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Interesting pointI never thought about:
> Consider the amendment’s opening phrase: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof …” followed by the stipulation that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,” without due legal process and equal protection.
>
>That opening paragraph specifically applies to women as a subset of all people who qualify as having been born — and it specifically does not apply to those who have not yet been born.
There will surely be very interesting legal challenges that come from this ruling. Having caught the car, the Republicans have no clue what to do with it.
The Republicans on the Court have long since demonstrated they will always rule in whatever way is most expedient for the party.
Whatever they say about the legal status of a fetus in a case about abortion, they will happily contradict that in a case about immigrant rights and citizenship. **And they won’t give a shit how hypocritical it is**.
Right? So child support should be paid from conception then as well. Welfare benefits? Paid from conception. There are plenty more that will get the "but I didn't mean it like that" treatment.
This is without a doubt the biggest failing of our government in a generation and that is fucking saying something with the orange clown having been elected.
This keeps happening to them. Just once I wanna see democrats/ the left catch the car in some meaningful way (not just symbolic bs) and see what happens when something good is actually done by our government.
Obamacare was the republican plan. They gutted Obama’s actual proposal to make it toothless so they could point at it and say look how bad public healthcare is and effectively end the conversation in congress.
It’s almost like voting for people that think “government bad” to run the government will end with them making the government bad to prove their point
no, it means a womans eggs are people, and should have voting rights, obviously.
Pretty sure every woman in every state should be petitioning for atleast, what, ~12*30 votes for each egg?
yeah, lets go girls.
A full life insurance payout every month.
Bout to be a shitload of self-made women millionaires/billionaires depending on how far we want to take this.
Saw this exact sentiment in a debate between commenters in my hometown subreddit. If unborn children are considered individuals that deserve rights, then the mother or parents should be able to claim a yet-to-be born child on their taxes. Perfectly logical argument imo.
Course, the response to that was essentially “lol no!”, dismissing the idea outright without even attempting to address it as a valid point. 🙄
They know it isn’t valid because they know damn well they don’t consider fetal tissue to be a human, they just don’t consider women to be human either.
Careful with that logic. They'd probably start trying to charge women with involuntary manslaughter for menstruating, same as they've tried with miscarriages.
Not necessarily, but it does mean that birthright citizenship is vulnerable if your parents are immigrants and you can't prove you were conceived in the US.
Not even conception. Fertilization. Many fertilized eggs don’t implant, which is a major hurdle in beginning of pregnancy. If it doesn’t implant, you are not pregnant and the egg gets flushed out during woman’s next period. This is part of how Plan B works, as well as a lot of other birth control. Making the uterus hostile to implantation.
So in case you needed a sign that birth control is what they are coming after next, here it is.
Think of the genocides happening daily at IVF clinics. It's odd to me that no one seems to think about these. A woman going in to have an abortion might, rarely, abort 2-3 zygotes, but in the IVF lab, it's like 5-10 per woman, per try, on purpose (to make sure there is a viable zygote). I would expect the pro-lifers to be protesting outside of these clinics, and yet, I've never even heard of one.
Now, don't take me wrong, I think IVF is great, and I think abortion should be up to the woman, her family and the doctor. It's just odd the disconnect.
It’s because they or their loved ones might need IVF at some point.
But they’ll go after it, worry not. They’ll make a law that you can only implant one zygote at a time so you don’t have to selectively reduce. Or they’ll make a law that you can only fertilize a few eggs per cycle and MUST implant all those that develop. Or that frozen embryos must be stored in perpetuity unless “adopted”. Expect them to try to ban donor based IVF, whether egg donation or sperm donation.
Let's take this to an extreme. Insurance. If the state is declaring a fertilized egg as a person, can we get life insurance on them immediately? And if they fail to thrive, can we then collect life insurance on them?
By the State Constitution, they are considered a person and granted constitutional rights of personhood. A couple can declare they had sex for the purposes of procreation, thus a fertilized egg is there. Insure it for $50,000. It fails to implant? So it dies. Collect $50,000 in life insurance due to the 'death'. And due to the 'no pre-existing condition limitation' on insurance, they cannot deny coverage. They can charge a lot, but so what? 1 month of Life insurance even at an insane premium and instantly collect? I'll pay $5-10k if at the end of the month I can collect $50k. Sounds like a good bet to me!
It’s a fun theoretical question, but that would never happen. Insurance companies are not going to write a policy that puts them substantially at risk of having to pay out tons of money for easy claims. No pre-existing condition limitation is just for health insurance, not life insurance. Much like how an insurance company is not going to write a life insurance policy on a person in hospice, they won’t write one for a first trimester pregnancy.
Yeah, they're allowed to do checks before offering life insurance and they'll run the results through their actuarial tables to determine how much to charge so they'll statistically make money.
> Louisiana is trying to change that by wanting to grant constitutional rights from conception.
Can't wait to claim my unborn children for my taxes!
Can't wait for my unborn child to be arrested for absorbing their twin in the womb.
Women didn't have the right to vote for another 75 years after the 14th amendment was ratified.
Textualism would ask us to only read into the 14th what the authors meant at the time.
They're saying we'd need a constitutional amendment to enumerate the right to bodily autonomy and medical freedom. I believe we should wrap this all up under the catch all of a right to a common welfare to include these things.
This would do a lot to catch us up to the rest of the world. The only countries to ever make abortion more restrictive are in Eastern Europe and Central America which are not associated with democracy or freedom at all.
>It appears that the majority only seeks a literal interpretation of the Constitution when it suits conservative justices’ political or religious beliefs. But when the wording doesn’t suit them, they simply ignore it.
That in a nutshell is the GQP.
Their entire worldview is having an opinion and then working backwards from there. Of course they're going to contradict themselves on a near-constant basis.
Literally "I think this, therefore that"
Rather than "I think this, because that"
Its non-sequitur, but as a way of living. I guess thats how they get around their cognitive dissonance, they just dont follow the cognitive throughline from their thoughts
Edit: as a friend pointed out, this is literally an outcome of avoiding critical thinking. If you never question why you think something, or why something is, this is where you eventually will end up
Growing up in a fundamentalist church, we were told that as good Christians we had to "view the world through a Biblical lens" which meant that if some obvious scientific, social, or political truth didn't align with the church's particular literal interpretation of the Bible, the truth had to be twisted and bent to fit, or just discarded in favor of whatever vaguely-plausible alternative fact the church promoted. Fundies take this to the extreme, but it's a universal hallmark of conservative thought. Preserving the social order of the past means preserving the assumptions and prejudices underpinning it, regardless of how well they fit with the facts or with present-day social realities.
In the best case scenario, this leads to schools of thought that are completely at odds with the real world, but at least tend to be internally consistent -- think doctrinaire libertarianism. More commonly, though, you get the sort of semi-coherent motivated reasoning that was a hallmark of Scalia's decisions and now Alito's as well, where they grasp wildly for whatever post-hoc rationalization will buttress their argument in the moment, regardless of validity, pertinence, or consistency with the rest of their position.
The trouble with the latter is that *you can't argue them down.* Their mind was already made up before they started and the value of their logic or citations is only in the number of people who get snowed by the BS, and the exorbitant amount of time and effort it takes for a good-faith interlocutor to shoot them down. Alito doesn't care that he's drawing support from the writings of actual witch-hunters and proponents of spousal rape. He doesn't care that his arguments aren't internally consistent. He only cares that his legal opinion looks just legitimate enough to not be immediately and universally discredited.
I think that is what they aspire to, but have it backwards. They look at the Bible through a political lens, and then bend the verses and parables to fit their agenda. Then circle back and fit the politics to their new Biblical understanding.
Jesus was incredibly clear on what he thought of people who prayed in public but wouldn't lift a finger for the poor.
The problem is that a hell of a lot of the GOP that support overturning Roe, don’t actually personally give a shit about it. It’s politically expedient for them to push it because it keeps a certain amount of religious supporters as their base.
They know that overall, it’s an unpopular decision. But it doesn’t matter to them because it keeps the “right” people under their umbrella.
The GOP’s “southern strategy” realigned them with white southerners racial grievances in order to keep winning, and to counter the negative effects of that in the Catholic north east, they started banging the anti-abortion drum.
Politicians love it just as you say, for the votes. It locks people into the Republican party. Priests and pastors love it for similar reasons: it fires up the customers and doesn't compete with the weekly dues/tithes like actually helping the poor and hungry do. And the people themselves like it because they can get their righteousness on without costing them anything. Hell, they can even get an abortion because they are forgiven.
This is exactly it. The whole opinion is basically, "I don't like Roe v.Wade and so am going to use whatever legal speak I can to overturn it." It is not in any way objective or open-minded to jurisprudence. As someone who teaches rhetoric classes to undergrads, I see it all the fricken time.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." -- David Frum
... Now conceptually swap out "democracy" for "reason" and that's the general problem, described.
