I wonder why this data can't just be stored locally on the device? Unless you want to share it with other devices you own, it should be trivial to do so. Perhaps Apple and Google with their walled gardens can enact a data privacy and storage requirement for apps? Any personal data that is being collected should remain local to the app in encrypted storage. Furthermore it should be able to be viewable by the end-user and also deleted at anytime. Remote access to this data should also be limited if not prohibited.
> can enact a data privacy and storage requirement for apps?
Sure they can. But they're probably making money from the arrangement somehow. At least the app publishing fee, but possibly also all data going through their APIs.
Volunteers reverse-engineered Bluetooth scales and created all the dashboard you could ever want, and it can export CSV. A company can make the app have a dashboard.
Rather than let unnamed third parties target ads through my weight, I would have returned my scale had this not existed:
We need to drop the "my body my choice" cliche. The entire crux of the disagreement is whether it is really just your body, or whether it is two bodies.
If pregnant women have bodily autonomy, then it is their body and their choice. The argument is whether a fetus has the right to use another person’s body against their own will.
Otherwise we’re saying that bodily autonomy is not absolute and it’s OK to use people’s body’s against their wishes.
If a woman must use her body to give life to the baby inside her, then I really don’t think it’s that big of leap to a situation where someone is compelled to give a kidney to save a life. After all, we’ve conceded that people can be compelled to use their bodies in ways they don’t desire to.
This line of thought has been elaborated under a theory called evictionism [1]. Evictionists concede personhood of a fetus, but reject its right to reside in a womb without consent of the owner of the womb. The logic seems sound, but leads to conclusions which are objectionable by current mainstream moral standards (for example, allowing extremely late term abortions for non-medical reasons [2]).
> The logic seems sound, but leads to conclusions which are objectionable by current mainstream moral standards (for example, allowing extremely late term abortions for non-medical reasons.
With evictions in the post-birth world, we generally require some notice before the actual eviction. I have a hard time imagining that we would not do so for pre-birth evictions considering that the consequences to the evictee are much more severe.
Set that notice time to N months and you have then effectively prohibited abortions in the last N months of the pregnancy.
On the other hand, that may be pointless. If a landlord evicts someone without proper notice has the landlord committed a crime or just given the evictee a cause for civil action?
If it is just civil action then this approach wouldn't work for limiting late term abortions under evictionism because the injured party would be dead. Normally in the case of a dead pre-adult it would be up to the parents to sue, but since the mother would be the defendant she can't sue herself.
There is presumably a father though. If he didn't agree to the abortion maybe he could sue? That's a whole different can of worms in general--it takes two to create a pregnancy, so should both have a say in termination? If so what are the results when they cannot agree on whether or not to terminate?
> There is presumably a father though. If he didn't agree to the abortion maybe he could sue? That's a whole different can of worms in general--it takes two to create a pregnancy, so should both have a say in termination? If so what are the results when they cannot agree on whether or not to terminate?
Before birth, he may sue for his sperm, or the equivalent, back. The truth is before birth absolutely nothing is physiologically required of the father. Yes, there’s clearly a cultural role for the father before birth, but that’s not actually necessary for the woman to give birth. They really don’t enter into the equation. After birth, sure, there’s plenty of precedent for that and I won’t argue that here.
Regarding evictionism, I have to admit that I too find the idea of very late term, elective abortions distasteful. However, the act of giving birth itself is very dangerous for women, so just because her pregnancy has been without complication doesn’t mean she won’t die giving birth.
Being pregnant can kill you. Giving birth can kill you. Birth and pregnancy are mortal dangers. We need to let women choose themselves over their baby if that’s what they desire.
And of course the truth is most will choose to have the baby. If reducing the number of abortions was ever the real goal we’d have free contraception for everyone and the state would pay for all pre-natal and birthing medical expenses.
There’d still be some, but there’d be far, far fewer.
> Being pregnant can kill you. Giving birth can kill you. Birth and pregnancy are mortal dangers. We need to let women choose themselves over their baby if that’s what they desire.
A live birth is much less dangerous than the flu so this isn't really a good argument. I agree that women should be able to commit abortions, at least for the first trimester or so, but I wouldn't say that the danger of live birth is a good motivation for it. The most important reason is to give women who aren't ready to be mothers yet more time to prepare so they are ready and actually want the child before they give birth.
