DEVELOPING, the US Supreme Court reverses Roe v Wade (is it cry havoc?)

_{kairosfocus
June 24, 2022

Defending our Civilization, Ethics, Intelligent Design, News Highlights, Politics, rhetoric

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Having returned from a shopping trip to Junction, Jamaica [here for 4x bereavement reasons], I noticed news as captioned. I clip:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/06/24/supreme-court-overrules-roe-v-wade-in-dobbs/

Supreme Court Overrules Roe v. Wade in Dobbs Decision – Returns Abortion to State Lawmakers
WASHINGTON, DC – The Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade on Friday, holding in the Dobbs case that the Constitution does not include a right to abortion and returning the issue of abortion laws and regulations to state legislatures.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Supreme Court in Friday’s ~~5-4~~ [–> 6-3] decision:
>>Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return the authority to the people and their elected representatives.>>
Roe was handed down in 1973 in a 7-2 decision, holding that the U.S. Constitution includes a constitutional right to abortion, despite the fact that abortion is not found in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution, and the nation went more than 180 years without ever noticing it existed. It has been one of the most divisive legal issues in American history.
An early draft of Alito’s opinion leaked in May, the first such leak of a full opinion in the 233-year history of the Supreme Court, leading the left to violent protests, including destroying a pro-life center in Wisconsin, vandalizing churches, and threatening protests at the home of conservatives justices in violation of federal law.
These threats have culminated in what was almost an assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which went seemingly unnoticed by President Joe Biden – who did not speak out to condemn it – and has led to rapid action on a new federal law to protect the justices. The court majority evidently stood firm against the threats and public pressure, overruling Roe and the later revision of Roe in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
With Roe overruled, the issue of abortion now goes back to the states to pass whatever restrictions on abortions the voters of each state choose to adopt.

This is an issue that pivots on life, the first right, and lurking within is, what is law and what may a civil authority legitimately rule as law. DEVELOPING

Comments

AaronS & KF - yes it indicates that people are ignorant about what this ruling means. States can vote to have unlimited abortion rights - as horrifying and barbaric as that is.Silver Asiatic_{June 27, 2022
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Relatd: Saying the truth is how everyone moves forward. The truth is that a lot of people disagree with you about the right, or not, for a woman to chose to terminate a pregnancy within a certain time limit. (Notice, above, that even in 1973 the Supreme Court acknowledged that it was perfectly reasonable to limit the abortion window as has been the case ever since.) So, are you willing to sit down and talk with those you disagree with in an honest attempt to find a compromise solution?JVL_{June 27, 2022
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To everyone here who is "fighting" for abortion, is the following true? I did not begin life as a fertilized egg. I was never an embryo or fetus.relatd_{June 27, 2022
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Biden, Biden, Biden, When your girlfriend gets pregnant, what are you going to do? Call Biden?relatd_{June 27, 2022
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JVL at 209, Saying the truth is how everyone moves forward. The baby growing in the womb, human or not? Answer that question.relatd_{June 27, 2022
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FH at 208, The true culprits are anyone who believes that the baby growing in the womb is less than human.relatd_{June 27, 2022
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FH at 205, It should be changed so I can make it do what I want it to? So I can get want I want? Question: Did you begin life as a fertilized egg? Yes or no?relatd_{June 27, 2022
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JH at 200, Are you white? Did you own slaves? Neither did I. Stop with the propaganda. Just stop it.relatd_{June 27, 2022
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ET: There isn’t anything in the US Constitution that guarantees access to abortions. 50 years ago, the SC made it up out of thin air. That group messed up. Of course they didn't make it up out of thin air.
