The article is by Politico founding editor John F. Harris, and I'm not in the mood to wade through his scenario of posthumous mirth, but I will state the obvious: Alito's written opinion is not about preventing abortion, but about allowing the issue to be decided through the political process.
Harris is obviously relying on that statement Ginsburg once made that we'd have been better off if the abortion question had been dealt with through the political process.* So why would she be laughing at him? The views are basically the same. Of course, when she got on the Court, she upheld the abortion rights precedents, but that difference between her and Alito could not be the basis of post-death laughing. She lost that one.
But is she getting the "last laugh," because now that the issue has finally entered the political process, people are voting for abortion rights? The Alito majority professed not to care what happened in that process, so what's the basis of the laughter coming from inside the tomb? You have to attribute an unstated opinion to Alito before you have a basis for laughter.
And let's say you get that far. It's unseemly to laugh about abortion. If the dead can laugh, can they also cry? If we're going to ventriloquize the dead, your laughing Ginsburg is drowned out by 60 million crying babies.
_______________
* Yes, this is the third-to-last sentence in Harris's article: "Somewhat tauntingly, the Dobbs opinion cited a 1992 speech from one of the most prominent abortion-rights supporters of all, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that Roe 'halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believed, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.'" How is that taunting? You could just as well call it concilliatory.
Posts
49 comments:
Harris sure does not want abortion laws to be made by the state legislatures. He prefers those laws to be made by a five-member majority of the US Supreme Court.
With reasoning like Harris is using here, can you imagine debating him on the high school debate team? They’d have to invoke a mercy rule to prevent him from experiencing cruel and unusual punishment.
That copium is glass grade. You've got crystals two, maybe three inches long!
60 million crying babies is pro-abortion.
The vast majority of Americans do not, and have not, been in favor of the abortion rights heretofore allowed at the federal level. Furthermore, neither is most of the world outside of China.
Wishful laughing.
I would highly doubt RBG would be laughing from the grave...Witch cackling like Kamala over the third trimester abortions and infanticide.
I'd would guess like most Americans, she was morally ok with 1st trimester, conflicted on 2nd, and knew damn well 3rd trimester is infanticide. A death ritual in a deteriorating culture.
By overturning Roe and sending it to the states, returning it to the political process, people will vote reasonably like Kansas did (Kansas allows up to 20 weeks post-fertilization and 22 weeks post last menstrual period). A bit ripe, but not 3rd trimester, and not completely banned.
This author is and asshole.
Maybe Ginsberg has been learning that abortion runs 180 degrees counter to God's plan for his children, and their growth and development. Perhaps she has now realized in great sorrow that the power to create another human being was the highest form of human action, and to treat that power so lightly was a mistake of colossal proportions. Perhaps she has also learned to her joy that despite her utter misguidedness, God's hand was and is outstretched to her even now.
"60 million crying babies is pro-abortion."
I guess, by my own rules, I can't laugh.
Mr Wibble said...
That copium is glass grade. You've got crystals two, maybe three inches long!
Heh. Care for the usual morning squirt of dopamine with your coffee, lefties? Here you go- Ginsburg laughing from the grave...
What kind of fucked up creation is Laughing from the grave?
Having the last laugh or the antonymic turning over in her grave maybe...
It would be interesting to see advocates on both sides of this issue give an honest assessment of what is going on here--as honest an assessment as Alito gave in his Dobbs opinion and as honest as Ginsburg was in her 1992 speech.
The ultimate outcome will be that access to abortion (subject to some reasonable restrictions) will be available in many states, with support for travel to those states available from organizations like Planned Parenthood.
Extremists on both sides are going to run on the rocks if they get too far from this conclusion. Both political parties need to be careful here. The Democrats in states like California and Illinois appear to be OK with late term abortion on demand (i.e., infanticide). The GOP, currently in the process of returning to its historic position as the Stupid Party, needs to be particularly careful about getting too far from the voters. All those polls showing the public opposed to overturning Roe and Casey but in favor of restricting abortion? Those polls are real.
Harris had a case to make and a column to write, so screw the logic.
In conversation about abortion I quit using the term "baby". I use the term "human spirit". Those who are pro abortion (like myself) have a visibly and more emotionally difficult time with that term in play. They can deny that it's a baby all day long but they can not gainsay that it's a human spirit denied life.
You have to remember, for lefties like Harris, "laughter" is not rooted in humor and mirth, it's about expressing one's self-superiority, vengeance and hate.
Abortion in Kansas still goes to 22 weeks, with post-22 week abortions allowed with two physicians agreeing on grave danger to the mother and I think an unviable life outside the womb for the baby.
The vast majority of Western nations consider the 22 week abortions on-demand inhumane.
I feel sorry for Harris who apparently thinks of aborted babies as fodder for a political fight. An appalling lack of humanity.
Alito's written opinion is not about preventing abortion, but about allowing the issue to be decided through the political process.
I don't know what more there is to say.
Except, perhaps, that a lot of people are invested in another reality.
