There is already a case from Mississippi on the docket for this upcoming term that will decide the fate of Roe. Quite frankly, the current court does not give me any reason to believe that enough of the conservatives will uphold stare decisis.
In the case of Roberts, I think he actually does want to overturn Roe, but he is afraid of the possibility that, rather than just setting things back to where they were prior to Roe (i.e. being the purview of the individual states), the other Republican justices are going to make a decision where they declare that a fertilized egg is considered a person under the 14th amendment, which they would use to outlaw abortion nationwide, as well as a number of birth control methods.
Roberts would probably be afraid that this would be an action that would prompt Democrats to expand the court, or even worse, might prompt a modern judicial nullification crisis (i.e. states that have laws on the books protecting abortion, like California, will give such a decision a giant middle finger and dare the feds to try to enforce it).
Is there reason to believe that the other Republican justices would do that? I thought the standard conservative anti-Roe position was “let the states make their own laws about abortion, it should never have been legislated from the bench in the first place”.
Yup, this has ever been Roberts’ approach on advancing conservative priorities – move incrementally, never push so hard as to generate a strong political backlash, and dress up what you’re doing in boring legalese. And he’s been very successful at it, particularly in slowly eviscerating Obamacare without going so far as to overthrow the whole law.
But all of that was when he was a necessary vote for conservatives to form a majority on the Court. As the CJ, if he’s in the majority he gets to decide who writes the opinion, and he could use that to craft more narrow decisions. Now that the Court is 6-3 he can’t as easily force his approach on the other conservatives. Now it depends on how restrained Kavanaugh or Barrett are feeling, and signs are not promising.
Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.
Yyyokay, but if they support a “human life amendment to the Constitution”, then that means they acknowledge that the Constitution as it stands doesn’t take a position on when human life begins, right? And they’d be opposed to the SC “inventing” a new constitutional right as it claims they did with Roe?
I think you overestimate Republicans’ dedication to constitutional niceties if it gets them the outcome they want. But the platform says that they want the amendment and legislation to “make clear” that the 14th Amendment applies to children before birth. So they obviously believe that it already does or should, and an SC ruling would be just as clarifying.
I suppose the number one Texas export is petroleum. Do their municipal buildings use natural gas heating?
Texas used to be a big manufacturer of computer parts, including basics like resistors and capacitors. But maybe they now come from that bastion of reproductive rights, China.
Texas is the largest purchaser of school texts in the world. Individual school districts (1247 districts, charters, and other entities) do not purchase their own books. Instead, the state has an adoption process and adopts a few texts in each subject. Each district then selects a text from those chosen in the adoption. That is why you see school texts published with Texas-specific content.
I haven’t seen the specifics of the Portland boycott, but apparently what they’re proposing is that the City of Portland would no longer purchase goods or services from Texas-based businesses (however they define that) and city staff would not be allowed to travel here. Since the city presumably doesn’t buy petroleum straight from the wellhead and refine it themselves, I don’t imagine this will impact their gas purchasing.
They estimate it would cost the Texas economy $7 million per year, which I’m pretty sure our economy generated just in the time it took me to type this paragraph.
These sort of boycotts have been going on for awhile but I think on the scale of a whole state, particularly a big state, they just aren’t that meaningful. They all basically take the same shape–whatever government entity is “boycotting” the objectionable location, simply means they will no longer pay for employee travel to that state/locality (for conferences etc) and will sometimes extend it a step further like Portland has to disallow doing business with companies headquartered in the targeted locality.
I frankly think it’s not a good precedent and unwise in any number of ways.
I also think it’s materially different than what went down with the North Carolina bathroom bill and the ensuing business reaction. For some time North Carolina had been diligently building up a finance/IT sector, and it has several good universities in the research triangle region which create a feeder stock of educated employees for such firms to hire. The bathroom bill was something that was kind of a nonsense issue that most people did not really care a ton about on the right, but enjoyed foaming at the mouth over. So in a fit of stupidity the legislature passed it. This embarrassed the IT/finance companies in the region and they started leaning on it to make it go away, mostly for the simple marketing reason that it really didn’t help with the greater vision happening in the regions of North Carolina that had been deliberately building up white collar industries–basically the Charlotte area, the Research Triangle Area, and to a somewhat lesser degree the Winston-Salem area.
In that situation you found some extremist / Tea Party type Republican legislators at odds with Chamber of Commerce type business leaders throughout the state, over an issue that frankly was mostly not going to curry any significant additional votes to the GOP, and also honestly just wasn’t that “important” of an issue from the perspective of the right wing political movement. It was fairly predictable the state GOP caved and fairly logical.
SB8 is very different, if the Texas GOP flipped on that it would be seen as an active repudiation of the Pro-Life movement in the State of Texas by the State Republican party. It would be akin to taking a dagger and driving it into the back of the core part of your own base, and it’s unthinkable the Texas GOP is going to do that. I’ve estimated probably 30-35% of the GOP nationally are “ardent” pro-lifers, meaning it is either the defining reason they are Republicans, or a very significant reason. On top of that the majority of the party as a whole is pro-life, even if some of the rest don’t care about it quite as much on an emotional level. This is just too much a part of the party’s fabric for them to flip, it would basically implode the party in Texas and would create a civil war, the national party would actually turn on the Texas GOP to make sure it didn’t get tainted by association. It’s just unthinkable.
I agree with your assessment about the difference between SB 8 and the “bathroom bill.” Banning abortion has been the prime motivator for social conservatives for decades. Making life miserable for trans people is just a “nice to have.” Although Texas is trying to do that too – the Governor added requiring trans student athletes to compete with their “biological sex” to the next (third, if you’re counting) special session.
Likewise, it’s the one point I would never bend on. Taxes? I’ll discuss. Health care? Universal would be great, but let’s talk. The military? Ideally I’d scale it back as far as possible, but what are you thinking?
But abortion? Y’all got no business dictating what someone does with their uterus.
IIRC -Another factor in North Carolina bathroom bill debacle, was the pressure from the architecture and interior design industries. North Carolina has a huge furniture industry.
Merrick Garland and the DOJ sue Texas over their new abortion law.
"AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday sued Texas over a new state law that bans most abortions, arguing that it was enacted “in open defiance of the Constitution.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, asks a federal judge to declare that the law is invalid, “to enjoin its enforcement, and to protect the rights that Texas has violated.
The act is clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference announcing the suit. "
What does it say about us (as a country or as a species) that until we see people needlessly die repeatedly we can’t get our collective heads out of our collective asses?
(And sometimes we can’t do that even when lots of people are dying)
The modern right likely will not be phased by the deaths of women, they will say they were actually due to “pre-existing” conditions, or they’ll vilify them and say they were using drugs etc. Same as they justify all covid deaths as either not really being covid deaths, or saying the person was “obese” or “sickly” as if that somehow justifies not caring about them being dead.