After dealing with mootness and standing, the Court proceeded to the main issue of the case: the constitutionality of Texas's abortion law. The Court first surveyed abortion's status throughout the legal history of Roman law and the Anglo-American common law.[6] It also reviewed the developments of medical procedures and technology used in abortions.[6] After its historical surveys, the Court introduced the concept of a constitutional "right to privacy" that it said had been intimated in its earlier decisions Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which involved parental control over childrearing, and Griswold v. Connecticut, which involved the use of contraception.[6] Then, "with virtually no further explanation of the privacy value",[7] the Court ruled that regardless of exactly which provisions were involved, the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of liberty covered a right to privacy that protected a pregnant woman's decision whether to abort a pregnancy.[6] This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or ... in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether to terminate her pregnancy. —?Roe, 410 U.S. at 153.[107] The Court reasoned that outlawing abortions would infringe a pregnant woman's right to privacy for several reasons: having unwanted children "may force upon the woman a distressful life and future"; it may bring imminent psychological harm; caring for the child may tax the mother's physical and mental health; and because there may be "distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child".[108] At the same time, the Court rejected the notion that this right to privacy was absolute.[6] It held instead that women's abortion right must be balanced against other government interests, such as protecting maternal health and protecting the life of the fetus.[6] The Court held that the interests were sufficiently compelling to permit states to impose some limitations on pregnant women's right to choose to have an abortion.[109] A State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. ... We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation. —?Roe, 410 U.S. at 154. Texas's lawyers had argued that limiting abortion to situations where the mother's life was in danger was justified because life began at the moment of conception, and therefore the state's governmental interest in protecting prenatal life applied to all pregnancies regardless of their stage.[7] But the Court said that there was no indication that the Constitution's uses of the word "person" were meant to include fetuses, and it rejected Texas's argument that a fetus should be considered a "person" with a legal and constitutional right to life.[110] The Court observed that there was still great disagreement over when an unborn fetus becomes a living being.[110] We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, in this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. —?Roe, 410 U.S. at 159.[111] To balance women's rights to privacy and state governments' interests in protecting mothers' health and prenatal life, the Court created the trimester framework.[112][113] During the first trimester, when it was believed that the procedure was safer than childbirth, the Court ruled that a state government could place no restrictions on women's ability to choose to abort pregnancies other than imposing minimal medical safeguards, such as requiring abortions to be performed by licensed physicians.[7] From the second trimester on, the Court ruled that evidence of increasing risks to the mother's health gave states a compelling interest that allowed them to enact medical regulations on abortion procedures so long as they were reasonable and "narrowly tailored" to protecting mothers' health.[7] From the beginning of the third trimester on—the point at which a fetus became viable under the medical technology available in the early 1970s—the Court ruled that a state's interest in protecting prenatal life became so compelling that it could legally prohibit all abortions except where necessary to protect the mother's life or health.[7] Having completed its analysis, the Court concluded that Texas's abortion statutes were unconstitutional and struck them down. A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. —?Roe, 410 U.S. at 164.
JVL_{June 27, 2022
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The statement alone invalidates everyone advocating that abortion rights have been taken away Thank you KF for posting the decision “The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives. Pp. 78–79”AaronS1978_{June 27, 2022
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ET, for convenience, the syllabus (and many will have looked at the preliminary draft that was leaked): >> 1 (Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2021 Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus DOBBS, STATE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ET AL. v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 19–1392. Argued December 1, 2021—Decided June 24, 2022 Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act provides that “[e]xcept in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn hu- man being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks.” Miss. Code Ann. §41–41–191. Respondents—Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an abortion clinic, and one of its doctors—challenged the Act in Federal District Court, alleging that it violated this Court’s prec- edents establishing a constitutional right to abortion, in particular Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833. The District Court granted summary judg- ment in favor of respondents and permanently enjoined enforcement of the Act, reasoning that Mississippi’s 15-week restriction on abortion violates this Court’s cases forbidding States to ban abortion pre-viabil- ity. The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Before this Court, petitioners defend the Act on the grounds that Roe and Casey were wrongly decided and that the Act is constitutional because it satisfies rational-basis review. Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives. Pp. 8–79. (a) The critical question is whether the Constitution, properly un- derstood, confers a right to obtain an abortion. Casey’s controlling opinion skipped over that question and reaffirmed Roe solely on the basis of stare decisis. A proper application of stare decisis, however, requires an assessment of the strength of the grounds on which Roe was based. The Court therefore turns to the question that the Casey plurality did not consider. Pp. 8–32. (1) First, the Court reviews the standard that the Court’s cases have used to determine whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s refer- ence to “liberty” protects a particular right. The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion, but several con- stitutional provisions have been offered as potential homes for an im- plicit constitutional right. Roe held that the abortion right is part of a right to privacy that springs from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. See 410 U. S., at 152–153. The Casey Court grounded its decision solely on the theory that the right to obtain an abortion is part of the “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amend- ment’s Due Process Clause. Others have suggested that support can be found in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, but that theory is squarely foreclosed by the Court’s precedents, which es- tablish that a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classifi- cation and is thus not subject to the heightened scrutiny that applies to such classifications. See Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U. S. 484, 496, n. 20; Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, 506 U. S. 263, 273– 274. Rather, regulations and prohibitions of abortion are governed by the same standard of review as other health and safety measures. Pp. 9–11. (2) Next, the Court examines whether the right to obtain an abor- tion is rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition and whether it is an essential component of “ordered liberty.” The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradi- tion. The underlying theory on which Casey rested—that the Four- teenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause provides substantive, as well as procedural, protection for “liberty”—has long been controversial. The Court’s decisions have held that the Due Process Clause pro- tects two categories of substantive rights—those rights guaranteed by the first eight Amendments to the Constitution and those rights deemed fundamental that are not mentioned anywhere in the Consti- tution. In deciding whether a right falls into either of these categories, the question is whether the right is “deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition” and whether it is essential to this Nation’s “scheme of or- dered liberty.” [--> hence natural law thought] Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U. S. ___, ___ (internal quotation marks omitted). The term “liberty” alone provides little guidance. Thus, historical inquiries are essential whenever the Court is asked to recognize a new component of the “liberty” interest protected by the Due Process Clause. In interpreting what is meant by “liberty,” the Court must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what the Fourteenth Amendment protects with the Court’s own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy. For this reason, the Court has been “reluctant” to recognize rights that are not men- tioned in the Constitution. Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 125. Guided by the history and tradition that map the essential compo- nents of the Nation’s concept of ordered liberty, the Court finds the Fourteenth Amendment clearly does not protect the right to an abor- tion. Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State. At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s ex- panded criminal liability for abortions. By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States had made abor- tion a crime at any stage of pregnancy. This consensus endured until the day Roe was decided. Roe either ignored or misstated this history, and Casey declined to reconsider Roe’s faulty historical analysis. Respondents’ argument that this history does not matter flies in the face of the standard the Court has applied in determining whether an asserted right that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution is never- theless protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Solicitor Gen- eral repeats Roe’s claim that it is “doubtful . . . abortion was ever firmly established as a common-law crime even with respect to the destruc- tion of a quick fetus,” 410 U. S., at 136, but the great common-law au- thorities—Bracton, Coke, Hale, and Blackstone—all wrote that a post- quickening abortion was a crime. Moreover, many authorities as- serted that even a pre-quickening abortion was “unlawful” and that, as a result, an abortionist was guilty of murder if the woman died from the attempt. The Solicitor General suggests that history supports an abortion right because of the common law’s failure to criminalize abor- tion before quickening, but the insistence on quickening was not uni- versal, see Mills v. Commonwealth, 13 Pa. 631, 633; State v. Slagle, 83 N. C. 630, 632, and regardless, the fact that many States in the late 18th and early 19th century did not criminalize pre-quickening abor- tions does not mean that anyone thought the States lacked the author- ity to do so. Instead of seriously pressing the argument that the abortion right itself has deep roots, supporters of Roe and Casey contend that the abortion right is an integral part of a broader entrenched right. Roe termed this a right to privacy, 410 U. S., at 154, and Casey described it as the freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” that are “central to personal dignity and autonomy,” 505 U. S., at 851. Ordered liberty sets limits and defines the boundary between competing inter- ests. Roe and Casey each struck a particular balance between the in- terests of a woman who wants an abortion and the interests of what they termed “potential life.” Roe, 410 U. S., at 150; Casey, 505 U. S., at 852. But the people of the various States may evaluate those inter- ests differently. The Nation’s historical understanding of ordered lib- erty does not prevent the people’s elected representatives from decid- ing how abortion should be regulated. Pp. 11–30. (3) Finally, the Court considers whether a right to obtain an abor- tion is part of a broader entrenched right that is supported by other precedents. The Court concludes the right to obtain an abortion cannot be justified as a component of such a right. Attempts to justify abor- tion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s “concept of existence” prove too much. Casey, 505 U. S., at 851. Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like. What sharply distin- guishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion is different because it destroys what Roe termed “potential life” and what the law challenged in this case calls an “unborn human being.” None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion. Ac- cordingly, those cases do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and the Court’s conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them in any way. Pp. 30–32. (b) The doctrine of stare decisis does not counsel continued ac- ceptance of Roe and Casey. Stare decisis plays an important role and protects the interests of those who have taken action in reliance on a past decision. It “reduces incentives for challenging settled prece- dents, saving parties and courts the expense of endless relitigation.” Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 455. It “contrib- utes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process.” Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 827. And it restrains judicial hubris by respecting the judgment of those who grappled with important questions in the past. But stare decisis is not an inexorable command, Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 233, and “is at its weakest when [the Court] interpret[s] the Constitution,” Agostini v. Felton, 521 U. S. 203, 235. Some of the Court’s most important constitutional decisions have overruled prior precedents. See, e.g., Brown v. Board of Educa- tion, 347 U. S. 483, 491 (overruling the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, and its progeny). The Court’s cases have identified factors that should be considered in deciding when a precedent should be overruled. Janus v. State, County, and Municipal Employees, 585 U. S. ___, ___–___. Five factors discussed below weigh strongly in favor of overruling Roe and Casey. Pp. 39–66. (1) The nature of the Court’s error. Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. Casey per- petuated its errors, calling both sides of the national controversy to resolve their debate, but in doing so, Casey necessarily declared a win- ning side. Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views. The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing it to the large number of Americans who disagreed with Roe. Pp. 43–45. (2) The quality of the reasoning. Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation. See 410 U. S., at 163–164. Roe’s failure even to note the overwhelming consensus of state laws in effect in 1868 is striking, and what it said about the common law was simply wrong. Then, after surveying his- tory, the opinion spent many paragraphs conducting the sort of fact- finding that might be undertaken by a legislative committee, and did not explain why the sources on which it relied shed light on the mean- ing of the Constitution. As to precedent, citing a broad array of cases, the Court found support for a constitutional “right of personal privacy.” Id., at 152. But Roe conflated the right to shield information from dis- closure and the right to make and implement important personal de- cisions without governmental interference. See Whalen v. Roe, 429 U. S. 589, 599–600. None of these decisions involved what is distinc- tive about abortion: its effect on what Roe termed “potential life.” When the Court summarized the basis for the scheme it imposed on the country, it asserted that its rules were “consistent with,” among other things, “the relative weights of the respective interests involved” and “the demands of the profound problems of the present day.” Roe, 410 U. S., at 165. These are precisely the sort of considerations that legislative bodies often take into account when they draw lines that accommodate competing interests. The scheme Roe produced looked like legislation, and the Court provided the sort of explanation that might be expected from a legislative body. An even more glaring defi- ciency was Roe’s failure to justify the critical distinction it drew be- tween pre- and post-viability abortions. See id., at 163. The arbitrary viability line, which Casey termed Roe’s central rule, has not found much support among philosophers and ethicists who have attempted to justify a right to abortion. The most obvious problem with any such argument is that viability has changed over time and is heavily de- pendent on factors—such as medical advances and the availability of quality medical care—that have nothing to do with the characteristics of a fetus. When Casey revisited Roe almost 20 years later, it reaffirmed Roe’s central holding, but pointedly refrained from endorsing most of its rea- soning. The Court abandoned any reliance on a privacy right and in- stead grounded the abortion right entirely on the Fourteenth Amend- ment’s Due Process Clause. 505 U. S., at 846. The controlling opinion criticized and rejected Roe’s trimester scheme, 505 U. S., at 872, and substituted a new and obscure “undue burden” test. Casey, in short, either refused to reaffirm or rejected important aspects of Roe’s analy- sis, failed to remedy glaring deficiencies in Roe’s reasoning, endorsed what it termed Roe’s central holding while suggesting that a majority might not have thought it was correct, provided no new support for the abortion right other than Roe’s status as precedent, and imposed a new test with no firm grounding in constitutional text, history, or prece- dent. Pp. 45–56. (3) Workability. Deciding whether a precedent should be over- ruled depends in part on whether the rule it imposes is workable—that is, whether it can be understood and applied in a consistent and pre- dictable manner. Casey’s “undue burden” test has scored poorly on the workability scale. The Casey plurality tried to put meaning into the “undue burden” test by setting out three subsidiary rules, but these rules created their own problems. And the difficulty of applying Ca- sey’s new rules surfaced in that very case. Compare 505 U. S., at 881– 887, with id., at 920–922 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissent- ing in part). The experience of the Courts of Appeals provides