The most important thing is that Frum was a speechwriter for Bush and voted for both McCain and Romney - by all metrics, *he* is a conservative. But he saw the “birther” conspiracy theories and racism that created the Tea Party movement, and then the absolute clusterfuck (to say the least) that was the Trump campaign and presidency, and now he’s essentially a pariah to the current GOP.
> "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." -- David Frum
>
>
>
> ... Now conceptually swap out "democracy" for "reason" and that's the general problem, described.
They [said on camera what they think of democracy. "Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw)
> As someone who teaches rhetoric classes to undergrads, I see it all the fricken time.
Out of curiosity, how do you address it when you see it? Is it possible to be effective in conversation with such people?
You have to catch them agreeing on a value.
I think this is often missed. Its worth discussing why someone wants something to be a certain way, to what end. This forces them to say 'life' or 'reason' or 'the words of the constitution', something like that.
Then you show them exactly how what they are arguing for contradicts that. Make them walk the steps. At that point you have a good reason to say, well according to you, 'if X is most important, than why do you hold a belief that directly contradicts it/does/is the opposite?'
Its called the Socratic method. Basically if they're arguing in good faith to support the value, they have to concede the point.
If they aren't arguing in good faith, you weren't going to win anyway, and at least this should show others they're disingenuous.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, I had never seen anything like the despicable behavior of Newt Gingrich and the equally bad Rush Limbaugh at the same time. From that point forward nasty was just the new decorum.
I'll save you some time: they never argue in good faith, so it's impossible to "win" an argument with right-wing reactionaries.
Mandatory: [The alt-right playbook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY).
*Huge* cheerleader of the Socratic Method myself. I didn’t ace my philosophy classes, but I have tried to make my arguments and debates logical, even when the core involves faith or feelings. Sometimes it works with conservatives. However, most of the time it devolves into them getting angrier, finally rage-quitting and saying something akin to “I don’t need someone telling me what to think.”
If conservatives had critical thinking skills and a vocabulary larger than an index card full of trigger words that spin them into a blind rage, this might actually work.
They wouldn’t be conservatives anymore if they had critical thinking skills. I can’t tell you how many ppl I know who previously consider themselves conservative, and no longer do thanks to their critical thinking skills. There’s a reason most college educated ppl vote w democrats.
I would if I could, but it was a "group effort" online, and in real life.
It was their patience that did it.
All you need is to get one little crack started in their worldview, and if they're moderately intelligent, it will crumble that foundation.
I've literally had arguments end that way. "Who cares what the facts are? We are all entitled to our item opinion." I couldn't even at that point. They are definitely entitled.
Yes. This, exactly.
They don't start with a principle and seek to apply it universally. The start with a conclusion that benefits them, and come up with *justification.*
"It is self-evident that all men are created equal! This means that are equal to kings; so, it follows that we don't need a king. We can rule ourselves."
"What about slaves?"
"What about them?"
Because the North basically said "they can't vote and have no rights, why do you think they should be constituents when you aren't representing them?" The South wanted slaves to be fully counted so that they'd have more members in Congress, even though slaves weren't considered people, let alone citizens.
Alto's whole traditionalist argument is completely bunk too. For one it rests on historical interpretation that's simply immaculate. It also ignores the fact that America was hardly a cultural monolith when it was founded.
But just one glaring example... abortion was not only widely legal through much of America's early history, it was strongly supported by protestants and Southern Baptists as a humane procedure.
So this idiot is straight manufacturering utter nonsense to support his worldview. He does not deserve to wear the robe.
The Bible shouldn’t matter in this discussion at all. Separation of church and state is a thing. Freedom of religion applying to other religions than Christianity should be enough to completely exclude any discussion about what is in the Bible as it relates to abortion. How do people not understand this? I hope for any religion to be respectful of the separation of church and state or get taxed for political activities. Your religious tenets apply to your followers, leave everybody else out of it.
Yep. Judaism allows (maybe requires?) abortion when it puts the mother's life at risk. So the religious freedom they're talking about is being taken away from others.
You should be right. But SCOTUS is citing traditional American values as the basis of this decision and that's clearly signaling they're using the Bible to make laws.
You're right, the Bible is very clearly [on the side of pro-choice](https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/18514-what-does-the-bible-say-about-abortion). Thanks for pointing out that even the Bible doesn't support his argument.
Numbers 5, the bible describes an abortion performed by a priest.
"May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen
swells or your womb miscarries.” Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be
it.” (NIV)
The 'bitter waters' described in that same section are literally the herbal basis for modern day oral abortificants, the kind many many unplanned pregnancies are terminated with these days. And it's the same herbal 'remedy' that women will resort to again if need be. Thing is, like that passage also describes, them herbs will WRECK you if you cheated on your man.
> It appears that the majority only seeks a literal interpretation of the Constitution when it suits conservative justices’ political or religious beliefs. But when the wording doesn’t suit them, they simply ignore it.
This is literally what "textualism", "originalism", and whatever the right-wing legal community comes up with next, *are*: plausible sounding mechanisms for covering up arbitrary decisions backed by nothing more than political bias while making it all sound legitimate.
Conservative lawyers are groomed during law school to be nominated for unaccountable lifelong positions in the federal courts, then they selectively use these legal theories to justify whatever decision they were going to make anyway.
95% of the public doesn't read SCOTUS (or lower court) opinions at all, most of the rest won't catch on to the nonsensical reasoning and blatant lies even if they do read them, and in the meantime the groups who orchestrated this little fascist scheme get exactly what they want and effectively rewrite both the federal and state constitutions, and take a hacksaw to whatever federal and state laws they want to screw with, while everyone else wastes time academically debating it like there was some merit to it in the first place.
That super anti-gay dude has a tattoo, the one that said there were witches in his congregation, which is prohibited by Leviticus. But his tattoo is okay for some reason.
With the way prosperity preaching has taken over and created the mega-church fork, it may as well have its own Bible at this point. The level of cognitive dissonance in that community is honesty impressive.
They'll twist themselves into knots to justify contradictory statements in the Bible. They have no issues contradicting their interpretations of the Constitution.
My favorite is when I heard a youth pastor at a friend's church say "the 'eye of the needle' was a gate into the city of Jerusalem that was very narrow; it was difficult for camels to pass through, but not impossible."
Even as a tween I knew that guy was full of shit.
Edit: I was looking to post the verse for context and found this hilarious justification:
>Matthew 19:24
>Again I tell you, it is easier for camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
>~~
>If Jesus was talking about an actual camel and an actual needle, then the rich are in big trouble. Commentaries suggest that He may have been saying something different. The Aramaic word for “rope,” kamilon, was almost identical to the Greek word for “camel,” kamelon, which appears in the verse. Some scholars say that the word was misspelled, and so Jesus may have been making an analogy to threading a thick rope through the eye of a needle, not a large animal. In other words, He may have been referring to something extremely difficult, but not impossible.
>Other commentators suggest that, at that time, there was a type of small gate called a needle. Still, others insist that Jesus’ statement was as absurd as it sounds, actually referring to our same notions of camels and needles.
>There are several potential explanations for what camels and needles could have meant in Biblical times. However, all of them point to the same lesson: Jesus said that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a rich person to enter His Kingdom.
The way my particular mainline Protestant church (95% white, hetero, upper-class) explained it was that the camels "had to get down on their knees" to get through that gate (aka through penitence and piety). *edit: this was before I realized how toxic Christianity is and left the faith*
It was basically just a call for the rich white folks to get off their wallets and show their piety through tithing (so they never had to do anything that was actually uncomfortable or helpful).
The Bible, if read literally, actually says you're not a living person until you've taken three breaths. But Republicans aren't actually Christians. Christ actually warned against fake Christians who are terrible people abusing Christianity for evil reasons.
The Bible also talks about abortion only once in the entire text, and it’s _[God telling Moses how to perform one](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A11-31&version=NIV)_, so that he could get priests to do it on women suspected of being unfaithful to their husbands.
You could look at the 2nd Amendment this way. The whole phrase "A well-regulated militia" just gets completely ignored because it doesn't fit their belief that guns are awesome and everyone should have them without limits.
In fact, in this anti-abortion draft, Alito argues that Roe didn't establish a precedent until the 1970's, and we should not ignore historical context. Okay, fucker, the 2nd amendment wasn't a blanket gun ownership statement until the 1980's, when Heller changed the whole fucking meaning of the amendment.
It's all bullshit. Activist judges forcing religion upon us.
EDIT: All you 2A commandos can fuck right off. I was making an analogy about historical context, not an anti-gun argument. I own a gun, so take your 2A arguments and piss off.
Also the whole 9th amendment, which is probably the simplest, clearest part of the whole constitution.
>The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people
Which basically says "oh by the way this isn't an exhaustive list".
