The overturning of Roe v Wade

[Berliner]

Yet dozens of US States do explicitly allow abortion, and as far as I'm aware, the Supreme Court has not made any ruling to challenge that state of affairs, nor does there seem to be any serious attempt to do so. Indeed, part of the ruling appears to explicitly be based on the idea that it should be up to the politicians to decide what the laws on abortion should be, which implies respecting the rights of individual states to allow abortion:

"It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” Casey, 505 U.S., at 979 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand."



This is just paranoia. There's practically no significant mainstream political support for ending abortion rights in the UK. Simply not going to happen.

There was no issue with EU membership other than on the fringes of the mainstream political parties and dedicated groups like UKIP which were loud but unpopular. Although I support independence for Scotland, the idea was barely discussed until 2006 when the SNP suddenly surged to victory. Now the issue is the most prominent one in Scotland and has been for years.

All it takes is a few people to make enough noise, then a few prominant mainstream politicians get involved and suddenly something that isn't an issue becomes one. I'd be worried about the UK starting to make things like abortion a mainstream political issue. Our politics is becoming so polarised and Americanised that we simply can't rule out the chance that fringe groups will become emboldened here.

 

[Grecian 1998]

A key difference between the UK and USA however is the role religion plays in public life. We may officially have an established church but religion plays a far smaller part in most people's lives here than it does in much of the USA. There are significant areas there, the South in particular, where it would be virtually impossible to get elected if you were openly atheist. It's hard to think of anywhere here, where that would have any bearing on an election.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has previously said he's against abortion:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41172426

The public reaction to that was hardly supportive - then PM Theresa May's spokesperson made it clear she did not agree and the story faded away.

I can't really conceive that the issue could become significant to enough people for anything to change here.

 

[Shrop]

Welcome to Democracy and the idea of Separation of Powers! It's frustrating when the President can't do something that you want him to do, but that fact that he can't just do whatever he wants is one of the things that distinguishes democratic countries from dictatorships.

And yet Trump could do more or less anything he wanted just by stamping his feet until he got it. Okay, so he didn't quite get his way when he wanted to stay in power, but then again he did get away with inciting a riot that resulted in multiple deaths when he left. You might think that in a democracy then that would have been severely punished, but here he is with many believing he will actually run for another term as President, rather than serving a prison sentence as might be expected when multiple deaths have resulted directly from your actions.

Meanwhile the gun laws are going pretty much exactly as he wants. Oh, and if you look at a map of the USA where abortion is suddenly now illegal, and compare it with a map of states which vote Republican, there really are striking similarities. And in the UK, even if we do get rid of Boris, it has taken an extraordinary amount of time to do so, throughout which he has been known to lie and deceive his people.

So what does this all say about democracy? Boris proving as hard to get rid of as a dictator, and Trump is somehow managing to operate like one even though he no longer officially holds office. It seems that modern democracies don't actually have all that much going for them!

 

[Yew]

What did Prohibition in the USA actually achieve?

The satiation of religious nut jobs?

 

[najaB]

And yet Trump could do more or less anything he wanted just by stamping his feet until he got it.

He didn't really, at least not on a legislative basis. He did sign a large number of Executive Orders, but EO's only last as long as there's a supportive president. Note that Trump himself undid a lot of Obama's EOs.

 

[Yew]

Yet dozens of US States do explicitly allow abortion, and as far as I'm aware, the Supreme Court has not made any ruling to challenge that state of affairs, nor does there seem to be any serious attempt to do so. Indeed, part of the ruling appears to explicitly be based on the idea that it should be up to the politicians to decide what the laws on abortion should be, which implies respecting the rights of individual states to allow abortion:

And you can guarantee that there are southern states already typesetting some laws to restrict it - often with restrictions on going out-of-state for one either.

 

[najaB]

And you can guarantee that there are southern states already typesetting some laws to restrict it - often with restrictions on going out-of-state for one either.

They aren't typesetting them, the laws are already on the books!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

And you can guarantee that there are southern states already typesetting some laws to restrict it - often with restrictions on going out-of-state for one either.

The state of Idaho is not a southern state. What might occur there?

 

[Yew]

The state of Idaho is not a southern state. What might occur there?

I struggle to see how that is relevant to the comment I made?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I struggle to see how that is relevant to the comment I made?

Idaho is one of the states that could set wheels in motion to ban abortions. You only made reference to southern states, but is it not the case that the American Mid-West states are very conservative in their thinking?

 

[najaB]

Idaho is one of the states that could set wheels in motion to ban abortions. You only made reference to southern states, but is it not the case that the American Mid-West states are very conservative in their thinking?

