In a 5-3 decision, the Texas law restricting abortion clinics has been struck down by the SCotUS. This is a major victory for abortion rights in the U.S.
That 5 vote victory means the GOP has no shot to repeal this even if Scalia was alive! Another win for the good guys!
America: dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It’s taking longer than we thought.
Only 313 unconstitutional and medically ridiculous anti-abortion laws to go…
Someone should pass a law forbidding male politicians from pretending they are women’s doctors.
I kind of like the idea of them dressing up as uniformed nurses.
With the white garter belt and white stockings, and high heeled white shoes?
Kennedy is a disappointment. Ginsburg, Breyer et al. have a consistent philosophy. I disagree with it, but at least you can see where their philosophy is rooted.
Kennedy believes that the Constitution: 1) requires abortion so definitively that a state may not require doctors performing them to have admitting privileges to a hospital, 2) allows schools to discriminate based upon race, but only if it is a good kind of racial discrimination (he believes this after nearly 30 years of believing the opposite; I must have missed a constitutional amendment somewhere), and 3) requires states to allow same sex marriage.
He believes that the federal government may not outlaw the possession of guns near schools, but may outlaw the possession of marijuana throughout the entire country.
His opinions are short on law but rich in verbosity. At least this opinion was written by Breyer and I can intellectually disagree with it instead of suppressing anger at Kennedy’s drivel.
I’ve said it before, but why is it that when Dems nominate Supreme Court Justices, they get solid votes. Your side never has to worry about one of the four liberals betraying you.
Our side has had O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter, and sometimes Roberts.
Sometimes I feel like the president in The Pelican Brief after looking at a list of questionable nominees and saying “Get all of this shit out of here. I want solid, white, conservative, Protestant males who aren’t gonna stab me in the back!”
Obviously, I’m joking, but why can’t Republicans pick Justices like the Dems can?
Because there are more ways to be wrong than right.
It’s possible that the current Republican political philosophy is sufficiently removed from sound judicial philosophy that it’s increasingly difficult to find judges who’ll toe the party line.
Yet Kennedy was the one (** count 'em – one only **) vote that swung this decision.
Thomas (dissent) argued from a position that abortion is bad most always and that women weren’t disadvantaged even if there were no clinics they could go to. Alito/Roberts (dissent) were preoccupied with a legal technicality, i.e., did the plaintiffs recycle an old complaint when they shouldn’t have?
Thank Og for Kennedy, at least this time. Even if Scalia were still around, the outcome would not have changed.
Well, Reagan did try. Anthony Kennedy was only his third choice for that seat. And I’m not sure, but I doubt it was the left who lit their hair on fire when they found out that his second choice smoked the marihuana decades earlier.
Here’s one (faintly plausible) answer: because, long term, Republicans stand to benefit more from posturing against Roe V Wade than they’d benefit from actually overturning it.
Judges shouldn’t be politically or religiously motivated, in my opinion.
It couldn’t possibly be because two of the main qualifications for representing the highest court in the land are integrity and an understanding of the law?
Aren’t judges supposed to be making decisions based on law, and not philosophy…
what is that line I keep hearing around these parts…something about facts having a well known liberal bias?
I’ll start by declaring that I am pro-choice, but is there any factual basis at all for the Texas law? Have there been documented complications from abortion procedures that would have been mitigated by the measures required by the Texas law?
Maybe before I ask that I should be asking what the hell “admitting privileges” are. Is it really much more difficult to get an ailing woman admitted to the nearest hospital if the clinic doctor does not have “admitting privileges?”
No. The Texas law had nothing to do with safety of medical procedures. It dealt with things like the width of hallways, the size of custodial closets and the angles at which doors opened. Half of the abortion clinics in the state were closed because of these asinine regulations.
That exact question was asked during the hearing, and the answers were ‘nope’ and ‘nope’. It’s really bad when a lawyer defending the law at the Supreme Court can’t come up with even one single example.
Does each ridiculous anti-abortion law have to be struck down individually by SCOTUS, or does the Texas decision also invalidate laws in some other states?
There was a factoid on NPR this morning, that colonoscopies have ten times the mortality rate of abortions, yet none of the regulations “for the woman’s health” would have affected clinics that perform colonoscopies.
IANAL, but my understand is that those laws are individually struck down by federal courts around the nation. Something like 10 cases were stayed at the circuit level waiting the result of this case. Presumably those will be quickly resolved. Similar things happened with same sex marriage - each law was struck down individually, but it happened within hours of the supreme court ruling.
It’s more than that. It establishes a precedent that governments may not attempt to use regulatory policy to kill otherwise legal businesses.