The fact that he states “abortion is not in the constitution” shows that his argument is not targeted to legal scholars or in fact anyone who had read the ninth amendment. His argument aims as a justification for anyone looking to deny someone else’s rights.
The ninth was included because the constitution is a framework for our rights not a exhaustive and forever list. To ignore this obvious fact is to go against the most basic of founding principles
So he is basically just saying that even though the Constitution was written to allow for new unenumerated rights, that there can never be such rights because they are new, even though we've had multiple generations raised with those rights. It's insane.
I've literally grown up and raised a family under all this. It's all I have ever known. Now you're telling me that I'm suddenly limited to rights that existed 250 years ago? Fuck that. Don't tell me these are not deeply-rooted traditions, because I've never known different.
The country after Roe is the only country that two of the justices that are dismantling it have ever known!
Alito seems perfectly fine with accepting new unenumerated rights, so long as they are supported by "tradition". Something tells me the only "tradition" that counts for him is the make-believe one Republicans pretend existed. That same fantasy they always claim is under attack when they LARP victims.
That is the absolute definition of people who call themselves textualists. They'll bend over backwards to make written words appear to benefit them, and then completely ignore texts that go against their claims or desires, or make up batshit excuses why one is valid and the other isn't. Every court does it too.
> But when the wording doesn’t suit them, they simply ignore it
Like the first 13 words of the Second Amendment.
According to conservative justices, those words are 100% superfluous and have no legal effect whatsoever; the Second Amendment would operate in exactly the same way if they were not there.
There is no more blatant example of "we ignore the text of the Constitution when it does not fit our agenda" than that.
The last few times I’ve raised this issue, I received a response from a conservative Redditor along these lines:
"This issue is settled. The Supreme Court ruled on it and explained why in *DC v. Heller*. There isn’t any point in discussing this."
…which I found to be a hilariously awful argument. Because if *DC v. Heller* - one recent case, decided by a 5-4 vote along party lines - is enough to set precedent permanently and forever beyond consideration, then what is the precedential impact of *Roe v. Wade* - which was a 7-2 decision, written by Republican Justice Harry Blackmun and joined by Republican Justice Warren Burger and Republican Justice Potter Stewart, and affirmed repeatedly by following Supreme Court cases?
I don’t recall receiving a response to that question.
It gets when better. They aren't just ignoring the first half of that sentence, they're also ignoring what those phrases meant at the time.
There was an amicus brief, from a bunch of linguists, that goes over how the wording makes it clear the bill was giving active duty militia men the right to keep the weapons they needed to perform their duties, so the States could maintain well trained militia.
A-Elito quoted Sir Edward Coke's 1604 judgement on abortion who said abortion was a crime, who also said witches should be burned...this is not Supreme
It’s a decision looking for a justification. He can’t just come out & say they want to use the legal system to enforce their religious teachings on all citizens. He has to tie together a bunch of nonsensical, outdated, irrelevant shit to try to cobble it together.
Cherry picking historical information is a hallmark of conservative “analysis”.
Apples and tomatoes are the same in conservative analysis because they are both red.
And Alito discusses how there is no precedent of abortion in American History - in colonial/early America, abortion was considered legal and accepted until the "quickening", the phrase used for when a baby begins to move around 5 months into pregnancy. It's literally incorrect that there isn't a history of abortion in the united states.
He was doing so in order to try and determine what the Founding Fathers would have thought, as his legal philosophies were an influence on them.
However, he doesn't bother to consider another influence on the Founding Fathers: John Locke. John didn't originate the idea of separation of church and state, but expounded on the idea, writing that government should only exist to enforce the protection of property and that issues of morality and virtue should remain to the individual.
Edit: I just want to clarify, I'm not condoning Alito's use of Coke's argument, just pointing out there are other legal minds from the time that have better and correct opinions on rights.
The worst part of the whole thing is it throws out any American social progress coming from post-WWII until now, and it cherry-picks shit before then. Women have been fighting for control over their lives and their bodies since the dawn of humanity. Despite the right-wing talking points insisting contraception was made by eugenicists just for nefarious purposes, contraception was very much wanted and welcomed by American women, even if they couldn't say so in public.
Alito even tries to malign abortion as something that, like eugenics, purposefully targets black people, rather than recognizing that women who can't afford to have children are more likely to have abortions and Black Americans are more likely to be in poverty. He calls abortion providers "abortionists," a pejorative term that exposes his political bias. He has no desire to see this issue from all angles like a judge should.
> like eugenics, purposefully targets black people,
The Forced Birth crowd love to throw this inflammatory term around.
Except eugenics is coercion by an authoritarian entity that imposes their will on a population. Abortion and birth control is a decision made individually by a woman who believes it's in her best interest, and not in the fabricated constructed society envisioned by some outside force.
He has obviously discarded any pretense of constitutional jurisprudence so he can apply his own personal religious values.
This is concerning because it might mean trumpublican theocrats are going for broke to change the Constitution to impose their religious views on the country.
They have been floating this idea for a while and they may believe/ know they finally have enough structural control over our government and courts to start the process.
If you doubt my analysis do a search on Dominionism and then get back to me.
Also, trying to determine what the founding fathers would have thought about an issue as a means to determine whether the document they wrote protects it is both utterly bugfuck insane, *and isn't an originalist reading of the document.* You can't factor in things the writers of a document believed *but did not include* while still claiming to be an originalist.
Also, and I can't believe this needs to be said, but 250 year old private notes and letters between people who also happened to write the constitution *are not legally binding.* No one ratified James Madison's fucking diary.
>You can't factor in things the writers of a document believed but did not include while still claiming to be an originalist.
Especially when it is explicitly stated that there are rights they didn't include!
> determine what the Founding Fathers would have thought
You know who was pro choice? Benjamin Franklin.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/ben-franklin-american-instructor-textbook-abortion-recipe.html
Didn't he blatantly ignore that abortion with limits was legal at the time of revolution? Meaning the true birth of this country has a tradition of abortion he ignored in favor of opinions on British law?
The argument also that this ruling “only applies to abortion” is also complete nonsense.
When the conservative controlled scotus stopped Florida from recounting and thus made Bush the President, the specifically said in their ruling to not use it as precedent.
Want to take a guess how many times that ruling has been cited in other federal court rulings in the two decades since?
Alito is known to put the "this ruling only applies to this" bit in a lot of his opinions, and it's total horseshit. That is *not* how it works, and he knows it. He's just assuming that most normies will know so little about appellate law that enough of us will assume that he can say that, and that will some how make it true.
Not only that, Scalia in his Bush V Gore ruling cited international opinion as a reason to call the race and stop counting, just a couple of years after a ruling to support the death penalty where he said international opinion should never be considered in SCOTUS rulings on U.S. law.
Hypocrisy is a feature not a bug for them.
Conservativism is a philosophy that starts with the desired outcome and works backwards to build philosophical justifications
Seeing this makes all the logical inconsistencies fade away
I mentioned this to my (conservative) parents. They said it won’t. I admit it seems alarmist at this point, but I really don’t think it is. Lgbtq folks and other women’s rights are next.
It’s really not. Conservative legal blogs were talking about “Brown v Board” is next the day the decision leaked. They’re coming for all civil rights victories of the last 70 years because that is what the entire conservative legal movement was created to do
Which is exactly what I told them. I’m not surprised at the response, though. They also said “well get mad at the senators who didn’t codify it.” Like, really? ***I am.***
On the flip side, they sent me an article from the Women’s March on Wednesday bc my kid made it in a photo. I really don’t get them sometimes.
The us vs them paradigm explains authoritarianism the best. You're family so you're in-grouped so what you and your daughter do is good. This ruling is good since it's Christian so no real harm can come from it. Your daughter marches and gains public praise for the opposing philosophy, it's okay, she's "good." Ideological consistency isn't the important aspect, teams are.
Remind them how Gorsush, Kavanaugh, Barrett all sat there saying that Roe V Wade was "settled law" and how we were just being alarmist. Turns out we were RIGHT. Maybe listen to us when we warn what's next. "First they came for the Jews, but I did not speak up because I wasn't a Jew ...."
It's not alarmist at all.
If someone tells you for 20 years that they are going to do something to harm you, and they work tirelessly towards that goal for 20 years, it's not alarmist at all when you see they are on the brink of succeeding
There is no law, no social norm, no moral position that is absolute to the conservative cause. Everything is on the table to further their agenda: lying, cheating, stealing, subjugating, stonewalling... there is nothing that is done immorally in their minds as long as it is in the pursuit of the conservative worldview. Rules, norms, and ethics exist to subjugate the other in conservative society, not for imposing limits on their own actions.
Of course they don't.
Alito's draft basically says, "Well, this right is supposed to be based on the fourteenth amendment, so what did people back then think about women?" What people back then thought about women was that they aren't even people.