What you say is true but, to expand on @Yew's response: And?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

What you say is true but, to expand on @Yew's response: And?

I thought that by stating that it was not just the southern states, but also the Mid-West states, showed the Abortion Ban was not confined to the geographical area once the stronghold of the Confederacy.

Does that answer your "And?" query?

 

[birchesgreen]

There was no issue with EU membership other than on the fringes of the mainstream political parties and dedicated groups like UKIP which were loud but unpopular. Although I support independence for Scotland, the idea was barely discussed until 2006 when the SNP suddenly surged to victory. Now the issue is the most prominent one in Scotland and has been for years.

All it takes is a few people to make enough noise, then a few prominant mainstream politicians get involved and suddenly something that isn't an issue becomes one. I'd be worried about the UK starting to make things like abortion a mainstream political issue. Our politics is becoming so polarised and Americanised that we simply can't rule out the chance that fringe groups will become emboldened here.

I agree with you, things can change very fast and very unpredictably. The influence of foreign pressure groups on our politics is well known.

 

[Yew]

I thought that by stating that it was not just the southern states, but also the Mid-West states, showed the Abortion Ban was not confined to the geographical area once the stronghold of the Confederacy.

I don't remember ever saying that was, however it is certainly more common in southern states.

 

[najaB]

I thought that by stating that it was not just the southern states, but also the Mid-West states, showed the Abortion Ban was not confined to the geographical area once the stronghold of the Confederacy.

Nobody has made the claim that it's exclusively a southern state phenomenon, but it is indisputable that the southern states are the stronghold of both Christian Nationalism and the GOP, and the most restrictive abortion laws are to be found there.

 

[TheEdge]

And you can guarantee that there are southern states already typesetting some laws to restrict it - often with restrictions on going out-of-state for one either.

This is the worst part. Its all good and well if the civilised states still allow abortion but someone leaving Texas to go to California is still subject to the laws of Texas.

I've seen it floating around on social media that if this was about children the US would have paid maternity, free childcare, free child birth, proper child support. But they don't.

 

[najaB]

I've seen it floating around on social media that if this was about children the US would have paid maternity, free childcare, free child birth, proper child support. But they don't.

This is about Republicans pushing down to keep what they have, rather than pulling others up.

 

[windingroad]

This is the worst part. Its all good and well if the civilised states still allow abortion but someone leaving Texas to go to California is still subject to the laws of Texas.

Even women who chose to be pregnant are at risk, because if they miscarry the burden will be on them to prove they didn't abort the foetus. I can't imagine the pain of losing a child you desperately wanted and then being accused of deliberately ending the pregnancy.

I've seen it floating around on social media that if this was about children the US would have paid maternity, free childcare, free child birth, proper child support. But they don't.

Spot on. It's about controlling women and their bodies, nothing more. George Carlin says it best:

 

[brad465]

This is the worst part. Its all good and well if the civilised states still allow abortion but someone leaving Texas to go to California is still subject to the laws of Texas.

I've seen it floating around on social media that if this was about children the US would have paid maternity, free childcare, free child birth, proper child support. But they don't.

This is the thing, as a Christian (although I tolerate abortion in certain circumstances) I could get more onboard with their opposition to abortion if they were not hypocrites. I saw someone elsewhere give the opinion that maybe they're opposed to abortion because they want more people in the world to hate. I also saw it stated that the punishment for aborting a rape is less than the rape itself. I'm not familiar with the laws in question, and probably vary between states, but it would not surprise me if that's true somewhere.

 

[neilmc]

This is the thing, as a Christian (although I tolerate abortion in certain circumstances) I could get more onboard with their opposition to abortion if they were not hypocrites. I saw someone elsewhere give the opinion that maybe they're opposed to abortion because they want more people in the world to hate. I also saw it stated that the punishment for aborting a rape is less than the rape itself. I'm not familiar with the laws in question, and probably vary between states, but it would not surprise me if that's true somewhere.

That's the thing - a Christian response has to be nuanced, since there are vast numbers of spontaneous abortions occur to families who dearly want a child, so it could be said that God aborts more babies than any human agency. I think this has been picked up and run with by Roman Catholic agencies who are also anti-contraception and prefer to let young people dwell in sexual ignorance, and then throw their hands up in horror when their domains end up with more abortions than more liberal regimes. In extreme cases abortion, at any part of the pregnancy, is viewed akin to murder and might indeed be treated more harshly than rape, since women don't matter very much to these people, only children, or to be exact foetuses, since there's probably abysmal post-natal health care too.