Your questions prompted me to skim through Walter Block's exposition of evictionism [1]. There is a sense of what constitutes a reasonable, gentle, eviction.
"From these examples is derived the principle that when one evicts a
trespasser, or deals with any other violator of rights, one is obliged to do so
in a certain way; it must be done in the least invasive manner possible
consistent with upholding property rights. If a trespasser is on your lawn
and you have a bazooka, you are not entitled to blow him away - not as a first step in any case. That is far too extreme and incompatible with the
doctrine of private property rights. The homeowner has the right to make
sure that the outsider does not trespass further, but he must be evicted in
the gentlest manner possible." -pages 21-22
When there is no possible gentle eviction, due to technological or other circumstantial limitations, Walter Block believes that one can evict even when the sure consequence is death of the tenant.
"Based on the private property rights philosophy, the individual then had the right to evict the trespasser in the most gentle manner possible. If there was no gentle manner feasible, an individual's property rights to her womb transcend the so-called "right to life" of anyone else." -page 22
It looks like the world "gentle" is doing a lot of work here. One could claim, in the spirit of your comment, that a 9 month notice period for eviction is required for gentleness. In an even more bizarre twist, one could argue that an abortion is only gentle when the fetus would be then transferred to a life support system that could bring it to full term. With today's technology, this would imply an earliest date for abortion instead of a deadline. Walter Block does not, in my opinion, clarify the issue of gentleness enough in the document to settle the issue.
I think a major flaw in evictions is the concept of invitation.
You cant invite someone out on a boat ride and then evict them while out at sea in the "most gentle manner feasible". The degree to which conception equates to invitation is certainly debatable, but it is an elephant in the room.
Similarly, if the trespass is allowed for long enough, questions of adverse possession and de facto easements come into play.
Fine, then the fetus has the right to vacate the womb and gestate in someone willing.
The fetus can’t be given rights to the mother’s blood or use of her body, otherwise that sets a pretty dangerous precedent. If abortions can be outlawed, why not vasectomies? Or chemotherapy?
My point is it doesn’t matter the status of the fetus. It’s about the right of pregnant women to have autonomy over their body.
What is bodily autonomy? Most crimes are committed with the body in some form or another. What if I stab a knife in the air and somebody happens to be standing there? Thus it seems that the limit of my bodily autonomy ends where another person's rights begin.
The thing is that a lot of people think that a fetus is a person with rights. If a fetus is a person with rights then bodily autonomy doesn't quite apply. The bodily autonomy angle seems more of an escape hatch to sidestep the subjective and unsolvable issue of whether or not fetuses are people and have rights.
Put simply: the right to decide what goes into and comes out of your body.
Your knife example has nothing to do with your bodily autonomy. It’s why you can’t be forced to donate a kidney or why you can choose to get a vasectomy.
Don't we already compel people to use their bodies in ways that may be against their wishes?
Let's say I have a 1 month old. Pretty much everyone would agree I'm not allowed to murder that baby. However, I also need to care for the baby? What happened to my bodily autonomy? Why can't I fly out to vegas for a weekend and leave the baby at home to fend for itself? I have to be a ward for this little blob? Or I have to go out of my way and waste my time to find someone to care for it?
Why is it my job to keep this thing alive? Why will I be punished if I neglect that job?
Excuse me, where exactly is my bodily freedom in that instance? I need to go out of my way to do something with my body, just so someone else will live? We've concluded that that is wrong.
> Bodily integrity is the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination of human beings over their own bodies
I would say that part of having "self-determination of human beings over their bodies" is where their bodies are and what their bodies are doing.
But fine, we can just talk about tons of other laws which don't support the concept of bodily autonomy, like anti-drug laws, seat belt and helmet laws, etc.
> By you argument, prisons should not exist.
No, my argument is that bodily autonomy isn't a fully guaranteed concept in our legal system. A prison is exactly another example of the case, not only the main use of the prison, but also forced invasive strip searches there, forced blood draws, etc.
I was told I didn't understand a concept, so I went to the obvious place to get a primer on the subject. Do you have a better method I can learn about the rights of bodily autonomy in the US legal system?