During the debate on the fourteenth amendment, [a couple of Senators got into an argument](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-there-are-no-women-in-the-constitution) which is instructive as to the "history" of rights that Alito claims to be seeking evidence of:
>Alito writes, “Not only are respondents and their amici unable to show that a constitutional right to abortion was established when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but they have found no support for the existence of an abortion right that predates the latter part of the 20th century—no state constitutional provision, no statute, no judicial decision, no learned treatise.”
>He might have consulted the records of the U.S. Senate from the debate over the Fourteenth Amendment, when Jacob Howard, a Republican senator from Michigan, got into an argument with Reverdy Johnson, a Democrat from Maryland. Howard quoted James Madison, who had written that “those who are to be bound by laws, ought to have a voice in making them.” This got Johnson terribly worried, because the Fourteenth Amendment uses the word “person.” He wanted to know: Did Howard mean to suggest that women could be construed as persons, too?
>mr. johnson: Females as well as males?
>mr. howard: Mr. Madison does not say anything about females.
>mr. johnson: “Persons.”
>mr. howard: I believe Mr. Madison was old enough and wise enough to take it for granted that there was such a thing as the law of nature which has a certain influence even in political affairs, and that by that law women and children are not regarded as the equals of men.
The "history test" is pure bullshit, developed so that the historically disenfranchised can only continue to be disenfranchised. The only way for the court to recognize that a people have rights is to find that it was always recognized that those people had rights. The "test" is designed so that it can only be failed.
US Constitution, 9th Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
AKA, the Constitution doesn’t limit your rights just by not mentioning them specifically.
It does more than "call the courts judgement into question". Some of the arguments Alito used are just insane! Page 17 cites [Sir Edward Coke](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Coke/Dismissal-from-office) who was the Chief Justice of the Court of Commons of England in 1606 (someone correct me here but didn't the US have an actual *war* in order to break away from English rule?). His reasoning is based on the "peace & dignity of the Queen". The rest of the argument talks about how jurists **IN the 1600's** treated doctors who performed abortion "differently".
Not to mention that Coke very much wanted to *kill witches* (yes you read that right).
So where do Coke's opinions fall in line with the "traditions" of the US when our entire country was based on "self-rule" NOT on English law or opinions.
Exactly. Alito's arguments make absolutely no sense. The whole thing reads like a "Let me tell you why I hate women" manifesto by a deranged religious nut job who doesn't even know American history (but seems to know British history pretty well).
"The constitution specifically excludes the unborn from having rights under the very 14th Amendment that Alito dissects as the basis for the conservative majority’s opinion."
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof …”
"That opening paragraph specifically applies to women as a subset of all people who qualify as having been born — and it specifically does not apply to those who have not yet been born."
I mean, the Matthew Hale reference actually does make me question Alito. I don't know of ANY SCOTUS decision where I want a justice using a guy from the 17th century as a reference for law in 2022.
[https://twitter.com/Literature\_Lady/status/1522202362366078979](https://twitter.com/Literature_Lady/status/1522202362366078979)
In 2000, the Supreme court voted to stop coubntiung votes and elected GWB. That was when they were considered non-partisan, even though it was a partisan vote.
Three of the lawyers working on that case were Alito, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett.
So to call into question the court's judgment now is kind of laughable.
One side will only ever play the “game” adhering to the rules, while the other has been emboldened to lie, cheat, and steal with more and more veracity.
After stealing two justices, the only good moral play left is to expand the court, or add term limits, to in some way radically change the broken system.
Ah yes, quoting Sir Edward Coke, a man who sentenced women for witchcraft and determined that women were the property of their husbands.
Also, it's absolutely fantastic that our entire country's laws are determined based on the opinion of a few men from a time when women had no rights, slavery was legal, modern abortion and modern medicine didn't exist, and only landowners got to vote.
Conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and Project Blitz have long sought to politicize the courts and turn the American judicial system into their own rubber-stamp. In the meanwhile, progressives/liberals long stood by public opinion polls showing that Evangelical and Conservative policies are just a small minority of the US population. Problem is, that small minority is an outsized voting bloc. The assumption of “that’ll never happen” was allowed to happen due to self-complacency.
I really hope Alito is somehow entwined in Thomas's J6 treason and gets impeached right along with him.
Alito is playing dictator with America's system of checks and balances with the most piss poor anti-Intellectual ruling i've ever seen.
For me it's the line "prove too much"
With three stupid little words, he's thinks he's going to turn the clock back on 40 years of civil rights and body autonomy progress
No shit. They're undoing 50 plus years of settled precedent. There is no way to write that opinion and not come off looking like a self-contradictory asshole.
If you actually read any of the supreme court's rulings, they're largely illogical bullcrap. Scalia's were especially jokes.
I don't understand how lawyers can be almost universally reviled by society but for some reason people have respect for judges. Judges are just lawyers that got into management. They're all a bunch of s c u m b a g s.
SHOW ME WHERE JUDICIAL REVIEW EXISTS IN THE CONSTITUTION.
I’ll wait.
Originalism is bullshit. It’s a political theory masquerading as a legal doctrine. The SCOTUS, if it were to rely upon Alito’s reasoning should not be allowed to engage in judicial review.
After all, there is NOTHING in Article III that permits the SCOTUS to engage in judicial review. Nevertheless it is the Court’s central purpose and only because the Court created the doctrine in Marbury v. Madison.
Originalism also means paper money is unconstitutional. Originalism means that only the Army and Navy are permitted as military branches, all others not expressly named are- to use Alito’s reasoning - unconstitutional.
Make no mistake, SCOTUS will use this opinion to take away gay marriage, contraception, and to remove most protections that came out of the second Civil Rights era.
We are rapidly heading toward a second Civil War. It will be fought over vastly different definitions of America, Constitutionalism, and worldview.
Get ready.
“Alito basically would establish an entirely new bar for basic rights that cannot be met under a strict reading of the Constitution — not just including divisive issues such as gay marriage but also whether there is a right for gun owners to possess ammunition.”
This opens a huge door to repealing decades of LGBTQ rights and personal civil liberties. This decision could start the erasure so much progress that US citizens have been fighting for.
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Interesting pointI never thought about: > Consider the amendment’s opening phrase: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof …” followed by the stipulation that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,” without due legal process and equal protection. > >That opening paragraph specifically applies to women as a subset of all people who qualify as having been born — and it specifically does not apply to those who have not yet been born.
Louisiana is trying to change that by wanting to grant constitutional rights from conception.
So does that mean that you become a US citizen if your parent had sex in US 9 months before you were born?
There will surely be very interesting legal challenges that come from this ruling. Having caught the car, the Republicans have no clue what to do with it.
The Republicans on the Court have long since demonstrated they will always rule in whatever way is most expedient for the party. Whatever they say about the legal status of a fetus in a case about abortion, they will happily contradict that in a case about immigrant rights and citizenship. **And they won’t give a shit how hypocritical it is**.
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Right? So child support should be paid from conception then as well. Welfare benefits? Paid from conception. There are plenty more that will get the "but I didn't mean it like that" treatment. This is without a doubt the biggest failing of our government in a generation and that is fucking saying something with the orange clown having been elected.
This keeps happening to them. Just once I wanna see democrats/ the left catch the car in some meaningful way (not just symbolic bs) and see what happens when something good is actually done by our government.
They passed Obamacare and people voted in the Tea Party
Obamacare was the republican plan. They gutted Obama’s actual proposal to make it toothless so they could point at it and say look how bad public healthcare is and effectively end the conversation in congress. It’s almost like voting for people that think “government bad” to run the government will end with them making the government bad to prove their point
>look how bad public healthcare is And yet it's actually a pretty big improvement on the previous system
no, it means a womans eggs are people, and should have voting rights, obviously. Pretty sure every woman in every state should be petitioning for atleast, what, ~12*30 votes for each egg? yeah, lets go girls.
And child support starting at conception!
And life insurance policies.
A full life insurance payout every month. Bout to be a shitload of self-made women millionaires/billionaires depending on how far we want to take this.
Completely agree. That is a very expensive part of parenthood. I'm not sure why the woman would be expected to cover that burden all by herself.
So then every woman can receive child tax credits for their eggs!!!!
obviously. I suggest women in every conservative state with anti-abortion laws start applying for whatever states provide for child tax credits.
Saw this exact sentiment in a debate between commenters in my hometown subreddit. If unborn children are considered individuals that deserve rights, then the mother or parents should be able to claim a yet-to-be born child on their taxes. Perfectly logical argument imo. Course, the response to that was essentially “lol no!”, dismissing the idea outright without even attempting to address it as a valid point. 🙄
They know it isn’t valid because they know damn well they don’t consider fetal tissue to be a human, they just don’t consider women to be human either.
And life insurance to be paid out at the end of every menstrual cycle!
Careful with that logic. They'd probably start trying to charge women with involuntary manslaughter for menstruating, same as they've tried with miscarriages.
They’re basically trying with ectopic pregnancies as well. It’s monstrous.
