The US Supreme Court Thread - Post Roe v. Wade reversal edition

First Page?

 

IBTL

 

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Kill the pigs!

 

Hail Grimes!

 

I don't have NYT subscription, can someone post some extracts or the gist?

 

They were trendsetters wearing high tops with formal wear.

 

Author is an Anglican minister. Her key points:

Here are three ways that I find abortion rights arguments that appeal to bodily autonomy unpersuasive and ultimately harmful to our understanding of freedom and what it means to be human:

1. Bodily autonomy is limited by our obligation to not harm others. We already recognize in law that there are limits to physical autonomy. One can’t walk down the street naked, even if one really wants to, or go 75 miles an hour in a school zone, even if slowing down poses a burden on the driver.

These limits came up in the Dobbs oral arguments. Twice, Justice Clarence Thomas brought up a case where a woman was convicted of child neglect for ingesting harmful illegal drugs while pregnant. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs addresses this as well, saying that an appeal to autonomy, “at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.” Our desires to do as we wish with our bodies must be respected but they also must be limited by the needs and rights of others, including those who live inside our own bodies.

2. The term “autonomy” denies the deep interdependence and limitations of every human body. One definition of autonomy is “independence.” But no human has complete bodily autonomy from birth to death. The natural state of human beings is to be deeply and irrevocably interdependent on one another. The only reason any of us is alive today is that someone cared for us as children in the womb and then as infants and toddlers. Almost all of us, through age or disability or both, will eventually depend on other human beings — other human bodies — to bathe, dress, feed and otherwise care for us.

A child in the womb is dependent on a mother for life in a way that does place a unique burden on a mother. But this burden does not end at birth. Parenthood — at any stage — is an arduous good. A 1-year-old baby is dependent on adults for nourishment, protection and care in ways that can be profoundly burdensome, yet we cannot claim “bodily autonomy” as a reason to neglect the needs of a 1-year-old. Abortion seems to punish a fetus for its lack of bodily autonomy and deny the profound reliance that all of us who have bodies hold.

With this deep interdependence that we all share come obligations to one another. We do not always choose the ways our bodies are dependent on others. And we often do not choose the obligations placed on our lives by others who are dependent on us. Covid threw into sharp relief ways that our bodies and our bodily health depend on the choices of other people. I’ve criticized those on the right for casting a choice about whether to get a Covid vaccine as entirely an individual decision. This kind of individualistic rhetoric is the very logic of autonomy — that people can do what they want with their own bodies without regarding their obligations to others. But human bodies, unlike machines, simply aren’t autonomous. Our choices about our own bodies impact the bodies around us.

3. The pressing issue when it comes to abortion is whether championing bodily autonomy requires us to override or undo biological realities. In the Dobbs oral arguments, Julie Rikelman described what women experience if they lack access to abortion: “Allowing a state to take control of a woman’s body and force her to undergo the physical demands, risks and life-altering consequences of pregnancy is a fundamental deprivation of her liberty.”

But is restricting abortion the same thing as forced gestation? Is it correct to compare abortion restrictions to a state “taking control” of a woman’s body and a deprivation of liberty?

Whatever one thinks sex is and what it is for — whether a sacred act or a mere recreational pleasure — all of us can agree that sex is the only human activity that has the power to create life and that every potentially procreative sexual act therefore carries some level of risk that pregnancy could occur. (Birth control significantly lessens this risk but does not entirely take it away since birth control methods can fail.) Yet, the state does not impose this risk of producing human life; biology does. Except in the horrible circumstances of rape or incest, which account for 1 percent of abortions, women and men both have bodily agency and choices about whether they will have sex and therefore if they are willing to accept the risk of new life inherent in it.

Our bodies undeniably place a disproportional burden on women in reproduction. There is an inescapable asymmetry in male and female bodies when it comes to making and carrying life. To address the particular difficulty that pregnancy places on women, we need to hold fathers more responsible through child support laws. And we need to create a culture that does not shame women for unintended pregnancies but supports them through pro-women policies like paid parental leave, access to affordable child care, free health care and other measures. Yet, the state, in the end, cannot and ought not entirely rescue us from the known realities of human biology.

A sperm and an egg unite to grow into a human inside the body of a woman. The state doesn’t force this to happen any more than it forces aging or forces weight loss from exercise or forces lungs to take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide.

To use language of forced gestation or of a state “controlling” women’s bodies is to portray biology itself as oppressive and halting the natural course of the body as the liberative role of the state.

For both men and women, bodily autonomy can’t mean that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, with our own bodies without natural consequences or obligations to others. If this is what we mean by “autonomy,” then no one can champion bodily autonomy without ultimately advocating harm.

 

So, y'know, virtually all of that depends on a presupposition that a fetus is a person.

 

They’ll get there. Just be patient

 

Also... If you don't want a baby, don't have sex!

 

So if you're married, have kids, and don't want more kids, you and your spouse should just stop having sex.
OR, if you're married but aren't ready for kids, then just NO SEX.
OR, just don't get raped.

OR, if you want kids, just don't have a complicated pregnancy that threatens your life.

OR.........

 

Utah Judge grants a 14day restraining order on Utah's trigger law as Planned Parenthood's lawsuit makes it's way to court.

This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

I got a vasectomy. That’s an option.

 

Over the weekend, the wife and I had some hard conversations about where we were going to live in light of the SCOTUS decision.

What was the least surprising part of the weekend was seeing women who obviously voted for Trump (because you can see their Facebook status) getting angry on social media. Something something Leopards Eating People's Faces Party something something.

 

Such limited imagination when it comes to sex! Good thing we gays are here to help straights realize missionary position heterosexual sex is just one way of having sex!

 

I was operating off of his assumptions.

Well, I’m guessing christofascists won’t outlaw that one, although you’ll probably be shamed.

 

I wonder. I hear the Catholics have decided it isn't really kosher?

 

Doesn't matter what kind of minister she is. This is all her opinion, based on something or another about a fetus being a complete human.

Free these women and the men who impregnated them.

 

They are going full throttle. I thought after Roe, they would slow down and make so calls for Libs so they can point to them as not being one-sided but they are essentially at, I have the votes so screw you.

 

I despise them as a lower form of life, but I so respect their grit.

 

It is like watching the opponent score a beautiful well worked goal in your team. The ruthlessness and bravdo is impressive. I look at the Dems and wonder when they will go for broke and change the court and get laws passed.