further evidence that Casey’s “line between” permissible and unconstitutional restrictions “has proved to be impossible to draw with precision.” Ja- nus, 585 U. S., at ___. Casey has generated a long list of Circuit con- flicts. Continued adherence to Casey’s unworkable “undue burden” test would undermine, not advance, the “evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles.” Payne, 501 U. S., at 827. Pp. 56–62. (4) Effect on other areas of law. Roe and Casey have led to the distortion of many important but unrelated legal doctrines, and that effect provides further support for overruling those decisions. See Ra- mos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part). Pp. 62–63. (5) Reliance interests. Overruling Roe and Casey will not upend concrete reliance interests like those that develop in “cases involving property and contract rights.” Payne, 501 U. S., at 828. In Casey, the controlling opinion conceded that traditional reliance interests were not implicated because getting an abortion is generally “unplanned ac- tivity,” and “reproductive planning could take virtually immediate ac- count of any sudden restoration of state authority to ban abortions.” 505 U. S., at 856. Instead, the opinion perceived a more intangible form of reliance, namely, that “people [had] organized intimate rela- tionships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society . . . in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail” and that “[t]he ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Na- tion has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” Ibid. The contending sides in this case make impassioned and conflicting arguments about the effects of the abortion right on the lives of women as well as the status of the fetus. The Casey plurality’s speculative attempt to weigh the relative importance of the interests of the fetus and the mother represent a departure from the “original constitutional proposition” that “courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies.” Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 729–730. The Solicitor General suggests that overruling Roe and Casey would threaten the protection of other rights under the Due Process Clause. The Court emphasizes that this decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion. [--> those are to be separately addressed] Pp. 63–66. (c) Casey identified another concern, namely, the danger that the public will perceive a decision overruling a controversial “watershed” decision, such as Roe, as influenced by political considerations or pub- lic opinion. 505 U. S., at 866–867. But the Court cannot allow its de- cisions to be affected by such extraneous concerns. A precedent of this Court is subject to the usual principles of stare decisis under which adherence to precedent is the norm but not an inexorable command. If the rule were otherwise, erroneous decisions like Plessy would still be the law. The Court’s job is to interpret the law, apply longstanding principles of stare decisis, and decide this case accordingly. Pp. 66–69. (d) Under the Court’s precedents, rational-basis review is the appro- priate standard to apply when state abortion regulations undergo con- stitutional challenge. Given that procuring an abortion is not a funda- mental constitutional right, it follows that the States may regulate abortion for legitimate reasons, and when such regulations are chal- lenged under the Constitution, courts cannot “substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies.” Ferguson, 372 U. S., at 729–730. That applies even when the laws at issue con- cern matters of great social significance and moral substance. A law regulating abortion, like other health and welfare laws, is entitled to a “strong presumption of validity.” Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 319. It must be sustained if there is a rational basis on which the legislature could have thought that it would serve legitimate state interests. Id., at 320. Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act is supported by the Mississippi Legislature’s specific findings, which include the State’s asserted in- terest in “protecting the life of the unborn.” §2(b)(i). These legitimate interests provide a rational basis for the Gestational Age Act, and it follows that respondents’ constitutional challenge must fail. Pp. 76– 78. (e) Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohib- iting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives. Pp. 78–79. 945 F. 3d 265, reversed and remanded. ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, GOR- SUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and KA- VANAUGH, J., filed concurring opinions. ROBERTS, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., filed a dissenting opinion. >> A summary within a 233 pp document. KFkairosfocus_{June 27, 2022
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@FH So everyone but democrats huh? “Who are the true culprits? Republicans? Right wing fundamentalist Christians? Libertarians? Corporate moguls? Their stockholders? Trump selling “secret messages” for 45 bucks?” Good and biased Let me add a few more Nancy Pelosi using insider info and investing 1.2 million in Tesla after pushing the GND through. Joe Biden mandating a faulty vaccine after he said he wouldn’t, the vaccine create 9 new billionaires in big pharma, Joe Biden costing the United States 86 billion in military equipment loss in a botched(maybe) pull out of the Middle East also cost soldiers their lives, BLM holding cities hostage for 8 months and cause over 500 million in damages over a criminal killed by a criminal, anything Clinton, Hunter Biden and his zany adventures with his father being a criminal which looks like it will bite Biden in the butt, Bidenflation, Biden gas prices now he admitted the rise was part of his plan, court stacking admitted by Biden, liberal controlled Twitter being gutted by Elon Musk and forced to reveal 5% of their users where bots created by them of which 50% of Biden’s followers were their bots, list goes on and on and on There’s some culprits for you, are you really that blind to the corrupt nature of your partyAaronS1978_{June 27, 2022
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JVL:
The thing that I find the most sad about the recent Supreme Court ruling is that the United States looks to becoming the Un-united States.
