1703

There appears to be a limit to this Supreme Court’s extremism, thankfully.

1704

Nah, it is just too close to the election. They are afraid of pushing people to the Left.

1705

I remember upthread Timex was saying that he didn’t think there were 5 justices on this that would support fetal personhood, and I disagreed. Apparently I was too pessimistic! For now, at least.

1706

Alito and Thomas don’t give a shit about timing. If they had a chance to enshrine fetal personhood, they would do it.

1707

One of the very small silver linings to Alito’s terrible opinion in Dobbs was that he expressly said personhood should be decided by the legislatures not by the courts. Of course, he has twisted himself in knots before but I’m not surprised by today’s ruling.

Specifically, to say a few months ago “this should be decided by the legislatures” then go 180 now would tarnish the “appearance of respectability” that the GOP judges like to maintain. It’s kind of weird, but the vanity of the hard right justices actually helped on this particular point, for now. In the long run though…

1708

The idea that it’s up to the legislature to decide who is and isn’t a person seems fine and dandy to me. What could go wrong?

1709

3/5 chance you are right

1710

Ho-hoooo!

1711

For the record, I’m not endorsing ANY part of Alito’s argument but am pointing out the degree to which he painted himself into a corner, and is unwilling to step into the paint, at least for now. After the election, I suspect we are going to be seeing a lot of paint getting tracked all over the place by this Court.

1712

Yes, understood. I’m shakin’ my head at Alito, not at you.

1713
1714

Eggs are really expensive so America is probably going to give them that chance.

1715

People often forget that he is a christofascist.

1716

All the people on death row will be happy to hear about the GOP’s new dedication to the sanctity of life!

1717

An Austin woman nearly dies of sepsis due to abortion laws:

The near-total ban on abortion in Texas meant that the doctors couldn’t do anything to remove the unviable fetus unless Amanda’s life was at risk. She would either have to get sick enough for doctors to intervene, or miscarry on her own. And Amanda and Josh had no way of knowing how long they’d have to suffer.

1718

This is what our founding fathers intended.

1719

From sea to shining sea.

1720

This is the right way to answer a gotcha question like that.

1721

Just a reminder b/c the media has done a crap job of explaining this but Roe v. Wade is a compromise result on abortion that provided for largely unrestricted right to abortion in the first trimester, some limitations on abortions that don’t unduly restrict the right in the second trimester, and fairly substantial restrictions in the third trimester. For example, what the US right decries as “partial birth abortions” (a terrible and misleading name) can in fact be restricted under Roe v. Wade and were in many states.

I continue to feel the structure of Roe remains a reasonable compromise but the right has never accepted it, which is the problem.

Now it is true that some states have much greater abortion rights than Roe, as CA is about to codify with Prop 1 (which I plan on voting for as an FU to Alito.) But I can say that if a national agreement to the Roe v. Wade model were proposed which would be a “final settlement” of the matter nationally, then I would be willing to agree to that.

1722

Something along the lines of Roe is the only workable solution, IMO.