I will state my point directly:
To me, arguing that a person has no obligation to care for an unborn human they created is no different than arguing that a person has no obligation to care for a 1 month old they created. I don't see the process of birth as some factor in determining whether someone is a human or not. Please note this is entirely separate from the concept of when someone is a human. I'm all for abortions of non-human-yet things should the mother be desirous.
> To me, arguing that a person has no obligation to care for an unborn human they created is no different than arguing that a person has no obligation to care for a 1 month old they created.
Except, in our society you do not have that obligation. Just leave them at the hospital.
Of course, you will have to create odd situations where this doesn't work to support your flawed argument, because you're a luddite and have a smol brain.
There are FUCKING ZERO situations outside of abortion where you can give up your care for the baby while pregnant, nevermind the many other differences where pregnancy is much more serious for the mother than having a 1mo old.
Are you seriously telling me you can't use whatever braincells you have left to come up with a few situations where a woman pregnant with a child and a born child are different? Really?
There's a book by Rothbard, I think it is his "The Ethics of Liberty", where he describes a set of libertarian principles and then how he thinks a society could be made based on those principles. What makes it interesting is that he tries very hard to not have to compromise those libertarian principles, following them even if they go to some places he agrees are pretty dark and trying to explain what would prevent that from happening.
He covers the issue of parents having to care for children and concludes that they would not be legally required to do so. Go ahead and go to Vegas for a weekend and if the baby can't figure out how to survive on its own that's not legally your problem.
His argument for why this would not lead to the large number of baby deaths by neglect that probably most people reading this are sure it would is that adoption would not be regulated in his ideal libertarian state. There would be a totally free market in babies. You could make a lot more than you'd ever win in Vegas in a weekend by first putting your unwanted baby up for sale.
I don't find his arguments very convincing, but it is interesting if you treat it more as an intellectual puzzle than how you would actually set up a society.
Are there any circumstances where you would be OK with compelled organ donation?
For instance suppose someone needs a kidney to save their life and I am the only possible donor and suppose the reason they need a kidney is that I deliberately and without their permission did something that I knew had a significant risk of leading to someone needing a kidney.
I don't know if I should be compelled in that case to give a kidney, but it seems reasonable for there to be legal pressure on me to do so (such as facing some kind of homicide charge if I do not on they die).
I think a reasonable argument can be made that I should have taken that into account before doing something that destroyed their kidneys.
If I've wrongfully created a situation where either an innocent person will certainly die or I have a risk of dying (under 0.06% for kidney donation) how is it fair or right that they die?
What if I deliberately poison someone in an attempt to murder them, but botch it so that instead of quickly killing them it just damages their kidneys to point that they will die without a transplant, and I'm the only compatible potential donor?
Wasn't my wrecking their kidneys a breach of their bodily autonomy? Why shouldn't I be required to give up some of my own bodily autonomy to reverse much of the damage I did to their bodily autonomy?
No one was forcibly vaccinated. The use of incentives and disincentives to encourage vaccination can certainly be debated, but no had a vaccine forced into their body against their will.
Plenty of people are still not vaccinated by choice.
This is not quite correct. Some people were vaccinated against their will. Some old folks homes in the EU vaccinated residents even if they did not consent, for example.
Everything I’ve said is about the US in particular. What you described would almost certainly be illegal in the US, unless the care home had power of attorney over the residents in question.
An employer forcing employees to be vaccinated is nothing else as people may be dependent on the income. This is not an argument against abortion, it is an argument against "my body my choice" line. In the vaccination case that would be true but the discussion around abortion is the premise that there are two competing interests which the argument neglects.
Yeah. I was being a bit hyperbolic. But there was lots of talk about ways to force vaccination. Including mandates for keeping your job (both in the public and private sector). You might say that a private company can do what they want (and the libertarian in me says yes) but then you need to be consistent on the other side - remember the uproar when Hobby Lobby said they didn’t want to pay for insure that provided abortion services?
I’m really not taking sides here, I’m just pointing out that we should strive for self-consistency in our government regulations. And either you have a right to your body or you don’t. You can’t pick and choose.
Nothing is absolute. You don't have the right to walk around naked. Sometimes your body autonomy is taken away in some scenarios. I don't think the vaccines should be one. Just because people talked about how to encourage vaccines being taken and were upset they were forced to work with unvaccinated coworkers doesn't mean anti abortion policies are good. You're just a troll.
I think they are indeed similar and a framework would be needed to separate them. I'm open to the idea that they are similar but have meaningful differences.