Your ignorance of the Law and what the Supreme Court is, is not an argument. There isn't anything in the US Constitution that guarantees access to abortions. 50 years ago, the SC made it up out of thin air. That group messed up. The thing that is most sad is the total disregard for human life that goes hand-in-hand with abortion for birth control.ET_{June 27, 2022
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The US Constitution has been questioned and amended 27 times! But it's stupid to think there will be an amendment allowing for the wholesale slaughter of society's most vulnerable.ET_{June 27, 2022
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When is it NOT OK to end the life of an innocent human?ET_{June 27, 2022
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Not one person here has read the Supreme Court's decision that overturned Roe.ET_{June 27, 2022
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Fred Hickson:
My initial point that RNA World refutes Upright Biped’s hypothesis is sufficient.
Then you are a fool and a liar.
There’s no point in me posting further comments in a buried thread unless he’s interested in substantive discussion.
YOU are not interested in a discussion. You have yet to post anything of substance. In an open debate with judges, you would have been demolished.ET_{June 27, 2022
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PPS, the current situation can, in my view, be readily understood in the light of this principle of secondary legitimacy of law and of sound reformation as critical mass arises. Reform, of course, is almost always strongly (and, sometimes, violently) opposed by entrenched interests.kairosfocus_{June 27, 2022
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F/N: Let us return to law, here, the issue of hardness of heart compromises and law that is strictly sub-standard but legitimate at a second level. As in, what one can reasonably do in a circumstance with entrenched evils or want of capability to go to another level? E.g., until the printing revolution, the vernacular Bible, the rise of coffee shops etc opening up public discussion and opinion, the wider impacts of the protestant reformation etc -- i.e. from 1688 - 1787 on -- there was no space for a stable constitutional democracy. So, here is a discussion on law with defects:
Mark C. Murphy reads Aquinas [--> who summarised the classical and Christian thought in Summa Theologica, in the 1200's] as having formulated the central natural law thesis that, ‘‘necessarily, law is a rational standard for conduct.’’ [--> cf Cicero on law as highest reason, regarding what ought/ought not to be done in the context of life and community towards good order] Though it is not so easily refuted as many have thought, Murphy acknowledges that natural law theory is nonetheless ‘‘marked by ambiguity and unclarity at its core’’ – a condition that he attempts to correct. Murphy defines and defends an inter-mediate ‘‘Weak Reading’’ of the central thesis – one also advocated by John Finnis – according to which irrational or insufficiently rational laws are treated as laws, but defective laws, in the same way that the existence of lame cheetahs is to be recon-ciled with the truth that, necessarily [--> by nature], cheetahs are fast runners. Natural law differs from legal posi-tivism (whose ‘‘generic thesis’’ is that the status of a social rule as a law is entirely independent of its status as a rational standard) in holding that there is a rational standard internal to law that makes an irrational law a defective though valid law. Parting company with Finnis, Murphy argues that the better line of defense of natural law begins with the idea that law is a functional kind, that is, a kind of thing characterized by its function. [--> notice, issues of distinct identity pivoting on core characteristics] Murphy treats several objections to this functionalist approach, and concludes that law need not have a characteristic end (such as social order, or justice) to serve as a functional kind, so long as law employs certain characteristic means to achieve what ends it serves. [--> ends implicit and inherent to the structure and function, it seems] What remains is to describe those characteristic means as essentially involving a background in which humans are en-gaged in their characteristic activity as rational beings, namely, acting for reasons. Law’s charac-teristic means, Murphy concludes, are ‘‘to pro-vide dictates backed by compelling reasons for action, and . . . law that fails to do so is defective as law.’’ [William Edmundson, in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, 2005, pp. 1 - 2]