 

[windingroad]

This is the thing, as a Christian (although I tolerate abortion in certain circumstances) I could get more onboard with their opposition to abortion if they were not hypocrites.

While I'm irreligious, I have no problem at all with opposition to abortion in the context of personal religious morality.

What I cannot abide is the imposition of that religious morality on others, particularly when it comes to the law, which should be secular. Religion itself is not even universally anti-abortion (and in some cases explicitly deems it permissible) so why should one particular religious perspective set the terms? There are now quite a few states in the US which ban abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or medical emergency. This would include ectopic pregnancies in many cases, in which the foetus isn't viable (and cannot be saved) and yet the woman will be forced to carry that foetus until it kills her. That is evil, nothing less.

I know you aren't justifying these things, to be clear! It's just that, for me, even if they weren't disgusting hypocrites I still wouldn't want them to control other people's bodies in this way. It should be a personal choice, subject to some limited but reasonable restrictions, that each woman can make according to their conscience.

 

[najaB]

I also saw it stated that the punishment for aborting a rape is less than the rape itself. I'm not familiar with the laws in question, and probably vary between states, but it would not surprise me if that's true somewhere.

If you meant the punishment for the abortion is greater than that for rape, then that is definitely the case.

In Texas the penalty for performing an abortion can be up to 99 years in prison. Depending on circumstances, rape may be prosecuted as sexual assault which carries a sentence between 2 and 20 years (though aggravated sexual assault also carries a penalty of up to 99 years).

 

[deltic]

There was no issue with EU membership other than on the fringes of the mainstream political parties and dedicated groups like UKIP which were loud but unpopular. Although I support independence for Scotland, the idea was barely discussed until 2006 when the SNP suddenly surged to victory. Now the issue is the most prominent one in Scotland and has been for years.

All it takes is a few people to make enough noise, then a few prominant mainstream politicians get involved and suddenly something that isn't an issue becomes one. I'd be worried about the UK starting to make things like abortion a mainstream political issue. Our politics is becoming so polarised and Americanised that we simply can't rule out the chance that fringe groups will become emboldened here.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where abortion has been a mainstream issue - in the UK support/opposition for/to abortion is virtually equal amongst Conservative and Labour supporters. Conservatives are 70% in support, 9% opposed while for Labour the figures are 77% to 9%. In the US Democrats who believe abortion should be legal in all cases has increased from 63% to 80% from 2007 to 2022 while amongst Republicans it has stayed virtually static at 39% down to 38% over the same time period.

 

[Scotrail12]

We have to be wary now for the emboldened to try and push for similar here.

I don't think that will happen, certainly none of the right-leaning UK people on Twitter (e.g. Julia Hartley-Brewer) that I follow seem impressed by the Supreme Court's decision. Reform UK's deputy leader Dr. David Bull spoke out against it as well so that's one conservative leaning fringe party which isn't going to be campaigning to remove abortion. I'd be wary of morons like the Heritage Party or the Scottish Family Party but they thankfully have no real traction.

 

[windingroad]

If you meant the punishment for the abortion is greater than that for rape, then that is definitely the case.

In Texas the penalty for performing an abortion can be up to 99 years in prison. Depending on circumstances, rape may be prosecuted as sexual assault which carries a sentence between 2 and 20 years (though aggravated sexual assault also carries a penalty of up to 99 years).

Implicit in all of these disgusting policies is the belief that women's bodies belong to men, and I cannot be convinced otherwise. None of it survives the slightest scrutiny unless you apply that lens.

I don't think that will happen, certainly none of the right-leaning UK people on Twitter (e.g. Julia Hartley-Brewer) that I follow seem impressed by the Supreme Court's decision. Reform UK's deputy leader Dr. David Bull spoke out against it as well so that's one conservative leaning fringe party which isn't going to be campaigning to remove abortion. I'd be wary of morons like the Heritage Party or the Scottish Family Party but they thankfully have no real traction.

My concern is less about a sudden and dramatic shift on this specific issue, and more about emboldening extremists more generally over time. If the Supreme Court goes on to strike down things like equal marriage (which is a distinct possibility) and even the right to contraception, it will represent a very significant lurch to the hard right which will be seized upon by reactionaries around the world.

I do also think we have to be very, very careful not to be complacent. As little as five years ago this court judgement was unthinkable.

 

[Berliner]

Implicit in all of these disgusting policies is the belief that women's bodies belong to men, and I cannot be convinced otherwise. None of it survives the slightest scrutiny unless you apply that lens.