A significant portion of the US doesn't think there is a meaningful distinction.
They are not similar. Primarily because having to take care of a kid doesn't mean you are forced to carry them inside you. Also at least in the US you can drop your baby off at any hospital no questions asked. So not similar at all. You're uneducated or trolling.
If you need me to explain now these are different things you're the problem.
No need for the hostility. At a minimum they are similar in that they are all compulsions to take action and limitations on personal autonomy. I never said they were the same.
You can drop a baby at a hospital, but you can't drop them in the trash.
That’s very different. Being compelled to take some action is very different than being compelled to remove a part of your body or to put something into it, or to give a part of your body to someone else.
The actual disagreement is whether individuals should have the right to enjoy their own sexual freedom. The religious right says "no." The cases we're going to see the Supreme Court tear apart are about abortion, contraception, gay marriage, etc. Sexual rights.
They believe: Marriage is between a man and a woman only. Sex is for procreation only between married couples. And the only reason someone would need an abortion is because she either had sex out of wedlock like a harlot, got herself raped, had an affair, or something else untoward. As such, she deserves punishment, not the baby (and definitely not the man). Contraception only helps women get away with this stuff.
And if you think this stuff all weirdly leans towards giving the man in the relationship full control: Bingo. I'm sure these assholes will eventually get around to picking apart Title IX and women's suffrage if they get through their starter list, here.
So, no, the crux of the argument isn't the number of bodies involved one or two — it's whether adult Americans, with the full fundamental freedoms of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" should be allowed to have sex how they want and with whom they want.
The abortion part is the only part that really gets traction, which is why that's what they focus on.
That's why the religious right cares about it and not the dozens of other things they could be focusing on to save lives — from gun control to universal healthcare to environmental conservation. They won't budge on that shit.
But abortion, this one relatively narrow, highly-specific thing. That they're all over. Why?
> That's why the religious right cares about it and not the dozens of other things they could be focusing on to save lives — from gun control to universal healthcare to environmental conservation. They won't budge on that shit.
1. You're talking about a coalition like it was one person monomaniacally organized around one idea, which us unlikely to give true insight about that coalition.
2. It also feels that you likely have a distorted view (e.g. taking a oversimple slogan, interpreting it through your views, then misunderstanding the people who use it by imposing your interpretation on them).
3. Also, there are likely subsets of that coalition that actually believe very close to how you think they should (e.g. my impression is the Catholic Church is pretty close).
Fine, then that other body can survive without the first, and be the ward of the state, paid for by tax dollars.
The entire disagreement is a made up political wedge that is held by a minority of a particular religion which for the most part is actually against their very own holy book. A book that is full of actual "baby" killing and not just lumps of unborn cells which actually weren't recognized by any religions as a "baby" until someone decided to apply their "go forth and multiply" attitude which also bans all forms of birth control, as well as sex for any purpose other than reproduction.
And in the end, its terrible policy, and will do nothing to reduce actual abortions. Given it only slightly inconveniences those with means, and likely results in an even worse maternal death rates as women are pushed to the point of mortal jeopardy before being provided health care (and if you don't think a large number of the terminations are due to either failures of fetus to develop properly/etc then your living in a larger fantasy) as is happening in TX now. A place where there are actual legislators suggesting that women having abortions should now be given the death penalty.
OP isn't arguing for or against abortions, he is arguing about these soundbites that get banded around in lieu of more nuanced debate.
Calling the anti-abortion croud a 'minority of a particular religion' I think is also an understatement - according to polling c40% of Americans would consider themselves 'Pro-Life' (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx). IMHO it's better to 'strong-man' the other sides arguments (I think you are over simplifying the pro-life viewpoint and are too quick to dismiss their views - let's remember that neither side has an absolute moral truth, and that it's possible to be educated, rational and pro-life).
I personally absolutely support a woman's right to get an abortion, and am from the UK, but looking from afar at the debate in the USA it seems more like a war of slogans than a rational discussion.
But 58% of Americans didn't want Roe v. Wade overturned, while only 35% did, which widens the decision's unpopularity even more (again, according to a Gallup poll):
Like with any culture war issue anywhere, it reaches the point where, whether actively or due to escalation, rational discussion does not survive in an environment where the stakes become personalized. It's wishful to lament how people aren't talking about this rationally but because of escalation the only way to get your message out effectively is to, unfortunately, distill it as hard as you can. I don't think anyone knows how to effectively defuse this situation, so it's just a horrible catch-22.
