6457

Maybe, but there isn’t really any clear sign of that here:

6458

Now do Joe Donnelly… ;)

6459

Can someone believe that abortion is not a right protected by the constitution and not be motivated by religion?

I think that you can make a compelling case that the right to an abortion is not found in the constitution on straight legal argument. Personally, I think abortion is a right guaranteed by the constitution, because I believe in a broad reading of Constitutional protections for individual autonomy and appreciate common law constitutional development.

That being said, I don’t see how you could be a originalist/textualist and find a right to abortion in the Constitution.

6460

Doing what? All I’m saying is that ACB will be seated and there’s nothing Senate Democrats can do about it. Losing that battle will be demoralizing even if it’s inevitable.

6461

I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure that versions of abort drugs were used by the folks in the time of the writing of the constitution. They just didn’t put it in there. Even in the 1700s it was a thing. Perhaps they didn’t consider it a big deal?

Hell, they were used in the times of the Romans and the Egyptians.

6462

For sure. The originalist argument would be that, like many things, the Founders (and more importantly for this argument, the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment) would have left the decision about the legality of abortion to the states.

I’m not saying the originalist position is right. I strongly disagree with originalism as a school
of interpretation. I’m just saying the argument (a) isn’t insane and (b) doesn’t only make sense if you are religious.

Amy Coney Barrett is a bad pick because she is going to do bad things when elevated to the Supreme Court. It makes more sense to focus on the bad things she will do than whether her particular Christian sect has scary sounding names for its adherents. I feel like more voters care that she is going to vote to overturn Roe and the ACA.

6463

Think whatever you want about them. It’s when you pre-judge or devalue people who hold them that you become a bigot.

Thanks for articulating this, Nesrie. This is the only valid approach if you want to respect religion as believers practice it. There are few values untouched by religious conviction. How would a jurist who holds sacred the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic scriptures not be affected by the way those texts speak about justice?

Nonsense. I don’t know the case, but the argument as you gave it can easily be defended in secular terms. There is no biological difference between a fetus of a certain age and a premature infant–either can be raised and nurtured to become adult humans. And even that aside, we treat many kinds of living human tissue with such dignity as befits them, from transplant organs to baby teeth. Parents grieve the loss of a fetus through miscarriage–my wife (an atheist) named and buried the remains of one of our late-term miscarriages.

This is important for those who get exercised about Roe on both sides to grapple with. If all the energy put into pointless “embryos do/don’t have souls!” arguments were instead mustered to critique originalism (or, heaven forbid, to fight to articulate a right to privacy/personal autonomy/abortion in the constitution), we’d have some hope of escaping the choke-hold abortion has on our politics and on the courts specifically.

6464

I think it is probably a lost cause to go after her.

This a debate between Joe Biden’s former VP counsel and now law professor, and one of ACB law clerks.

The law professor, calls a ACB a fine woman, who she likes on personal level but finds her views dangerous. When you listen to her law clerk, with wonderful name of John Adams, describe textualism it is really hard to get to conclude its dangerous.

I’m assuming ACB is probably even more articulate than her law clerk.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/2-views-on-the-judicial-philosophy-of-scotus-nominee-amy-coney-barrett.

I think Democrats are best to focus on just the sheer hypocrisy of Republican saying in Feb of an election year, that you have to give the voters the say on who will be the new Supreme Court justice, but the rule doesn’t apply in Sept. (as long as you have the votes.)

Just hammer them relentlessly, with the Lindsay Graham ad. Then let it be known to the base, that court systems needs to be modernize, and that if the Democrats take control of the senate they will fix some of the issues with her nomination.

I sincerely think the court should be expanded to 15 judges and some type of rotation between Supreme Court and Appellate court be started, but if that is too radical.

Isn’t it legal for Congress to simple move ACB from the Supreme Court back to her appellate court job and then replace her, with lets say Merrick Garland?

This isn’t retribution it is simply restoring justice.

6465

The majority correctly cited precedent which says unequivocally that a fetus isn’t a child; the dissent argued that nothing in the precedent prevents a state from treating a fetus as if it deserved the dignity of a dead child. This is surely a religious view, the notion that a fetus is person in the way that e.g. an amputated toe or removed appendix is not. The idea that this view can be derived secularly is unlikely and certainly unsupported, as you can’t point to anyone anywhere who developed the view in the absence of any influence from religious customs. And in any event, people who choose abortion don’t grieve in the same way that people who have miscarriages do, so your comparison is not apt.

Oh, yes, of course both sides are to blame for the fact that one side wants to use the lethal force of the state to compel a person to bring a pregnancy to term, and engages in absurd legislative flights to attempt to bring about that circumstance. Both sides.

6466

Looks like Donnelly was beginning to tank in August, well before the confirmation fight, if the poll figures here can be believed. I add that condition because later, in October, the polls show Donnelly leading by as much as 7 points! They’re basically all over the place, and I don’t see anything that makes me believe that Donnelly was hurt by the confirmation fight.

Generally, I think people who were inclined to vote for the Dem were also people who didn’t like Kavanaugh, and people who were inclined to vote for the Rep were people who did like Kavanaugh, and what probably mattered most was how many of each there were in that particular state. The same would be true of any confirmation fight over Barrett.