Standing on the graves of midgets.
That a sizable percentage of us are willing, some even happy, that we will allow the killing of our Posterity.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity [scratch that, insert "to ourselves and ourselves alone], do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
I think you covered any comment I might have had, so I'll simply say, "What she said".
In the NYTimes newsletter "The Morning", Dave Leonhardt makes the identical stupid argument: "The Kansas abortion vote and the congressional push on same-sex marriage show how progressives can confront the Supreme Court."
How is this in any way a "confrontation"? The Dobbs majority wanted the issue of abortion decided at the state level by democratic institutions -- which is exactly what happened in Kansas. Alito and the rest of the majority should be pleased.
As you note, this is a "confrontation" only if you impute a belief to Alito et al. that what they *really* want is abortion banned everywhere via state law. There is of course no evidence for this belief.
That which is not forbidden is mandatory. Harris, like nearly all left-wing people, is incapable of comprehending any reason to take a guaranteed right and put it to public vote other than a hope that the vote goes the other way. Process doesn't matter, principles are not a thing. Democracy is a tool, not a value, and you don't fix what isn't broken.
In the NYTimes newsletter "The Morning", Dave Leonhardt makes the identical stupid argument: "The Kansas abortion vote and the congressional push on same-sex marriage show how progressives can confront the Supreme Court."
How is this in any way a "confrontation"? The Dobbs majority wanted the issue of abortion decided at the state level by democratic institutions -- which is exactly what happened in Kansas. Alito and the rest of the majority should be pleased.
As you note, this is a "confrontation" only if you impute a belief to Alito et al. that what they *really* want is abortion banned everywhere via state law. There is of course no evidence for this belief.
Maybe Ruth does have the last laugh on Harris: she also believed Roe was a poor decision. But yes, the phrase is shallow and stupid. Washington is all about winners and losers, gloating when you win, whining when you lose. I miss the old, quixotic Mr. Smith Goes To Washington days, when people were proud to fight for a losing cause, but I guess those days weren't ever real.
"I will state the obvious: Alito's written opinion is not about preventing abortion, but about allowing the issue to be decided through the political process."
It may be obvious to you, but not to progs. At least they are eager to feign obliviousness. Example in the NYT today: Dave Leonhardt headline on "defying the Supreme Court."
Of course Dobbs also gives the lie to the notion that conservative justices somehow impose their own values. Here, the Catholic majority issued a decision that most likely will lead to Roe-like legislation in many states, continuing the killing they theologically abhor.
I find it interesting that the Kansas Constitution did not provide for a right to abortion prior to 2019 - so the right was not there for 160 years (Kansas adopted its constitution in 1859), and was not there for a full 46 years after it was "discovered" in the U.S. Constitution, despite Kansas having passed a number of statutes placing limits on abortion during that period of time. The State Supreme Court found the right from the phrase ""All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the state's constitution. Writing is support of this "right," Judge Steve A. Leben of the State's Court of Appeals said that the "rights of Kansas women in 2016 are not limited to those specifically intended by the men who drafted our state's constitution in 1859."
Seems like the state's constitution might just have been stretched a bit in the 2019 decision.
Harris is obviously relying on that statement Ginsburg once made that we'd have been better off if the abortion question had been dealt with through the political process.
Isn't this being two-faced by Ginsberg. If she really believed it was a constitutionally protected right, she would prefer it be a SCOTUS decision rather than left to legislation that could be very restrictive.
What nonsense. As noted Ginsberg voted to uphold Roe every chance she got, and also voted to strike down ANY restrictions on abortion. but now that the other side won and roe is gone, she didn't lose. SHe REALLY won. Only a liberal/leftist could write that double-think.
Lets go talk to another Pro-abortionists, like David Souter and Sandra Day O'Connor or Kennedy, and ask them if they thought they have "Won". You'll notice that "Mr. Big CHristian" George Bush hasn't said a celebratory word about Dobbs, and neither has "Mr. Big Morman" Mitt Romney.
Conservatives never pose the issue in the correct way. The Liberal/left wants to IMPOSE their values on everyone else through Judicial fiat. Mississippi MUST be forced to have the same values and laws as NYC. Everyone must bow down to the Liberal/left.
That's the Ginsberg position. That's the biden position.
'Alito's written opinion is not about preventing abortion, but about allowing the issue to be decided through the political process.'
It's shocking that such a simple concept cannot be grasped by supposedly 'smart' people.
This is 6th-grade civics stuff...
I used to make arguments like this, when I was young. It is the sort of thing you argue when you are first getting pushback to your ideas, and you come up with arguments like this that seem clever because you do not know what you are doing. After acting the fool a sufficient number of times, you learn to think about what the other person would think of the argument, attack it from that direction, and either refine or discard it.
Obviously, our journalism class still have the mentality of high schoolers.
The Left knew what they were getting from the Court, the absolute best outcome for them. With Casey there were essentially no restrictions on abortion. They could fundraise on every state law that was overturned based on Roe and Casey. All that without having to face voters, who in most states would give them far fewer protections.