The UK is, of course, not immune to this on its own culture war issues.
I find the wording of "pro life" and "pro choice" in polls problematic and doesn't necessarily correlate with view points on roe vs wade. In particular "pro life" doesn't directly address if abortion should be legal.
I know several people that are "pro life" in the sense that they would not get an abortion themselves. They call themselves "pro life". But they also don't try to restrict the choices of others and don't think abortions should be illegal.
- Do you think abortions should be determined by legislature rather than the judiciary?
(i.e. Roe vs Wade was tenuous from a legal perspective, and IMO a supreme court shouldn't be able to make it's own laws up which I think this veered into, even though I 100% agree with a woman's right to abortions!).
40% is a minority, and those are people who consider themselves "pro-life" which isn't exactly the same as the number that think abortions are bad, but should remain legal. I'm to lazy to look that up (and the numbers are nuanced) but its was a lot closer to 25% thought it should be illegal.
AKA there are plenty of "conservatives" who are horrified by the decision.
> I don't see why people who adhere to the first interpretation should stop articulating their position.
I think OP's point was that they should articulate their position rather than rely on soundbites, particularly soundbites that can be interpreted in multiple ways.
For instance, 'My Body, My Right' could also be a slogan for allowing very late-term abortions.
And why shouldn't they. A common religious definition of life, is a birthed babies first breath. A fairly reasonable scientific take might be independent viability outside the womb.
Largely because most late term abortions were the result of nonviable pregnancies. The laws in many of these states have already made that an uncomfortable proposition as women were given the choice of trying to bring obviously defective pregnancies to term, stillbirth is still a thing, and is particularly high in many of the sh$&thole states where women don't have good prenatal care.
I personally saw what it did to a woman I knew personally a few years ago. Due to TX's incredibly stupid laws, when the ultrasounds came back that the baby basically didn't have 1/2 a brain, sever spina bifida, and a few other details I don't remember. The woman was given the choice of trying to carry it to term at risk to her life, or abort it. And due to the timing, literally had to decide that day, then had to listen to its heartbeat, and listen to a bunch state mandated christian propaganda, sit around for 24 hours and then was allowed to terminate. All this bullshit magnified her sorrow. Losing a child one wants is bad enough, having to put up with a bunch of state mandated bullshit designed to make you feel bad and f*&k with your head? Criminal.
Without those laws, she probably would have waited at least a couple days to come to terms with the whole thing. I'm guessing some women in less clear cut circumstances might have waited to see how it develops until it was obviously nonviable resulting in a later term abortion.
The real criminals here are the ones in the legislature, and should be held responsible for the pain and suffering they cause.
The slogans are sometimes a bit like barnum-statements too.
i.e. They are designed so anyone can read them and fit their already held beliefs onto them. There is a some kind of interpretation of 'My Body, My Right' that can fit to almost any view on the whole political spectrum.
They shouldn't, but they need to stop acting like it's a rebuttal of the other position.
This is a huge part of the "debate". The two sides aren't even talking about the same issue because they haven't agreed on common language defining what the issue even is.
Why? Conservatives use the word 'life' in exactly the same way. It's not reasoned debate (which has been had ad nauseam) but argumentum ad baculum. Slogans exist for people to assert what they stand for in a recognizable way, without getting drawn into dead-end arguments by bad faith debaters.
There isn't a 'correct' answer you can just reason your way to when conflicts of values are involved, because people with different value systems have different initial premises.
Fair enough - I guess my comment was based on my experience that I usually see it used as an attempt to convince others, not as an attempt to describe their own viewpoints.
> whether it is really just your body, or whether it is two bodies
Not really. That’s a pseudo-philosophical framing that anti-abortionists prefer, because it hides the real world consequence of their little thought experiment: forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies, and to raise unwanted children.
“One vs two body” is little more than semantics. Fact is, carrying pregnancies and raising the resulting child is the heaviest burden that a citizen can ever carry for the state. The state has no way to adequately compensate the citizen for such service, so instead they offer the freedom of choice. That’s the implicit social contract behind abortion policies; it’s got nothing to do with anyone’s metaphysical interpretation of a pregnant woman’s anatomy.