My concern is less about a sudden and dramatic shift on this specific issue, and more about emboldening extremists more generally over time. If the Supreme Court goes on to strike down things like equal marriage (which is a distinct possibility) and even the right to contraception, it will represent a very significant lurch to the hard right which will be seized upon by reactionaries around the world.

I do also think we have to be very, very careful not to be complacent. As little as five years ago this court judgement was unthinkable.

This is what I am fearful of. Yes, in the UK, Abortion is not an issue today, but it's the drip, drip effect and the fact that people who hold these views will stop at absolutely nothing. The UK has changed pretty dramatically over the last few years, bit by bit, there is absolutely nothing to say huge chunks of society cannot be convinced to vote against their own interests or those of others, even if it has no impact on them whatsoever. We cannot be complacent. This government alone has shown they can make huge changes to our lives with very little effort and the people, in general, don't notice or particularly care unless it affects them.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I've seen it floating around on social media that if this was about children the US would have paid maternity, free childcare, free child birth, proper child support. But they don't.

Is the attached image the meme you're referring to?

Of course, it doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. Pretty much none of the things that it claims are free are actually free - and many of them are hugely expensive, and someone (presumably, the taxpayer) would have to pay for them if the state provided them. It's basically an attempt to smear the motives of those who are opposed to abortion.

Implicit in all of these disgusting policies is the belief that women's bodies belong to men, and I cannot be convinced otherwise.

With respect, that is rubbish, and is just (like the meme I linked to) smearing the motives of those who are opposed to abortion. As I'm sure you are well aware, the real reason why many (including huge numbers of women) in the USA are opposed to abortion is that they believe that the foetus is a living human being and that abortion is therefore murder. Like most people in this thread, I don't share that belief, and I very much believe that women should have access to abortion when they need it, I'm appalled that the situation in the USA has come to this, and I really feel for those women (and men - for example - the partners of those women) who will suffer because of this decision. But I also don't think you should be arguing by trying to smear the motives of those who disagree with you. If you want to argue against abortion, do so on the merits of the argument.

There are a huge arguments in favour of abortion: The awful suffering and risk to life of women caused by 'back-street'-abortions that become inevitable when abortion is illegal; the equally huge suffering caused to women who are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, particularly if they have no means to support the child/became pregnant through sexual assault, etc. etc. You really don't need to resort to smearing people who disagree with you to argue your case!

 

[Ianigsy]

If the Supreme Court goes on to strike down things like equal marriage (which is a distinct possibility) and even the right to contraception, it will represent a very significant lurch to the hard right which will be seized upon by reactionaries around the world.

The interesting thing with equal marriage in the US is that various clauses dating back to the Constitution state that contracts and proceedings entered into in one state are valid in all the others - particularly important when a state like Maryland was set up specifically to accommodate Catholics, who might not otherwise recognise a marriage performed in Boston under Puritan-influenced Massachusetts law. So theoretically as things stand, as long as one state allows equal marriage, they all have to, whether they would enact it themselves or not.

Of course this means that the flip side of this is that in certain states, it’s not hard for conservatives to argue that equal marriage is something they’ve been forced to accept against the will of their electors. If we complain about judges making law in Britain, it’s almost certainly worse in America as it’s not just a case of having an emergency debate to push a bill through Parliament.

 

[windingroad]

Of course, it doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. Pretty much none of the things that it claims are free are actually free - and many of them are hugely expensive, and someone (presumably, the taxpayer) would have to pay for them if the state provided them. It's basically an attempt to smear the motives of those who are opposed to abortion.

What? It doesn't claim any of those things are free. It's saying that if the anti-abortion right truly cared about babies, or "life", they would support comprehensive welfare policies of the sort described.

Implied in your message is that you don't support those policies yourself, because they'd come at a cost to the taxpayer. Does that mean you value low taxes more than life? This absurd moral absolutism goes both ways.

 

[daodao]

There seems to be a misunderstanding that the US Supreme Court has banned abortion; it has not done so. What it is has done is merely issued a ruling (correctly IMO) that abortion is not a protected right under the US Constitution, and returned the decision regarding abortion regulations back to the states. It is individual states that have decided to reduce the availability of abortions. If the majority of people in each individual state are unhappy with their state's view regarding abortions, they can vote in another party that will change that state's laws regarding abortions.

The danger for the USA is that if one group of states takes particular views regarding a number of key issues, and another group of states takes fundamentally different positions. If this goes too far, the USA could fragment, as it did in the mid 19th century leading to the US Civil War.