RGB was right in her worries, but was not willing to settle for anything less.
Never underestimate the progressives' ability to turn their arguments on a dime 180 degrees.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Kansas's 22 weeks is actually a week past the youngest surviving preemie:
https://www.uab.edu/news/health/item/12427-uab-hospital-delivers-record-breaking-premature-baby#:~:text=World%20record%20holder&text=Guinness%20World%20Records%20%E2%80%93%20The%20most,making%20him%20132%20days%20premature.
I'm curious how people's ideas on acceptable limits will change as medical technology advances.
You've hit on the root of the Red/Blue conflict between Progressives and Conservatives: The different intellectual universes in which they reside.
The Dobbs decision is clearing the political ground for a resolution in favor of abortion rights.
So you're saying the Left should have signed onto Alito's approach years ago?
1. Your view of the Court is that it makes decisions to achieve certain political outcomes.
2. You approve of Roe (etc) because it achieved the outcome "abortions easy to arrange".
3. Alito wrote the opinion that overturned Roe.
4. Therefore, Alito must have intended to achieve the outcome "abortions hard to arrange."
5. But then Kansas voters failed to follow through and make abortions hard to arrange.
6. So Alito must be disappointed.
it is amazing that after all these years so many amateur court watchers fail to understand that the "Conservative" Justices reject point 1 on this list.
I'd would guess like most Americans, she was morally ok with 1st trimester, conflicted on 2nd, and knew damn well 3rd trimester is infanticide. A death ritual in a deteriorating culture.
I agree. Most people who are prochoice are in agreement on this. It is only the "activists" and other crazies, and of course the baby parts sellers, who support third trimester abortion.
And Karine Jean-quota-hire thinks the Dobbs decision is unconstitutional.
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1554885788772585475
The 3/5 compromise was to mitigate progress of slavers' influence. Conserving Roe and adjusting viability to where baby meets granny in state (pun intended), if not in process (i.e. evolution), is a 6-weeks compromise to mitigate the progress of liberals' influence.
There is no mystery in sex and conception, the Pro-Choice ethical religion denies women and men's dignity and agency, and reduces human life to negotiable commodities.
That said, a woman and man have four choices: sex or abstinence, contraception in depth, adoption (i.e. shared/shifted responsibility), and compassion (i.e. shared/personal responsibility), and an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation. American culture does not tolerate either slavery (i.e. conception without consent to sex) or diversity [dogma] (e.g. sexism, ageism).
Roe's regrets. Ruth's remorse. Human rites in lieu of human and civil rights, performed for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes. Keep women affordable, available, and taxable, and the bodies of evidence aborted and sequestered in darkness, privacy.
It's touching that you believe that the founding editor of Politico cares about this as anything but a political football.
Planned Parenthood for baby, planned parent/hood for granny, inclusive and equitable.
When Doves Cry
When babies coo... cute.
My ancient and saintly mother, who was a John Bircher when I was a wee lad and an anti-abortion firebrand and a Tridentine Latin Mass Catholic up to last Sunday at least, called me after the Supreme Court decision with the same problem the Left has with it. She mistakenly thought the ruling changed abortion laws everywhere, because she's a bit doddery at times. I explained that the ruling simply put the lawmaking authority back where it belonged, per the Constitution, at the state level rather than within the Supreme Court or the Congress.
When she had digested this concept, she - again, a full-on anti-abortion zealot for almost 90 years - said that sounded correct. If she can figure it out, so can the politicians, who just want to hang on to their cash cow and this means of arousing their base. Sorry, politicians, this issue will be legislated into a minor historical speedbump, as it should have been in 1972.
The founding Editor of Politco just wants Liberal/leftism and the Democrats to win. That's all he cares about. If you think you're getting objective analysis and stories, you're dumb. Very, very dumb.
The founding Editor of Politco just wants Liberal/leftism and the Democrats to win. That's all he cares about. If you think you're getting objective analysis and stories, you're dumb.
For the majority of American history newspapers were explicitly partisan and often said so in their names: The Arizona Republican, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, etc. Anyone today with an ounce of political sophistication knows it's the New York Times-Democrat, the Washington Post-Democrat, Fox Republican News, etc. Outlets like Politico benefit from the assumption they're somehow objective when in fact they're unambiguously partisan. To their readers I would recommend not giving them the power to define reality unilaterally: That is what fake objectivity asks of you.
For the majority of American history newspapers were explicitly partisan and often said so in their names: The Arizona Republican,
The Phoenix newspaper is the "Arizona Republic" and it is a long way from Republican in editorial policy.
All's fair in lust and abortion.
The Phoenix newspaper is the "Arizona Republic" and it is a long way from Republican in editorial policy.
Yes. But if you get that new Google "websearch" software installed on your mainframe you'll be able to verify the paper called itself the Arizona Republican in the nineteenth century when party politics was an explicit part of most newspapers' identity.
Satan doesn't allow laughter from Hell's residents.
Post a Comment