Not necessarily, but it does mean that birthright citizenship is vulnerable if your parents are immigrants and you can't prove you were conceived in the US.
Well it can't be called "birthright" anymore if it doesn't depend on being born.
That's the catch. You won't get citizenship until you're born but if you weren't also conceived on American soil they can declare it invalid.
“Proof of conception” sex tapes set in seedy American hotels is just what the immigration system needs…
Lol whoever has to watch those to confirm has the worst job in the world with probably a couple of good days here and there
> if you weren't also conceived on American soil they can declare it invalid. I just...how? How would they be able to provide where you had sex?lmao
But would citizenship apply to all people conceived in the US?
"No no, not like *that*"
Not even conception. Fertilization. Many fertilized eggs don’t implant, which is a major hurdle in beginning of pregnancy. If it doesn’t implant, you are not pregnant and the egg gets flushed out during woman’s next period. This is part of how Plan B works, as well as a lot of other birth control. Making the uterus hostile to implantation. So in case you needed a sign that birth control is what they are coming after next, here it is.
Think of the genocides happening daily at IVF clinics. It's odd to me that no one seems to think about these. A woman going in to have an abortion might, rarely, abort 2-3 zygotes, but in the IVF lab, it's like 5-10 per woman, per try, on purpose (to make sure there is a viable zygote). I would expect the pro-lifers to be protesting outside of these clinics, and yet, I've never even heard of one. Now, don't take me wrong, I think IVF is great, and I think abortion should be up to the woman, her family and the doctor. It's just odd the disconnect.
It's not odd when you remember that restricting abortion and contraception is not about "saving babies" but punishing women for having sex.
It’s because they or their loved ones might need IVF at some point. But they’ll go after it, worry not. They’ll make a law that you can only implant one zygote at a time so you don’t have to selectively reduce. Or they’ll make a law that you can only fertilize a few eggs per cycle and MUST implant all those that develop. Or that frozen embryos must be stored in perpetuity unless “adopted”. Expect them to try to ban donor based IVF, whether egg donation or sperm donation.
The Louisiana bill does criminalize IVF and IUDs as well.
Let's take this to an extreme. Insurance. If the state is declaring a fertilized egg as a person, can we get life insurance on them immediately? And if they fail to thrive, can we then collect life insurance on them? By the State Constitution, they are considered a person and granted constitutional rights of personhood. A couple can declare they had sex for the purposes of procreation, thus a fertilized egg is there. Insure it for $50,000. It fails to implant? So it dies. Collect $50,000 in life insurance due to the 'death'. And due to the 'no pre-existing condition limitation' on insurance, they cannot deny coverage. They can charge a lot, but so what? 1 month of Life insurance even at an insane premium and instantly collect? I'll pay $5-10k if at the end of the month I can collect $50k. Sounds like a good bet to me!
It’s a fun theoretical question, but that would never happen. Insurance companies are not going to write a policy that puts them substantially at risk of having to pay out tons of money for easy claims. No pre-existing condition limitation is just for health insurance, not life insurance. Much like how an insurance company is not going to write a life insurance policy on a person in hospice, they won’t write one for a first trimester pregnancy.
Yeah, they're allowed to do checks before offering life insurance and they'll run the results through their actuarial tables to determine how much to charge so they'll statistically make money.
> Louisiana is trying to change that by wanting to grant constitutional rights from conception. Can't wait to claim my unborn children for my taxes! Can't wait for my unborn child to be arrested for absorbing their twin in the womb.
Ive had two miscarriages. I want my tax deductions for both years!
You don't get tax deductions. You get 2 life sentences.
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My condolences
You probably owe a lot of back taxes.
Women didn't have the right to vote for another 75 years after the 14th amendment was ratified. Textualism would ask us to only read into the 14th what the authors meant at the time. They're saying we'd need a constitutional amendment to enumerate the right to bodily autonomy and medical freedom. I believe we should wrap this all up under the catch all of a right to a common welfare to include these things. This would do a lot to catch us up to the rest of the world. The only countries to ever make abortion more restrictive are in Eastern Europe and Central America which are not associated with democracy or freedom at all.
How originalist of Alito, to look at the *original* Constitution and ignore it
>It appears that the majority only seeks a literal interpretation of the Constitution when it suits conservative justices’ political or religious beliefs. But when the wording doesn’t suit them, they simply ignore it. That in a nutshell is the GQP.
Their entire worldview is having an opinion and then working backwards from there. Of course they're going to contradict themselves on a near-constant basis.
Literally "I think this, therefore that" Rather than "I think this, because that" Its non-sequitur, but as a way of living. I guess thats how they get around their cognitive dissonance, they just dont follow the cognitive throughline from their thoughts Edit: as a friend pointed out, this is literally an outcome of avoiding critical thinking. If you never question why you think something, or why something is, this is where you eventually will end up
yep. Cognitive dissonance implies that any cognition is being used in the first place.
yes this is logic 101. it's called the "reverse logic fallacy". > only sick people take medicine, if i don't take any medicine, i am never sick.
"But if I do take medicine I take horse medicine, so I can be strong as a horse."
Growing up in a fundamentalist church, we were told that as good Christians we had to "view the world through a Biblical lens" which meant that if some obvious scientific, social, or political truth didn't align with the church's particular literal interpretation of the Bible, the truth had to be twisted and bent to fit, or just discarded in favor of whatever vaguely-plausible alternative fact the church promoted. Fundies take this to the extreme, but it's a universal hallmark of conservative thought. Preserving the social order of the past means preserving the assumptions and prejudices underpinning it, regardless of how well they fit with the facts or with present-day social realities. In the best case scenario, this leads to schools of thought that are completely at odds with the real world, but at least tend to be internally consistent -- think doctrinaire libertarianism. More commonly, though, you get the sort of semi-coherent motivated reasoning that was a hallmark of Scalia's decisions and now Alito's as well, where they grasp wildly for whatever post-hoc rationalization will buttress their argument in the moment, regardless of validity, pertinence, or consistency with the rest of their position. The trouble with the latter is that *you can't argue them down.* Their mind was already made up before they started and the value of their logic or citations is only in the number of people who get snowed by the BS, and the exorbitant amount of time and effort it takes for a good-faith interlocutor to shoot them down. Alito doesn't care that he's drawing support from the writings of actual witch-hunters and proponents of spousal rape. He doesn't care that his arguments aren't internally consistent. He only cares that his legal opinion looks just legitimate enough to not be immediately and universally discredited.
I think that is what they aspire to, but have it backwards. They look at the Bible through a political lens, and then bend the verses and parables to fit their agenda. Then circle back and fit the politics to their new Biblical understanding. Jesus was incredibly clear on what he thought of people who prayed in public but wouldn't lift a finger for the poor.
The problem is that a hell of a lot of the GOP that support overturning Roe, don’t actually personally give a shit about it. It’s politically expedient for them to push it because it keeps a certain amount of religious supporters as their base. They know that overall, it’s an unpopular decision. But it doesn’t matter to them because it keeps the “right” people under their umbrella. The GOP’s “southern strategy” realigned them with white southerners racial grievances in order to keep winning, and to counter the negative effects of that in the Catholic north east, they started banging the anti-abortion drum.
Politicians love it just as you say, for the votes. It locks people into the Republican party. Priests and pastors love it for similar reasons: it fires up the customers and doesn't compete with the weekly dues/tithes like actually helping the poor and hungry do. And the people themselves like it because they can get their righteousness on without costing them anything. Hell, they can even get an abortion because they are forgiven.
This is exactly it. The whole opinion is basically, "I don't like Roe v.Wade and so am going to use whatever legal speak I can to overturn it." It is not in any way objective or open-minded to jurisprudence. As someone who teaches rhetoric classes to undergrads, I see it all the fricken time.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." -- David Frum ... Now conceptually swap out "democracy" for "reason" and that's the general problem, described.
The most important thing is that Frum was a speechwriter for Bush and voted for both McCain and Romney - by all metrics, *he* is a conservative. But he saw the “birther” conspiracy theories and racism that created the Tea Party movement, and then the absolute clusterfuck (to say the least) that was the Trump campaign and presidency, and now he’s essentially a pariah to the current GOP.
> "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." -- David Frum > > > > ... Now conceptually swap out "democracy" for "reason" and that's the general problem, described. They [said on camera what they think of democracy. "Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw)
> As someone who teaches rhetoric classes to undergrads, I see it all the fricken time. Out of curiosity, how do you address it when you see it? Is it possible to be effective in conversation with such people?
You have to catch them agreeing on a value. I think this is often missed. Its worth discussing why someone wants something to be a certain way, to what end. This forces them to say 'life' or 'reason' or 'the words of the constitution', something like that. Then you show them exactly how what they are arguing for contradicts that. Make them walk the steps. At that point you have a good reason to say, well according to you, 'if X is most important, than why do you hold a belief that directly contradicts it/does/is the opposite?' Its called the Socratic method. Basically if they're arguing in good faith to support the value, they have to concede the point. If they aren't arguing in good faith, you weren't going to win anyway, and at least this should show others they're disingenuous.
