Roe. The public opinion polls are particularly unkind to the gun-grabbers, and trending the wrong way. If you could find one that asked specifically about repealing the 2nd Amendment, I imagine the public would be staunchly against it. Hey look though, some dipshits in Illinois are signing a petition, so there’s that.
It’s even harder than that. It takes 2/3 to call for a vote and 3/4 to pass.
I think you are all seeing in pink. Let Trump appoint one more supreme and Roe is toast. This will still leave states free to allow abortion and I don’t see a constitutional amendment in the works to outlaw that. Similarly, I cannot see any amendment repealing the 2nd. I could imagine, with some difficulty, a court ruling that the 2nd amendment really requires only that the states have national guards. Remember that at the time of the adoption of the constitution, no standing army was expected and this pretty much held true until WW II. The court could also allow states to pass whatever gun laws they wanted, even an outright ban.
Maybe I’m missing something. Couldn’t the Supreme court just overturn Roe v. Wade? What Constitutional Amendment needs to be repealed for that?
I have this same question.
I believe what **ElvisL1ves **was referring to wasn’t just the overturning of Roe v. Wade (which isn’t that hard,) but rather, the outlawing of abortion across the land, period. That sort of sweeping national thing probably couldn’t be done without a full-on Constitutional amendment.
Thanks for the reply, but I don’t know why it couldn’t be done. If the Court overturned Roe v Wade it seems to me that abortion would be illegal.
Sure it could. Congress passes a federal law that says all abortions are illegal, the President signs it, and SCOTUS reviews the inevitable court challenge and says, “we were wrong back during Roe V Wade, this new law is totally constitutional because that penumbras bullshit was just embarrassing.” Ta-Da!!! No more abortions, and no need for a Constitutional amendment.
ETA: FWIW, a similar-ish scenario might work for guns, but it certainly seems more plausible for abortions.
Roe v. Wade only means that abortion must be legal in all 50 states. If the Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it doens’t ban all abortions nationwide, it just means that each of the 50 states gets to decide for themselves whether they want abortion to be legal or not. The conservative states like Alabama and Oklahoma might ban it. The liberal ones, like Oregon and Hawaii, would keep abortion legal for sure. And pregnant women from a pro-life state would probably still travel to a pro-abortion state. So all in all, banning Roe v. Wade might not even lead to a 30% decrease in abortions overall (my WAG.)
I don’t think this is quite accurate. Pre-Roe, states had already started overturning their abortion bans, so overturning Roe wouldn’t ban it on a federal level. Could a federal anti-abortion law stand SCOTUS scrutiny? I guess it depends on the SCOTUS. I suppose one that would overturn Roe may allow a federal ban on abortions, although there’s not much interstate commerce involved, right? Even if it’s considered murder, murder is proscribed on the state level for in-state murders, right?
Also, not directed at you, I don’t think the term “pro-abortion” is accurate either. If we’re going to use “pro-life”, I think we should use “pro-choice”.
My opinion is that there are many more pro-life voters than “gun-grabber” (to use your term) voters, so abortion rights are much more tenuous. Also, “gun-grabbers”, by and large, don’t actually want to ban guns, just regulate them to some more or less extent, whereas there are many, many voters who want to ban abortions outright.
So, with, say, one or two more SCOTUS appointments, and a 60-vote Senate majority and a simple House majority, I think Roe could easily be overturned, and a federal law passed and signed banning abortion. If that federal law passed SCOTUS scrutiny, abortion could be banned in the US. I don’t see that kind of path for total banning of guns. At the very least, you’d need an amendment, and that is a hard road to go down. Then, you’d need federal laws banning it, or all the states banning it.
Yes. Even SCOTUS has built up enough of a body of pro-choice precedent that even the Thomas-Alito-Gorsuch faction wouldn’t dare try that. I hope.