Of course, I respond that law and government, when they function properly, defend the civil peace of justice, but obviously falling short of an acknowledged end is not the same as undermining that core characteristic. In that context, there are built in first duties of reason that are pervasive, branch on which we all sit first principles, first law. Law, properly, articulates from these. However, in a given time and place, errors may be made and compromises with entrenched evils may have to be made, generally with some amelioration. For capital example, there is no doubt that rum and other highly distilled drinks, once they were widely available and cheap enough, did huge damage. Ideally, rum should be banned or restricted with stringent rules. However, as there is an entrenched demand, we can only regulate and restrict to a much lower degree of control than would be strictly better. The classic example of unenforceable regulation, here, was the American experiment with prohibition, which not only failed but reinforced organised crime and fed a climate of lawlessness that has never fully been worked through. So, substandard compromise ameliorative law can serve a reasonable purpose, and in some cases can lead onward to more adequate reform as hearts are softened and a critical mass of support emerges. In this secondary sense it serves the civil peace of justice and has a degree of secondary legitimacy. I argue, that this obtains for slavery and the slave trade in the past several centuries. As the evil was recognised, a movement of reform first targetted the trade as low hanging fruit, indefensible as based on kidnapping. Then, as the evangelical revival progressed, a strong enough support arose to move to outright banning of the institution, which was always recognised as contrary to the principle of liberty as a natural right. That is in Corpus Juris Civilis, and we find an echo in Locke, who saw enslavement as an alternative to execution for cause; a sort of lifetime imprisonment. We thus see how a once universal institution has been restrained and in most of the world abolished. However, for cause the antislavery society still exists and still addresses ongoing and modern subtler forms of enslavement. the underlying point here is, that order is pivotal for human thriving and that law must be practically enforceable. So, significantly substandard law may have a legitimate purpose. In some cases, onward abolition or the like may not even be a reasonable prospect, as has happened with rum and other similar things. KF PS, This of course answers to the attempt to use slavery to dismiss the lessons learned and applied by the US founders and framers. If we will not learn from history bought with blood and tears, we doom ourselves to pay the same coin over and over again.kairosfocus_{June 27, 2022
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JVL, the issues on the table are quite simple. First, has there been a mass slaughter of our living posterity in the womb under colour of law? Yes. Second, are the victims human and thus possessed of rights starting with life? Yes. Third, was the colour of law legitimate? No, as Alito takes pains to decisively expose, with five others agreeing (Thomas wished to fix other matters under the same mistaken principles) and we can see that above essentially no objector was willing to take on Alito's argument on the merits. Fourth, did the ruling take away a right of "choice"? No, as there can be no proper right to kill another at will, a point underscored by the manifestly false claim that it is a woman's body . . . half the time the unborn child is not even the same sex. Fifth, what did the ruling do? It corrrected an erroneous and evidently arbitrary pattern of US SC decision making, withdrew colour of law for mass slaughter, implying that penumbras and emanations were and are not there, and restored status quo ante, it is the states and their voters who are left to choose what to do. This last is actually where onward the issue is going to be to correct legal positivism and to recognise first built in law and how it articulates into a lawful framework for government. To which, I will now return my focus. If you have substantial responses to these points or even links, kindly give them. KF PS, Nominalism is still an issue, so, kindly show us a nine sided hexagon.kairosfocus_{June 27, 2022
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Silver Asiatic: If you believe you have the truth about something, then you should make your case. If you’re not successful then try other arguments or try to understand your opposition’s points better to see where the conflict lies. I believe I have tried to understand other people's thoughts and reasoning and if you look back up the thread you will find that, aside from the usual name-calling and assumptions about my beliefs, I was berated for asking questions. I would like to have an open, honest and civilised discussion about the issues. I don't expect to change anyone's mind but the level of animosity, non-collegial discourse and intransigent beliefs leads me to decide that carrying on the conversation is pointless. The thing that I find the most sad about the recent Supreme Court ruling is that the United States looks to becoming the Un-united States. Abortion, gun control, trans rights, same-sex marriages are all creating gulfs between people and no one is willing to find a compromise anymore. It's all my way or no way. I don't have nor pretend to have all the answers. I am willing to lay all cards on the table and try and find some middle ground we can all live with, no one will be completely happy but how else do you move forward?JVL_{June 27, 2022
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They get ordinary people to fight each other in order to distract people from the true culprits.
Who are the true culprits? Republicans? Right wing fundamentalist Christians? Libertarians? Corporate moguls? Their stockholders? Trump selling "secret messages" for 45 bucks?Fred Hickson_{June 27, 2022
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– Prisons continue to be overcrowded, brutal places with substandard food and living conditions.