I've often asked, what defines a human life? It's a fairly difficult question when trying to be consistent with other areas of life. The viability standard before was pretty good. Even then you had inconsistent laws that punished someone for double murder prior to that date, and even if they couldn't possibly know of the pregnancy.
I don't think that's the entire crux. Thomson's violinist thought experiment is another big part of the debate, and "my body my choice" is a pretty fair way to describe one of the positions people take on that thought experiment.
I think the way they are going about it is counterproductive to actual privacy reform.
Basically they are associating privacy rights with abortion which will make this bill a dead end in the Senate. No Republican can sign onto this bill without being accused of supporting abortion.
Given the filibuster in the Senate, this bill is more about messaging and fundraising than actually trying to pass a bill.
I completely agree. I get where they are coming from, but this is a great way to loose the current bipartisan momentum against big tech, and change it into another wedge issue.
West Virginia is one of the most conservative states. It is a huge anomaly that they actually have a Democratic senator. There is no way Manchin tries to lift the filibuster for anything supporting abortion. Actually, I would guess he rather likes the filibuster as it keeps him from having to actually vote on a lot of controversial issues.
I'm not trying to win anyone over. The Supreme Court didn't strike down just a woman's right to bodily autonomy. They argued that people do not have the fundamental right to privacy, and state governments who want to know every single little thing that you do online are going to use this decision to argue that they should have access to your data without a subpoena or your consent, so I do hope that you are aligned with your political betters.
So should the same bill also make vaccine requirements federally illegal?
“Bodily autonomy” is a vague and nebulous concept. And it’s also another way to show one’s bias because to a pro-life person abortion is a violation of the unborn child’s bodily autonomy.
You wouldn’t talk about being able to commit murder as an exercise of bodily autonomy on the part of the murderer. And again to someone pro-life that’s going to be directly analogous to how they view abortion.
Doesn't matter how they view abortion. We already know how they regard fetuses. They are non-persons except in this narrow context according to their own lawmakers for the purposes of waging a culture war that literally didn't exist until Republicans made protecting segregation a part of their party's platform in the late 70s and tied abortion along with it as part of their "moral majority."
When's the last time someone received extra child-care benefits for a fetus? How about SNAP benefits? When's the last time you were able to claim a fetus on your taxes in anti-choce states? Seems awfully strange that people who claim they care so much do so little.
>Given the filibuster in the Senate, this bill is more about messaging and fundraising than actually trying to pass a bill.
Based on previous actions, should the Rs take control of the Senate, they will remove the filibuster. And if they then lose control, they will take a page out of Wisconsin's playbook[0] (ultimately unsuccessfully[1]) and put it back before the Ds take control again.
I don’t think they will actually remove the filibuster.
Most of the things Republicans care about such as cutting taxes and confirming judges can be done without the filibuster (see reconciliation and how the filibuster is no longer for judges).
For the Democrats, much of what they want to do is vulnerable to filibuster, so the Republicans will act like the legislative filibuster is sacrosanct, since it doesn’t really birth them and cripples the Democrats.
Today's innocuous data is tomorrow's political target.
I don't want law enforcement having _any_ of my health/medical data. Without an even playing field this can turn into another "privacy for me but not for thee" situation.
My wife had a (legal at the time, medically-administered) abortion as a teenager, which effectively put her on a List of Fetal Murderers.
She is now terrified that abortion will be made retroactively illegal and she will be captured by bounty hunters. Her family's generational experiences with other Lists didn't end so well for them.
I'd tell her the retroactive thing is silly and has never happened before, but precedent no longer seems to be a factor in Supreme Court decisions so I can't help but feel I'm telling a German Jew in 1935 that she's being silly and there's nothing to worry about.
I slept through political science, but I'm awake enough to notice that what's been going on in other contexts lately is that a state will pass a law (constitutional or not) and just start acting on it.
For its constitutionality to be challenged, it has to be escalated all the way to the Supreme Court. This can take years, does not happen for free, and in the end, the trolls who sit on the Supreme Court retain the right to refuse to hear it.
Roe vs Wade has been in legal conservative crosshairs since it was decided. There is no movement by anyone to undermine the prohibition on ex post facto laws. These two things are very, very different in how legally well-founded they are in the eyes of conservatives.