The question was Roe v. Wade or the 2nd amendment. The answer is Roe v. Wade. One because of what others said, it’s simply a decision by the Supreme Court and not truly law. Two, it’s also a questionable decision since it relies on an implicit Constitutional right that many say doesn’t exist and that even if this right does exist, it’s difficult to say why it would apply to abortion and not say heroin use or any of many other decisions that the federal and state governments are allowed to regulate. Three, its outreach groups are very well-organized and embedded at multiple government levels, much moreso than 2nd amendment groups. 2nd amendment groups largely rely on a single entity that influences via money pipelines to candidates and a very small group of single issue voters. Pro-life groups have multiple large entities that influence at grassroots levels. The only real disadvantage that pro-life groups have is that Roe v. Wade is a judicial decision, so the only way to overturn it is either an amendment (very, very unlikely) or through replacing one set of justices with another. That’s time consuming and requires a very long-term outreach and commitment. Somewhat off-topic, but one of the reasons I believe we’re in the pickle we’re in today politically is Roe v. Wade. By liberal groups deciding to fight it in the courts instead of the legislatures, it forced pro-life groups to buckle down for the long-term goals of changing the judiciary and thereby pushed people into a particular party and enforcing ideological purity within that party. I think that Roe v. Wade was probably the worst judicial decision that ever happened to this country, not because it protected abortion, but because the modern Republican Party is in large part a reaction to it. I think that having our current president can be laid directly at the feet of Roe v. Wade. Anyway, I digress.
You don’t have a clue what you’re up against.
Maybe, but I live in West Virginia. I’m fairly well acquainted with where gun owners stand (since I am one as is everyone in my family and almost all of my friends.) I’m also pretty well-acquainted with gun owners’ political leanings regarding the 2nd Amendment and at a grass roots level, they are far less organized than pro-lifers. When was the last time they had a major political protest? Right to Lifers have their big one in DC every January and local ones multiple times a year and they have large numbers of people that go to every single one of those. When election time comes, I get far more pro-life literature and cold-calls than I do 2nd amendment pamphlets despite the fact that I have a Cabela’s credit card, multiple outdoors magazine subscriptions and am a member of local hunting and fishing clubs. You would think I would be their target demographic unless they are using some serious big data that digs into my liberal interests as well. I get maybe one or two NRA pitches a year and that’s about it. That doesn’t speak to a particularly well-organized grass roots organization.
No. It would then be up to each State to decide.
Yep, what would happen is that the pre-Roe laws would go into effect. It would mean that abortion would be pretty much completely legal in Washington State, New York, Alaska and Hawaii. It would be legal with restrictions in Oregon, California and most of the south (Yep, you read that right. In the 70s, the south was actually more progressive on abortion than New England. One of the joys of Roe v. Wade is that it pushed the south into being more conservative, although other things were happening as well and it’s not fair to lay the complete blame at Roe’s feet.) It would be illegal in most of the rest of the country. What would likely happen is that New England, Illinois and the West Coast would probably legalize it fairly quickly and the southern states would move to restrict it. The abortion battle would then shift to state houses instead of the courts.
Considering the only choice under fire in this situation is abortion, calling it pro-choice in this conversation is less clear than pro-abortion.
As for the OP, I too think that Roe is the more likely contender for a complete overturn. But I think the future of abortion legality hinges more on the linked future of technological advances in the way of birth control. Some day we’ll either have birth control so effective that abortion for any reason other than something going catastrophically wrong with the fetus or mom’s health will be vanishingly rare and done only for medical reasons, or we’ll develop an artificial womb that’ll allow women who simply don’t wish to be pregnant to give their babies away early in pregnancy.
Sure, this does venture into the realms of optimistic science fiction, but it still feels more realistic than the idea that this country will completely outlaw personal gun ownership…Abortion hasn’t even been legal for 50 years, and guns have been here in this country and in people’s hands since we were a mere colony.
The choice is between having an abortion and *not *having one. The right to that choice, without personal imposition by people who think they have a morally superior right to make it since they’d make it in only one way, is the right being defended. Calling it “pro-abortion” is inflammatory, apparently deliberately, and factually false.
Pro-choice is a term that anyone wading into a thread with this title would understand. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be respectful enough to use the term that abortion rights supporters prefer. I’m not about to call pro-lifers anti-choice, forced birthers, anti-bodily autonomy, etc.
Anyway, contraception is already extremely effective, so you won’t see much improvement there. What will you do with the 650 thousand to 1 million children born into artificial wombs each year? Who will pay to safely extract the fetus? Why would that be better for the woman than just taking a morning after pill or having a medical abortion?
Whatever, this isn’t the thread for that again. Somewhere above, someone mentioned that all fifty states would have to make it illegal. Maybe. Congress could pass a federal law and if the Supreme Court upholds it, it’s law.
I’m fairly-rabidly pro-life, and I agree with RitterSport on this. If you hope to have even a civil conversation with someone from the other side, “pro-choice” and “pro-life” should be the labels you use. If you get into calling people “pro-abortion” / “anti-choice” / “anti-life”, you’re being needlessly antagonistic in a conversation on a topic already fraught with sky-high emotion for many participants. You’re driving your chances of accomplishing anything (dim as they ever may have been) into the cellar.