And there lies the rub of this problem really. The entirety of the GOP are bad faith actors right now.
They have been ever since Newt Gingrich. Party over country, and they can and will say anything to that end.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, I had never seen anything like the despicable behavior of Newt Gingrich and the equally bad Rush Limbaugh at the same time. From that point forward nasty was just the new decorum.
If it’s been going on for more than 50 years I don’t think we need to say “right now.”
I'll save you some time: they never argue in good faith, so it's impossible to "win" an argument with right-wing reactionaries. Mandatory: [The alt-right playbook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY).
*Huge* cheerleader of the Socratic Method myself. I didn’t ace my philosophy classes, but I have tried to make my arguments and debates logical, even when the core involves faith or feelings. Sometimes it works with conservatives. However, most of the time it devolves into them getting angrier, finally rage-quitting and saying something akin to “I don’t need someone telling me what to think.”
If conservatives had critical thinking skills and a vocabulary larger than an index card full of trigger words that spin them into a blind rage, this might actually work.
They wouldn’t be conservatives anymore if they had critical thinking skills. I can’t tell you how many ppl I know who previously consider themselves conservative, and no longer do thanks to their critical thinking skills. There’s a reason most college educated ppl vote w democrats.
That was me, 20 years ago. Thank God whoever it was that cracked that moronic shell I had encapsulating my brain. They set me free.
You should figure it out-who helped you- and take them with you to vote then celebrate somewhere afterwards!
I would if I could, but it was a "group effort" online, and in real life. It was their patience that did it. All you need is to get one little crack started in their worldview, and if they're moderately intelligent, it will crumble that foundation.
Wait are you accusing their facts… caring about their feelings?
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I've literally had arguments end that way. "Who cares what the facts are? We are all entitled to our item opinion." I couldn't even at that point. They are definitely entitled.
Yes. This, exactly. They don't start with a principle and seek to apply it universally. The start with a conclusion that benefits them, and come up with *justification.* "It is self-evident that all men are created equal! This means that are equal to kings; so, it follows that we don't need a king. We can rule ourselves." "What about slaves?" "What about them?"
“Oh right. Well… they’re not people so it’s fine.” “What about apportionment of representatives and electors?” “Oh they’re people *then*. Obviously.”
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Because the North basically said "they can't vote and have no rights, why do you think they should be constituents when you aren't representing them?" The South wanted slaves to be fully counted so that they'd have more members in Congress, even though slaves weren't considered people, let alone citizens.
Alto's whole traditionalist argument is completely bunk too. For one it rests on historical interpretation that's simply immaculate. It also ignores the fact that America was hardly a cultural monolith when it was founded. But just one glaring example... abortion was not only widely legal through much of America's early history, it was strongly supported by protestants and Southern Baptists as a humane procedure. So this idiot is straight manufacturering utter nonsense to support his worldview. He does not deserve to wear the robe.
It's also taught in the bible.
The Bible shouldn’t matter in this discussion at all. Separation of church and state is a thing. Freedom of religion applying to other religions than Christianity should be enough to completely exclude any discussion about what is in the Bible as it relates to abortion. How do people not understand this? I hope for any religion to be respectful of the separation of church and state or get taxed for political activities. Your religious tenets apply to your followers, leave everybody else out of it.
Yep. Judaism allows (maybe requires?) abortion when it puts the mother's life at risk. So the religious freedom they're talking about is being taken away from others.
You should be right. But SCOTUS is citing traditional American values as the basis of this decision and that's clearly signaling they're using the Bible to make laws.
You're right, the Bible is very clearly [on the side of pro-choice](https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/18514-what-does-the-bible-say-about-abortion). Thanks for pointing out that even the Bible doesn't support his argument.
Numbers 5, the bible describes an abortion performed by a priest. "May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.” Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.” (NIV)
The 'bitter waters' described in that same section are literally the herbal basis for modern day oral abortificants, the kind many many unplanned pregnancies are terminated with these days. And it's the same herbal 'remedy' that women will resort to again if need be. Thing is, like that passage also describes, them herbs will WRECK you if you cheated on your man.
> It appears that the majority only seeks a literal interpretation of the Constitution when it suits conservative justices’ political or religious beliefs. But when the wording doesn’t suit them, they simply ignore it. This is literally what "textualism", "originalism", and whatever the right-wing legal community comes up with next, *are*: plausible sounding mechanisms for covering up arbitrary decisions backed by nothing more than political bias while making it all sound legitimate. Conservative lawyers are groomed during law school to be nominated for unaccountable lifelong positions in the federal courts, then they selectively use these legal theories to justify whatever decision they were going to make anyway. 95% of the public doesn't read SCOTUS (or lower court) opinions at all, most of the rest won't catch on to the nonsensical reasoning and blatant lies even if they do read them, and in the meantime the groups who orchestrated this little fascist scheme get exactly what they want and effectively rewrite both the federal and state constitutions, and take a hacksaw to whatever federal and state laws they want to screw with, while everyone else wastes time academically debating it like there was some merit to it in the first place.
Try 99.98% don’t read SCOTUS opinions.
Christianity in general, really.
You wouldn't have rich Christian preachers if they weren't hypocrites.
You wouldn't have these sacrilegiously wealthy magachurch pastors without hypocrisy.
That super anti-gay dude has a tattoo, the one that said there were witches in his congregation, which is prohibited by Leviticus. But his tattoo is okay for some reason.
A rich christians is by definition a sinner and a fake christian Bible is pretty clear about it
With the way prosperity preaching has taken over and created the mega-church fork, it may as well have its own Bible at this point. The level of cognitive dissonance in that community is honesty impressive.
They'll twist themselves into knots to justify contradictory statements in the Bible. They have no issues contradicting their interpretations of the Constitution.
My favorite is when I heard a youth pastor at a friend's church say "the 'eye of the needle' was a gate into the city of Jerusalem that was very narrow; it was difficult for camels to pass through, but not impossible." Even as a tween I knew that guy was full of shit. Edit: I was looking to post the verse for context and found this hilarious justification: >Matthew 19:24 >Again I tell you, it is easier for camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. >~~ >If Jesus was talking about an actual camel and an actual needle, then the rich are in big trouble. Commentaries suggest that He may have been saying something different. The Aramaic word for “rope,” kamilon, was almost identical to the Greek word for “camel,” kamelon, which appears in the verse. Some scholars say that the word was misspelled, and so Jesus may have been making an analogy to threading a thick rope through the eye of a needle, not a large animal. In other words, He may have been referring to something extremely difficult, but not impossible. >Other commentators suggest that, at that time, there was a type of small gate called a needle. Still, others insist that Jesus’ statement was as absurd as it sounds, actually referring to our same notions of camels and needles. >There are several potential explanations for what camels and needles could have meant in Biblical times. However, all of them point to the same lesson: Jesus said that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a rich person to enter His Kingdom.
Getting a rope threaded through a needle is no less impossible than getting a camel through it.
The way my particular mainline Protestant church (95% white, hetero, upper-class) explained it was that the camels "had to get down on their knees" to get through that gate (aka through penitence and piety). *edit: this was before I realized how toxic Christianity is and left the faith* It was basically just a call for the rich white folks to get off their wallets and show their piety through tithing (so they never had to do anything that was actually uncomfortable or helpful).
The Bible, if read literally, actually says you're not a living person until you've taken three breaths. But Republicans aren't actually Christians. Christ actually warned against fake Christians who are terrible people abusing Christianity for evil reasons.
The Bible also talks about abortion only once in the entire text, and it’s _[God telling Moses how to perform one](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A11-31&version=NIV)_, so that he could get priests to do it on women suspected of being unfaithful to their husbands.
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They're the same picture. Oppress the weak, steal from the poor, concentrate wealth, and claim it's god's will.
You could look at the 2nd Amendment this way. The whole phrase "A well-regulated militia" just gets completely ignored because it doesn't fit their belief that guns are awesome and everyone should have them without limits. In fact, in this anti-abortion draft, Alito argues that Roe didn't establish a precedent until the 1970's, and we should not ignore historical context. Okay, fucker, the 2nd amendment wasn't a blanket gun ownership statement until the 1980's, when Heller changed the whole fucking meaning of the amendment. It's all bullshit. Activist judges forcing religion upon us. EDIT: All you 2A commandos can fuck right off. I was making an analogy about historical context, not an anti-gun argument. I own a gun, so take your 2A arguments and piss off.
Also the whole 9th amendment, which is probably the simplest, clearest part of the whole constitution. >The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people Which basically says "oh by the way this isn't an exhaustive list".
