

Whether or not someone is your spouse affects medical insurance, which is very much life-or-death. It affects child custody issues. It affects inheritance.

And while YOU may not be against same-sex marriage there are other people who self-identify as Republicans who ARE. They are rabidly against same-sex marriage. Which is why I lack your confidence that it is “just” Roe that is or will be dismantled if these folks get their way.

75

I assume you are discounting the very sizeable minority (38% this year, per Pew) of roughly pro-choice Republicans?

76

We are coming at the same thing from opposite ways. For everything you said, that is why Obergefell should stand under stare decisis principles. It is every reason why Roe should not have.

77

Every abortion polls in the last 30 years has had slugs in its pocket. You get inconsistent things like people supporting Roe but also support abortion bans before 20 weeks or without spousal notification.

I think the country, in general, supports a general right to reasonable choice, not unlike that which Roberts proposed in his concurrence.

78

It also involves being able to make medical decisions for incapacitated partners, including deciding whether to “pull the plug” on a braindead partner on life support. Literally a “life or death” issue.

79

Excuse me if I don’t trust Alito, and don’t trust that time is going to soften the Republican stance on this. The reality is that Republicans would roll back LGBTQ rights today if they were granted the power to do so. Numerous Republicans have said they would, so I’m going to believe them this time.

80

They’re certainly rolling back everything they can get away with, as the recent efforts in Texas and Florida regarding trans kids demonstrates.