When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing āstabilizing treatmentā to pregnant patients by performing an abortionāwithholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
The ruling proves what we already know: Roeās demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
Iāve always seen it more that the Roe decision is what happens when an anti-choice majority rules on abortion in āreasonably good faithā, leaving the opening for erosion when a 14th Amendment Decision would have been steelclad. I donāt think they wanted to appease everyone, they just didnāt want to compromise their legal ethics OR their personal morals.
And I guess I donāt think it would have been steeclad because Dobbs wasnāt about leaning around Roe insomuch as saying āRoe was wrongā because āthe fetus is special and should be treated as suchā (paraphrase because Iām too lazy to look up the offending line in Dobbs right now). Bodily Autonomy could easily be overturned by a bad faith judiciary by simply pointing out DUI laws, or even āthe spirit of drug lawsāā¦ OR just saying āthe fetus is specialā the same as they did in Dobbs.
In fact, call me paranoid, but I question whether the current SCOTUS wouldnāt overturn a national abortion protection on States Rights grounds, finding some reason to disqualify the Commerce Clause from being applicable.
This is what we certainly have now, given the recent decisions that are based on facts that are somewhere between cherry picked and outright false. Laws and precedent donāt, and wonāt, matter if theyāre acting in bad faith.
They definitely would. And if the Commerce clause is where Congress finds its grant of authority, they wouldnāt be wrong. Thatās why it bothers me every time someone laments that Dems should have passed a law, as if SCOTUS wouldnāt have struck that too.
Exactly. I liked RBG a lot, and/but I donāt like the way people keep taking her out of context when making wild claims about what we could or should have done to prevent Dobbs.
Before the 1/6 insurrection was a SCOTUS coup. It happened. And the one thing we shouldnāt do is blame the party that wasnāt involved in it.