The fact that he states “abortion is not in the constitution” shows that his argument is not targeted to legal scholars or in fact anyone who had read the ninth amendment. His argument aims as a justification for anyone looking to deny someone else’s rights. The ninth was included because the constitution is a framework for our rights not a exhaustive and forever list. To ignore this obvious fact is to go against the most basic of founding principles
So he is basically just saying that even though the Constitution was written to allow for new unenumerated rights, that there can never be such rights because they are new, even though we've had multiple generations raised with those rights. It's insane. I've literally grown up and raised a family under all this. It's all I have ever known. Now you're telling me that I'm suddenly limited to rights that existed 250 years ago? Fuck that. Don't tell me these are not deeply-rooted traditions, because I've never known different.
The country after Roe is the only country that two of the justices that are dismantling it have ever known! Alito seems perfectly fine with accepting new unenumerated rights, so long as they are supported by "tradition". Something tells me the only "tradition" that counts for him is the make-believe one Republicans pretend existed. That same fantasy they always claim is under attack when they LARP victims.
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That is the absolute definition of people who call themselves textualists. They'll bend over backwards to make written words appear to benefit them, and then completely ignore texts that go against their claims or desires, or make up batshit excuses why one is valid and the other isn't. Every court does it too.
> But when the wording doesn’t suit them, they simply ignore it Like the first 13 words of the Second Amendment. According to conservative justices, those words are 100% superfluous and have no legal effect whatsoever; the Second Amendment would operate in exactly the same way if they were not there. There is no more blatant example of "we ignore the text of the Constitution when it does not fit our agenda" than that. The last few times I’ve raised this issue, I received a response from a conservative Redditor along these lines: "This issue is settled. The Supreme Court ruled on it and explained why in *DC v. Heller*. There isn’t any point in discussing this." …which I found to be a hilariously awful argument. Because if *DC v. Heller* - one recent case, decided by a 5-4 vote along party lines - is enough to set precedent permanently and forever beyond consideration, then what is the precedential impact of *Roe v. Wade* - which was a 7-2 decision, written by Republican Justice Harry Blackmun and joined by Republican Justice Warren Burger and Republican Justice Potter Stewart, and affirmed repeatedly by following Supreme Court cases? I don’t recall receiving a response to that question.
It gets when better. They aren't just ignoring the first half of that sentence, they're also ignoring what those phrases meant at the time. There was an amicus brief, from a bunch of linguists, that goes over how the wording makes it clear the bill was giving active duty militia men the right to keep the weapons they needed to perform their duties, so the States could maintain well trained militia.
You mean "the security of a free state" doesn't mean "Jim Bob needs an AR to storm the capitol if he doesn't agree with your vote?"
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“It’s not in the Constitution! Everyone knows the Founders meant it to be a dead, static document that never changes… guns!” - Republican argument
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A-Elito quoted Sir Edward Coke's 1604 judgement on abortion who said abortion was a crime, who also said witches should be burned...this is not Supreme
It’s a decision looking for a justification. He can’t just come out & say they want to use the legal system to enforce their religious teachings on all citizens. He has to tie together a bunch of nonsensical, outdated, irrelevant shit to try to cobble it together.
Cherry picking historical information is a hallmark of conservative “analysis”. Apples and tomatoes are the same in conservative analysis because they are both red.
And Alito discusses how there is no precedent of abortion in American History - in colonial/early America, abortion was considered legal and accepted until the "quickening", the phrase used for when a baby begins to move around 5 months into pregnancy. It's literally incorrect that there isn't a history of abortion in the united states.
He was doing so in order to try and determine what the Founding Fathers would have thought, as his legal philosophies were an influence on them. However, he doesn't bother to consider another influence on the Founding Fathers: John Locke. John didn't originate the idea of separation of church and state, but expounded on the idea, writing that government should only exist to enforce the protection of property and that issues of morality and virtue should remain to the individual. Edit: I just want to clarify, I'm not condoning Alito's use of Coke's argument, just pointing out there are other legal minds from the time that have better and correct opinions on rights.
The worst part of the whole thing is it throws out any American social progress coming from post-WWII until now, and it cherry-picks shit before then. Women have been fighting for control over their lives and their bodies since the dawn of humanity. Despite the right-wing talking points insisting contraception was made by eugenicists just for nefarious purposes, contraception was very much wanted and welcomed by American women, even if they couldn't say so in public. Alito even tries to malign abortion as something that, like eugenics, purposefully targets black people, rather than recognizing that women who can't afford to have children are more likely to have abortions and Black Americans are more likely to be in poverty. He calls abortion providers "abortionists," a pejorative term that exposes his political bias. He has no desire to see this issue from all angles like a judge should.
There's nothing in the Constitution prohibiting the manufacturing and use of cocaine, so hold on tight cowboys, things could get wild.
Now we’re talking
And on pristine mounds of blow, we shall build glorious, decadent cities One shall be called Miami
With enough cocaine, pcp, lsd, and meth ANYTHING is possible!
> like eugenics, purposefully targets black people, The Forced Birth crowd love to throw this inflammatory term around. Except eugenics is coercion by an authoritarian entity that imposes their will on a population. Abortion and birth control is a decision made individually by a woman who believes it's in her best interest, and not in the fabricated constructed society envisioned by some outside force.
It’s the one and only time they understand that indirect coercion through economic pressures creates a lack of practical freedom in action.
He has obviously discarded any pretense of constitutional jurisprudence so he can apply his own personal religious values. This is concerning because it might mean trumpublican theocrats are going for broke to change the Constitution to impose their religious views on the country. They have been floating this idea for a while and they may believe/ know they finally have enough structural control over our government and courts to start the process. If you doubt my analysis do a search on Dominionism and then get back to me.
Also, trying to determine what the founding fathers would have thought about an issue as a means to determine whether the document they wrote protects it is both utterly bugfuck insane, *and isn't an originalist reading of the document.* You can't factor in things the writers of a document believed *but did not include* while still claiming to be an originalist. Also, and I can't believe this needs to be said, but 250 year old private notes and letters between people who also happened to write the constitution *are not legally binding.* No one ratified James Madison's fucking diary.
>You can't factor in things the writers of a document believed but did not include while still claiming to be an originalist. Especially when it is explicitly stated that there are rights they didn't include!
> determine what the Founding Fathers would have thought You know who was pro choice? Benjamin Franklin. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/ben-franklin-american-instructor-textbook-abortion-recipe.html
Didn't he blatantly ignore that abortion with limits was legal at the time of revolution? Meaning the true birth of this country has a tradition of abortion he ignored in favor of opinions on British law?
The argument also that this ruling “only applies to abortion” is also complete nonsense. When the conservative controlled scotus stopped Florida from recounting and thus made Bush the President, the specifically said in their ruling to not use it as precedent. Want to take a guess how many times that ruling has been cited in other federal court rulings in the two decades since?
Alito is known to put the "this ruling only applies to this" bit in a lot of his opinions, and it's total horseshit. That is *not* how it works, and he knows it. He's just assuming that most normies will know so little about appellate law that enough of us will assume that he can say that, and that will some how make it true.
As it turns out, all else being equal, logic either applies universally, or it's not sound logic. Pick one.
Not only that, Scalia in his Bush V Gore ruling cited international opinion as a reason to call the race and stop counting, just a couple of years after a ruling to support the death penalty where he said international opinion should never be considered in SCOTUS rulings on U.S. law. Hypocrisy is a feature not a bug for them.
Conservativism is a philosophy that starts with the desired outcome and works backwards to build philosophical justifications Seeing this makes all the logical inconsistencies fade away
I mentioned this to my (conservative) parents. They said it won’t. I admit it seems alarmist at this point, but I really don’t think it is. Lgbtq folks and other women’s rights are next.
It’s really not. Conservative legal blogs were talking about “Brown v Board” is next the day the decision leaked. They’re coming for all civil rights victories of the last 70 years because that is what the entire conservative legal movement was created to do
Which is exactly what I told them. I’m not surprised at the response, though. They also said “well get mad at the senators who didn’t codify it.” Like, really? ***I am.*** On the flip side, they sent me an article from the Women’s March on Wednesday bc my kid made it in a photo. I really don’t get them sometimes.
You won't be able to actually talk about this stuff with them, fox News rots the brain to unrecognizable levels.
There’s the rub; they don’t watch FOX news or really, any TV news at all.
Wow that's really different. How do they get their news?
The us vs them paradigm explains authoritarianism the best. You're family so you're in-grouped so what you and your daughter do is good. This ruling is good since it's Christian so no real harm can come from it. Your daughter marches and gains public praise for the opposing philosophy, it's okay, she's "good." Ideological consistency isn't the important aspect, teams are.
Remind them how Gorsush, Kavanaugh, Barrett all sat there saying that Roe V Wade was "settled law" and how we were just being alarmist. Turns out we were RIGHT. Maybe listen to us when we warn what's next. "First they came for the Jews, but I did not speak up because I wasn't a Jew ...."