I certainly don’t think Dems in the Senate, or any prominent Dems, should be seen to be attacking Barrett for her Catholicism or even for her weird cultish group. I do think they should be pointing out her extreme legal views and the consequences for the law should she be elevated to the Court. That’s their job, after all. But I also don’t think ordinary people face the same restrictions in discussing her, and that she belongs to a group which is run by a council of only men, which makes a husband the spiritual advisor of a wife, which was started by charismatic Christians and fringe Catholics who had decided that e.g. speaking in tongues was a real thing, which believes in active ongoing prophecy and prophets to the extent that they have an organization designed to find and elevate these prophets, strikes me as alarmingly nutty.

6467

As we’ve seen from the Right, even if the confirmation questions are fine, they will go out and find any statement they can to characterize any way they want, and they will even change/manipulate those statements if they aren’t juicy enough meat for the base.

6468

Get a grip. First of all, are we no longer allowed to use the words “both” and “sides” in sequence without someone mindlessly shrieking BOTHSIDEISM!, whether it’s actually applicable or not? My point was only that there are constitutional arguments that could be had here, but we find it easier to cast it as a matter of religious dogma because that lets us either embrace or dismiss a position wholesale. That argument is worthless for making any progress; the constitutional one has some hope of making these Supreme Court nominations sane again. Seems like something that would be welcome.

6469

My point is that Roe v Wade makes the constitutional argument, so saying both sides should stop fighting over Roe v Wade and focus on the constitutional argument is silly. It’s silly because 1) it is the constitutional argument, and 2) only one side is determined to have the fight in the first place.

Edit: A reminder that Roe v Wade was not leftist overreach. It was decided by a majority of 5 Republicans and 2 Democrats, and opposed by 1 Republican and 1 Democrat. It was a consensus mainstream view, not an extremist one. What has happened in the intervening time is that the right, not the left, have moved out of the mainstream on the issue and made it a litmus test for proper conservative politics. So when Barrett says that she doesn’t include it in her list of maybe-wrong decisions that nonetheless must be upheld because they represent a social consensus that can’t be wrecked, she’s only rewarding extremism on the right.

6470

It’s interesting how we’ve outsourced our campaigning and how little representatives actually represent their consituents:

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/5977/to-represent-all-mississippians-hyde-smith-ad-uses-russian-canadian-footage/

Canadian, Russian, South African and Ukrainian models appear in U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s first 2020 campaign ad for her Mississippi campaigns—but no Mississippians. Instead, the ad uses stock footage from foreign production companies as the senator talks about the work she has done to bring jobs and economic growth to Mississippians.

Because my job is to work for you,” she says, as a montage plays, showing three other people that the ad implies are Mississippians. That ncludes a man in a hard hat working in a warehouse; a farmer walking through a field; and a woman flipping an “Open” sign in a café to “Closed.”

The Stockyards, a Canadian production company, produced the clip of the man in the warehouse; DedovStock, a Ukrainian production outfit, filmed the clip of the farmer; and Silverblackstock, a Russian company, made the clip of the woman in the café. The companies sell the footage on Shutterstock for between $79 and $179 a clip.

6471

This is because there is no strong argument in opposition to early-term abortion that is not based on religious dogma. You have to believe that fetuses have souls.

6472

I don’t generally believe in souls at all, but I believe it’s wrong to murder people.
(be advised, I’m not against early term abortion. I’m just pointing out that the argument presented there is not logically sound.)

What a lot of this actually hinges upon, at least for me, is what defines a “person”, which is quite a complex question once you start actually digging down into it.

6473

Your concern on behalf of women facing such a difficult choice is duly noted.

6474

We could probably move forward a little bit in the abortion debate if people would stop acting like women wake up and dream of having abortions or something. It’s not a dream come true sort of thing or something you hope to have one day when you grow up. It’s just not… that.

6475

This is an overly simplistic view, that doesn’t really bother to consider the deeper issues at play.

Saying, “your opinion doesn’t matter, because you’re not a woman” is a hollow position.

There are tons of cases where we prevent actions, even if those actions are not directly harming us.

For instance, if someone were to abuse their child, or kill them, you would likely not simply say, “Well that’s none of my business.” Even in the case of animals which are wholly considered property, if someone were to commit particularly sadistic acts upon them, we agree as a society that those acts are wrong and that those beings deserve protection.

If you believe that an embryo is a person, then you are morally obligated to not simply look the other way, just like you would be obligated to try and protect the child or animal from harm in the aforementioned situations. Once you cross that line, then the rights of all the persons involved require consideration.

While I do not believe that a embryo is a person, that’s based on my own determination of personhood. If someone else believes otherwise, then while I may not believe it’s ok for them to necessarily enforce that view on everyone else, I can understand how that definition would lead to an opposition to abortion that does not in any way derive from sexism or a desire to oppress others.

These issues are complex to a degree that is rarely explored in partisan politics.

6476

You characterize any way you like, claim it’s so complex it’s cold fusion, won’t change the simple fact you as a guy want to decide something on behalf of women.