On the first day of its new term, the U.S. Supreme Court in an unsigned opinion upheld a lower court ruling that enforces Texas’ ban on certain emergency abortions. The Biden administration had sought to overturn the ban and enforce its policy requiring hospitals to perform the emergency, potentiall...
We have 3 Justices on the court because of *the party that did nothing." Nothing short of a Constitutional amendment at this point will "codify" abortion rights in the eyes of the right. We need to get SCOTUS back.
As if these zealots wouldn't have ruled it unconstitutional or slowly weakend it with a series of cases anyway. See recent decisions gutting Voting Rights Act, weakening the Clean Water Act, Campaign Reform Act of 2002, Dodd-Frank and other federal laws.
Look, republicans suck ass, it’s true. But if Dems had codified Roe into law either time they had the supermajority (two chances in the last 20 years), then the corrupt SC wouldn’t have been able to do jack shit. If dems had any integrity, they would shoulder a significant amount of the blame for this issue, because they had their chance and deemed it “not a priority.”
Sure, Dems absolutely should have codified it. However, a federal law protecting abortion rights as health care against the religious freedom of a regional Catholic hospital's beliefs not to save a mother's life with an abortion would be the test case and I'm pretty sure I know how 5 of the Justices would vote. This SCOTUS know they have unchecked power and are no longer afraid to wield it.
Would be interesting to see that play out fully. Here’s hoping we get the chance to do so in the next few years. Its so heartbreaking that so many women are suffering/dying because of these regressive policy positions.
I'll never, ever forget the very first thing Democrats did when Republicans successfully overturned Roe.
They sent out a mass text asking for $15 donations because of what had just happened.
They had that shit ready to go immediately. Maybe if they had put a fraction of that preparation into having legislation ready to go, they wouldn't have wasted their opportunities to protect Americans' rights.
But at least they did for the only thing that matters. Fundraising.
Republicans were trying to overturn Roe for half a century. Best Democrats were willing to do in response was to cynically regard it as a fundraising opportunity.
So what I'm hearing is if Democrats had codified it, Republicans would have come along and got it struck down. But to fix the problem we need to elect more Democrats to get it codified?
No one else sees the circular reasoning behind this?
As a Canadian, I'd like to ask you a couple of things.
What exactly does it mean to codify something?
Two, why can't the Federal Gov put out a set of standards and say, "If you want Federal money for your healthcare systems, you have to meet these standards. If you don't want to, that's fine, but in that case you get get nothing from us."
That's essentially how it works in Canada between our Federal gov and the Provinces, granted Canadian Provinces are less powerful than American states, but the power of the purse should still be the same, yes?
That’s how the minimum age for purchasing tobacco used to work in the US; if states wanted a specific chunk of federal funding, their minimum age had to be set to at least 18.
Yeah, Dems had this crazy idea that Republicans wouldn't just straight go against the will of most Americans. But it seems to be their MO now, so ya, more Dems would be better, because now we know we need to codidy everything because Republicans have no problem destroying the common man for a buck.
Decades ago, the parties were much different than today. There were pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats. Only one time in recent (2000+) memory did the Dems ever have the 60 votes necessary for codifying Roe. They used that two-ish week window to pass the ACA.
And that's not even touching on the differing public approval of abortion.
The ACA which should be noted was desperately needed at the time unlike Roe which was known to be at risk but not nearly as immediate.
I’m not happy Roe is dead. The fact is though that without a constitutional amendment Roe was always on borrowed time with the constant attacks on it, and I don’t believe that there is any time after the issuance of the bill of rights that an amendment protecting abortion would work, and in the form of the bill of rights it would’ve had to be a robust privacy amendment that just happened to protect abortion.
They used that two-ish week window to pass the ACA.
The ACA was passed in March 2010. Obama took office more than a year earlier. The bill to codify Roe was written in 2003, all that it needed was a vote, which Pelosi refused.
No revisionist history. Pelosi refused to bring it to the floor because she didn't have the votes. There's lots of stuff to criticize her on, but whipping and vote counting aren't that.
Do you remember 2000 - 2006? We had the Republicans floating and pushing anti-marriage freedom constitutional amendments. They controlled the House, Senate, and White House. Republicans controlled the 107th, 108th, and 109th congresses. So while Pelosi could have proposed the Act, there's no guarantee Hastert (the Republican Speaker) would have even have allowed that on the floor.
She refused a vote while SHE was speaker. And if you remember correctly it was Bill Clinton that signed DOMA with Pelosi as House leader which restricted our marriages.
Introduced in the House as H.R. 3396 by Bob Barr (R–GA) on May 7, 1996.
Committee consideration by House Judiciary.
Passed the House on July 12, 1996 (342–67).
Passed the Senate on September 10, 1996 (85–14).
Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 21, 1996.
I don't know if you know this or not. I should hope you do, because it's a fundamental part of our democracy...but a presidents veto power is not absolute. Veto could be overridden with 2/3 vote in house and Senate, which they clearly had support for.
Yeah the house and Senate were (barely) dem controlled at the time...but Bill Clinton is clearly the wrong scapegoat for DOMA.
Right, if she didn't have the votes, she wouldn't bring it to the floor. Simple as that. She didn't not bring it up because she wasn't supportive of the LGBT+ community.
And bringing up DOMA, which was passed in 1996, at least get your facts straight. Republicans controlled the House when DOMA was passed. Pelosi was not the Democratic leader in the House then; that was Dick Gephart. Yes, Clinton signed it. However, there was much more public support for the bill then.
Up until the court decided to start ignoring centuries of legal tradition that is the bedrock of our legal system and threw out stare decisis the decision was actually more secure than a specific law.
Any law codifying it can be challenged on many grounds, especially the 10th amendment. It could easily have been struck down as unconstitutional because the federal government has no power to pass a law affecting this issue, since the constitution doesn't grant it.
Only a constitutional amendment would have been likely to survive a court willing to do what this one has done, and there is zero possibility the Democrats could have passed one.
Several members of Congress thought a law was good enough, Obama thought it was good enough when he promised to sign the freedom of choice act on day one in office. Then 3 months later said it was no longer a legislative priority.
Sorry, are you upset I defined a goal of "what would be required" instead of your goal of "why didn't they do something that would have been literally impossible?"
I'm guessing that's in reference to your reply to someone else about messages going out asking for donations after the supreme court decision? That may be in poor taste, I'll grant you, bug doesn't change the fact that it still wasn't the democrats that made the decision in the first place.
If Person A punches Person B, and Person C could have stopped it, I would still blame Person A for throwing the punch.