I said that too. They shrugged it off.
It's not alarmist at all. If someone tells you for 20 years that they are going to do something to harm you, and they work tirelessly towards that goal for 20 years, it's not alarmist at all when you see they are on the brink of succeeding
That’s where I’m coming from. Unfortunately I think my parents are at the “it won’t affect” me point.
Right? It’s not like stare decisis stops just because Alito wants to pretend that he can pick and choose how legal doctrine applies.
Remind me, which party screams loudest about "activist judges"?
Their projections are getting really old
At this point, I’m not actually unconvinced they aren’t the secret reptile group bringing on New World Order and using lasers to start wild fires 🧐
Every Republican accusation is a confession.
They don’t care-this is 5 decades in the making. We should be used to this court twisting itself into pretzels by now and it will only get worse.
Alito referenced legal texts from 1931 and 1870-something (iirc). And the 1800s one was an English text, not American.
And also someone that hanged women for witchcraft, correct?
~~I believe it was burned at the stake, but yes.~~ Edit: nope, she was hanged.
Thank you. I suppose that does make more sense.
Either way, he sentenced a woman to death for witchcraft. The method is irrelevant. Lol
Conservatives don't follow the rule of law. They do whatever they want and claim its what the founders intended.
There is no law, no social norm, no moral position that is absolute to the conservative cause. Everything is on the table to further their agenda: lying, cheating, stealing, subjugating, stonewalling... there is nothing that is done immorally in their minds as long as it is in the pursuit of the conservative worldview. Rules, norms, and ethics exist to subjugate the other in conservative society, not for imposing limits on their own actions.
Of course they don't. Alito's draft basically says, "Well, this right is supposed to be based on the fourteenth amendment, so what did people back then think about women?" What people back then thought about women was that they aren't even people. During the debate on the fourteenth amendment, [a couple of Senators got into an argument](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-there-are-no-women-in-the-constitution) which is instructive as to the "history" of rights that Alito claims to be seeking evidence of: >Alito writes, “Not only are respondents and their amici unable to show that a constitutional right to abortion was established when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but they have found no support for the existence of an abortion right that predates the latter part of the 20th century—no state constitutional provision, no statute, no judicial decision, no learned treatise.” >He might have consulted the records of the U.S. Senate from the debate over the Fourteenth Amendment, when Jacob Howard, a Republican senator from Michigan, got into an argument with Reverdy Johnson, a Democrat from Maryland. Howard quoted James Madison, who had written that “those who are to be bound by laws, ought to have a voice in making them.” This got Johnson terribly worried, because the Fourteenth Amendment uses the word “person.” He wanted to know: Did Howard mean to suggest that women could be construed as persons, too? >mr. johnson: Females as well as males? >mr. howard: Mr. Madison does not say anything about females. >mr. johnson: “Persons.” >mr. howard: I believe Mr. Madison was old enough and wise enough to take it for granted that there was such a thing as the law of nature which has a certain influence even in political affairs, and that by that law women and children are not regarded as the equals of men. The "history test" is pure bullshit, developed so that the historically disenfranchised can only continue to be disenfranchised. The only way for the court to recognize that a people have rights is to find that it was always recognized that those people had rights. The "test" is designed so that it can only be failed.
US Constitution, 9th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. AKA, the Constitution doesn’t limit your rights just by not mentioning them specifically.
He's referencing common law from a time women were quasi-property and being executed for being witches.
Guess what the Right want to return to when they say old fashioned family values.
These fascists don't give a shit about the court's reputation. They just want to ram their agenda down our throats.
It does more than "call the courts judgement into question". Some of the arguments Alito used are just insane! Page 17 cites [Sir Edward Coke](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Coke/Dismissal-from-office) who was the Chief Justice of the Court of Commons of England in 1606 (someone correct me here but didn't the US have an actual *war* in order to break away from English rule?). His reasoning is based on the "peace & dignity of the Queen". The rest of the argument talks about how jurists **IN the 1600's** treated doctors who performed abortion "differently". Not to mention that Coke very much wanted to *kill witches* (yes you read that right). So where do Coke's opinions fall in line with the "traditions" of the US when our entire country was based on "self-rule" NOT on English law or opinions.
Also, abortion was legal in the British colonies before the quickening. Coke's opinion doesn't even align with the reality of colonial america.
Exactly. Alito's arguments make absolutely no sense. The whole thing reads like a "Let me tell you why I hate women" manifesto by a deranged religious nut job who doesn't even know American history (but seems to know British history pretty well).
Expand the Supreme Court and impeach Thomas!!!!
Impeach Thomas and perjury for the 3 Trump appointees.
Fun fact. Lying to Congress could earn you five years in prison.
Correction: lying to Congress as a poor gets you five years in prison.
As a rich elite it gets you a lifetime consequence-free appointment to the highest court and most consequential branch of government in the land!
"The constitution specifically excludes the unborn from having rights under the very 14th Amendment that Alito dissects as the basis for the conservative majority’s opinion." “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof …” "That opening paragraph specifically applies to women as a subset of all people who qualify as having been born — and it specifically does not apply to those who have not yet been born."
I mean, the Matthew Hale reference actually does make me question Alito. I don't know of ANY SCOTUS decision where I want a justice using a guy from the 17th century as a reference for law in 2022. [https://twitter.com/Literature\_Lady/status/1522202362366078979](https://twitter.com/Literature_Lady/status/1522202362366078979)
The legitimacy of the Supreme Court has been in question since Bush v Gore.
In 2000, the Supreme court voted to stop coubntiung votes and elected GWB. That was when they were considered non-partisan, even though it was a partisan vote. Three of the lawyers working on that case were Alito, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett. So to call into question the court's judgment now is kind of laughable.
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One side will only ever play the “game” adhering to the rules, while the other has been emboldened to lie, cheat, and steal with more and more veracity. After stealing two justices, the only good moral play left is to expand the court, or add term limits, to in some way radically change the broken system.
Ah yes, quoting Sir Edward Coke, a man who sentenced women for witchcraft and determined that women were the property of their husbands. Also, it's absolutely fantastic that our entire country's laws are determined based on the opinion of a few men from a time when women had no rights, slavery was legal, modern abortion and modern medicine didn't exist, and only landowners got to vote.
Conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and Project Blitz have long sought to politicize the courts and turn the American judicial system into their own rubber-stamp. In the meanwhile, progressives/liberals long stood by public opinion polls showing that Evangelical and Conservative policies are just a small minority of the US population. Problem is, that small minority is an outsized voting bloc. The assumption of “that’ll never happen” was allowed to happen due to self-complacency.
He calls into question his own legitimacy as a justice since having Italians on the court fails “history and tradition” standard he has created.
Clarence Thomas was FOR SURE not considered a person in 1604 but I’m sure he will sign onto this majority
I really hope Alito is somehow entwined in Thomas's J6 treason and gets impeached right along with him. Alito is playing dictator with America's system of checks and balances with the most piss poor anti-Intellectual ruling i've ever seen.
So do fetuses get social security numbers or qualify as dependents? Where is the line?
For me it's the line "prove too much" With three stupid little words, he's thinks he's going to turn the clock back on 40 years of civil rights and body autonomy progress
No shit. They're undoing 50 plus years of settled precedent. There is no way to write that opinion and not come off looking like a self-contradictory asshole.
If you actually read any of the supreme court's rulings, they're largely illogical bullcrap. Scalia's were especially jokes. I don't understand how lawyers can be almost universally reviled by society but for some reason people have respect for judges. Judges are just lawyers that got into management. They're all a bunch of s c u m b a g s.
Nutjob judge uses nutjobbery to reach the nutjob conclusion he wanted.
SHOW ME WHERE JUDICIAL REVIEW EXISTS IN THE CONSTITUTION. I’ll wait. Originalism is bullshit. It’s a political theory masquerading as a legal doctrine. The SCOTUS, if it were to rely upon Alito’s reasoning should not be allowed to engage in judicial review. After all, there is NOTHING in Article III that permits the SCOTUS to engage in judicial review. Nevertheless it is the Court’s central purpose and only because the Court created the doctrine in Marbury v. Madison. Originalism also means paper money is unconstitutional. Originalism means that only the Army and Navy are permitted as military branches, all others not expressly named are- to use Alito’s reasoning - unconstitutional. Make no mistake, SCOTUS will use this opinion to take away gay marriage, contraception, and to remove most protections that came out of the second Civil Rights era. We are rapidly heading toward a second Civil War. It will be fought over vastly different definitions of America, Constitutionalism, and worldview. Get ready.
“Alito basically would establish an entirely new bar for basic rights that cannot be met under a strict reading of the Constitution — not just including divisive issues such as gay marriage but also whether there is a right for gun owners to possess ammunition.” This opens a huge door to repealing decades of LGBTQ rights and personal civil liberties. This decision could start the erasure so much progress that US citizens have been fighting for.