Today I visited the Supreme Court area on 1 St NE across the street from the Capitol. The fencing had driven the protesters into the street.
Most of the protesters when I was there were from a youth group. There was one anti-abortion activist with a megaphone ('a woman doesn’t own her own body, God does') getting shouted out.
Other sayings included 'keep your rosaries off my ovaries', 'abortion is reputable health care', and 'fake babies in other people’s private places'.
The Washington Post has an op-ed by Robert Blake analyzing Justice Alito’s leaked “opinion” (which is embedded as a PDF).
I’ve written about 'fundamental rights' in the past and will return to it. Alito et al are certainly sticking to originalism and have come up with a rationale why Roe v Wade is so extraordinary that stare decisis will not hold. W
Evan Woflson has an important op-ed in the Washington Blade about the risk to gay issues (mainly marriage and possibly even sodomy laws; the military DADT ban was settled in Congress, not the courts, thankfully). Kevin Naff also has one.
I think the abortion issue is distinct in one way: a dependent human life is taken with abortion. The other issues don’t have this feature (although they had their own problematic possibilities in the past, as during the HIV horror of the 80s). However, there are times when the life or health of the mother is in danger (and despite what some in the GOP claim, it isn't always possible to avoid abortion to protect a mother's life). CNN presented an important case in Michigan today. With multiple births sometimes one life has to be taken so the others can live. (This may have happened in my own extended family back in the 1940s.) And there are legitimate debates on when fertilization has happened or whether implantation counts, etc. If a mother was the victim of rape, and forced to carry to term (in a sense her body is “conscripted” for a conflict just as a man’s is for war) she must be allowed to surrender the baby for adoption and not be forced to raise emH (Amy Barrett even pointed that out).
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(Posted: Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 10 PM EDT)