I know this decision is awful for many people and has created justified anger, but this isn't the Anschluss. The people who did this aren't trying to destroy every venerated legal structure in the country to impose their will.
Not saying it's 100% impossible for some crazy thing to happen, your wife's anxiety is understandable, but I think a bit of perspective could help avoid needless panic.
I would also remember that Trump's bid to disregard the election was shut down in part by judges he appointed. Legal conservatives do actually want to conserve the legal traditions of the country, for the most part.
I haven't seen any that would suggest I should see the current SCOTUS as an arbitrary monster with no respect for any legal structure.
Are we able to draw a distinction between people who have a perspective we profoundly disagree with - even despise - and utterly ruthless, insane monsters?
That prevents new laws from being applied retroactively.
What would happen if a state law against abortion already existed before Roe vs Wade. It has been unenforceable, but was never repealed by state legislature. Would it be legal to retroactively enforce that law now?
I know my state had such laws, and there was a push to get them repealed after Barrett was appointed. Don't know if retroactive enforcement was a concern or just future enforcement.
Congress is prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by clause 3 of Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution. The states are prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by clause 1 of Article I, Section 10.
If it was, we'd still be under Plessy v. Ferguson.
But unlike abortion, protection from ex post facto laws wasn't determined by a judge to be a right. It's written very plainly in the Constitution itself, and I'm very confident that won't change within my lifetime.
Texas recently showed us how to make a law that gets around the Constitution. I don't think I'd feel safe quoting phrases from the Constitution and assuming they actually protect anyone.
It's clear that Congress doesn't want to solve the bigger problems here. This is token legislation that will not be passed anyway, so the fact that it's only limited to reproductive rights and not all data (not to mention, like, federally legalizing abortion?) indicates that they aren't even interested in token gestures beyond the absolute bare minimum to grab a headline.
Across the country there are data privacy advocates who are shaking their heads that, despite their best efforts to raise awareness of why privacy and digital security affects EVERYONE, it takes the abortion debate and questions about whether law enforcement will look at your period tracker app's data to determine if you're looking to get an abortion...
I guess better late then never. Hopefully this will really encourage people to take privacy and data security seriously.
So why aren't they just regulating abortion at the federal level? If they have the votes for this, they should be able to put something together that allows regulated abortion similar to the level prior to the ruling. They had the votes on gun control recently. I assume some of those supporters are along similar social policies lines for this.
At the most basic level, its because they don't a filibuster proof number of votes for it. Additionally, any attempt to regulate abortion at the federal level may be struck down in the supreme court, as the ruling suggests abortion rights are a state level decision.
I thought the ruling suggested that it just return to the legislative branch, not specifically the states. I have a hard time seeing how they can regulate stuff like the affordable care act and everything else but not this. At the very least they could put a modest tax on it and then use that tax for medical related grants.
BTW that is filibuster proof if using their remaining budget reconciliation passage for this (a hack, but it seems hacks are how everything gets done).
> I assume some of those supporters are along similar social policies lines for this.
There's only 100 senators, and of those senators, the majority is just "50" (because the vice president is a tie breaker), and in that majority, at least one senator, if not two, live in heavily red states and don't always agree with their democratic colleagues. But, even barring that, the filibuster rules make it difficult to pass anything, even with a majority, because you actually need enough votes for a cloture vote to stop debate.
Technically speaking yes, we could just pass legislation at the federal level to solve a lot of issues. Practically speaking, passing legislation at the federal level has been a complete challenge for both parties in recent times. When Trump was president, a coordinated effort called SwingLeft systematically secured a majority in the House specifically to win legislative control, for example. It is likely that in the next election cycle, a similar effort will occur due to redistricting, which will likely give the house to the republican party, thus making legislation equally difficult (because the president is a democrat, congress will be republican or deadlocked). If you go back far enough, this is the type of thing that stymied Obama. I don't know if it happened with Bush, but it's relatively easy to, for lack of a better term, deadlock congress because of its unique election rules and vote distributions.
But there are RINO Republicans as well. I assume there's no problem hitting 50 votes. It was only a few weeks ago they were suggesting to use budget reconciliation to pass gun control via a tax to bypass the filibuster. If this is such a big issue, then I don't see why they wouldn't use it for this.
I do see that it could just swing back if things change.