but profitable with the right business approach. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/economics_of_incarceration/Fred Hickson_{June 26, 2022
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Kairosfocus @201, I agree with you and would add that the self-righteous and self-serving politics that many espouse demonstrates a profound ignorance of both history and the injustices that continue to be ignored in the current narrative. They should read Kenneth Stampp's classic: https://www.amazon.com/Peculiar-Institution-Slavery-Ante-Bellum-South/dp/0679723072 and Frederick Douglas's book https://www.amazon.com/Narrative-Life-Frederick-Douglass-American/dp/B08FKSHDM3 Farm workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants are the de facto slaves in our "progressive" society and don't receive a decent living wage under brutal working conditions. The progressives couldn't care less. This also includes underpaid H1B technical workers who are always under threat of deportation. - Immigration reform hasn't happened under Democrat nor Republican administrations despite all their pretended caring about people dying in the desert or in the sea. - Prisons continue to be overcrowded, brutal places with substandard food and living conditions. The fact remains that certain minorities have a much higher incarceration rate due to decades of government policy that encouraged the breakup of traditional family units, inhumanely dense public housing, scandalously poor public education, and a de facto prenatal genocide machine that targets a disproportionately high percentage of minority women for massive profits. The infamous Dredd Scott v. Sanford decision denied citizenship to American of African descent. But the Roe v. Wade decision denied babies the classification as even human. I had a professor, the chairman of his department, once who seriously advocated that abortions should be legal up to the age of two years, arguing that it was inhumane to not terminate "an unwanted child." All this speaks volumes regarding those who hypocritically criticize America. They're really no different than the slaveholders of the past. Basically, today's "woke" progressives offer the same benefits and working conditions that plantation owners provided their slaves, namely free food, free housing, free medical care, and guaranteed lifetime employment, except instead of iron chains, they trap people in red tape, programs, and policies. The difference is that the prior to the Civil War, the slave owners and factory owners were more direct about their rationalizations and abuses, while the today's plantation owners: big business, big agriculture, big media, big pharma, big education, big entertainment, and big government are indirect and hypocritical. They get ordinary people to fight each other in order to distract people from the true culprits. Their goals remain the same. While pretending to be more humane, they realize words are cheap, but their system impoverishes and enslaves the majority of people while amassing unimaginable wealth and power for themselves. And now they have the gall to want to advocate removing the Constitution, our only protection from those who want to create more socialist worker's "paradises" such as in Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, D.C. God save us from monsters like these and their drones! -QQuerius_{June 26, 2022
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Am I the only one who thinks that the constitution should be questioned?
I think it should be questioned and amended. It is a document made for its time, not inscribed in stone.Fred Hickson_{June 26, 2022
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So why don’t you go back and try to make a coherent case against what Upright Biped explained to you?
My initial point that RNA World refutes Upright Biped's hypothesis is sufficient. If Upright Biped wants to develop his argument, that is up to him and I've suggested ways that could happen. There's no point in me posting further comments in a buried thread unless he's interested in substantive discussion.Fred Hickson_{June 26, 2022
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Jholo are you a liberal/democratic? If you are I’m pretty sure your party is historically responsible for the civil war, owned slaves, killed Lincoln, Jim Crow laws, and many other excitingly wonderful racist, sexist, and discriminatory things So I really hope your not telling people to question the constitution based on slave owning white men when your whole party is that and then some. It has only been with in the last 80 years that they supposedly started not being the above mentioned thingsAaronS1978_{June 26, 2022
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KF: JH, a pernicious ad hom laced strawman, and you know it
Oh. I apologize. They weren’t white, slave owning landowners that enshrined slavery in the constitution and did not allow blacks, Asians, women, non land owners and indigenous peoples a say in the running of the country? I think the constitution and written history would beg to differ.JHolo_{June 26, 2022
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JH, a pernicious ad hom laced strawman, and you know it. In fact, Jefferson et al had the moral courage to indict themselves and accept that they made hardness of heart compromises that needed to be eventually overcome [e.g. see the built in 20 year clause on slave trade] because they were convinced of certain foundational moral truths underpinning and constituting core built in law which framed a new space for government, a constitutional, lawful republic with significant democratic character. It is their success that then built what you so obviously despise and would discard on a toxic and distorted accusation . That you resort to such tactics implies that you do not have an answer on merits but intend to continue the policy that has produced the worst mass slaughter of innocents in history, 1.4 billion. Do you really intend that mass slaughter of the innocents is acceptable and even a right? That is absurd. So are the many attempts to dehumanise the unbord child, to create a frame under colour of law in which s/he may be freely killed. If I were to use the same disqualification by tainting standard, every advocate of such a policy would be deemed a pariah and silenced. Shame on you. Find a substantial response to what is on the table regarding the poor decision and argument involved in Roe, and/or the concept of a built in moral government that is expressed in branch on which we all sit first principles, and thus first law framing lawful government, or stand exposed as supporting the indefensible by the most crude of fallacies. KFkairosfocus_{June 26, 2022
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The biggest question is why white, slave owning men who have been dead for two centuries can still dictate what women can do. The same men who ensconced slavery in the constitution, and didn’t allow women, Asians, blacks, indigenous peoples and non landowners to have a say in how the country is run. Am I the only one who thinks that the constitution should be questioned?JHolo_{June 26, 2022
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