After hearing the arguments, it appears that the United States Supreme Court will ditch its landmark Roe V Wade decision. Dana Milbank writes:
A deeply partisan majority on the Roberts Court is about to enshrine a new principle in American jurisprudence: Justice for he who yells the loudest.
The six Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court left no doubt in oral argument Wednesday that they would end the constitutional right to abortion that American women have had for nearly half a century. The court will either overturn Roe v. Wade outright or cripple the landmark ruling by eliminating the “fetal viability” standard at its core. Both would return us to a time before most people living ever knew, when state legislatures controlled women’s reproductive decisions.
That's remarkable because "Public opinion hasn’t changed. The science hasn’t fundamentally changed. No new legal theory has been promulgated. The only difference is the court now has a majority hellbent on settling scores in the culture wars."
In the age of Donald Trump -- whether it's abortion or COVID -- everything is politicized. Justice Sotomayer rightly said, “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it is possible.”
Outside the court, demonstrators on both sides were protesting:
Police used metal barricades to split First Street NE in front of the court into equal sections for the opposing sides, each with a soundstage. Not content with that arrangement, a group of antiabortion demonstrators invaded the other side and took turns drowning out the speakers there with a pole-mounted bullhorn at ear-shattering volume:
“Maybe some of you should have been aborted, you wicked, nasty disgusting, ungodly — I don’t even want to call you women! You are bloodthirsty animals!”
“In the name of Jesus Christ, shut your vile, sick mouth!”
“This is what happens when you allow women to emasculate men! God hates you!”
They heckled a Black speaker: “Go to Chicago! Black-on-Black killing is off the charts! … You don’t mind taking the White man’s dollar when he wants to kill babies!”
This from those who are "pro life." Roe is dead and the United States is doomed.
Image: the Los Angeles Times
8 comments:
Once they're done with abortion, same-sex marriage will be next. After that if they move quickly, Thomas's marriage will be illegal before he retires.
Cap
And once again, Cap, lynching will be legal.
This is further erosion of democracy in the United States of America, the land of Freedom and Milk and Honey. This could easily happen here in Canada especially in Alberta if we do not keep watch. Anyong
Sharia law, American style.
To me there's a silver lining. America is no longer a nation, certainly not a democracy. It is one area occupied by two tribes that, between them, dominate the rest of the population.
How many straws will it take to break this camel's back? The Evangeliban seem poised to win but the country is deeply riven and reversals like this could be enough to trigger a rupture.
In the way this resembles the Second World War which arose out of the unfinished business of WWI. Red State America has lived and breathed the unfinished business of the Civil War. Like Germany in the 30s they have a grievance culture often expressed in white nationalism. Hitler motivated many of his people with a thirst for Aryan supremacy. It's creepy to see that same core ideology taking hold in the U.S.
I agree, Anyong. We have our own nutbars north of the border.
It would be nice to think that the world learned something from Hitler's National Socialism, Mound. Unfortunately, it hasn't.
A lot of people have no awareness of history and seem to think the present has always existed exactly the way it is right now and it will always be like this. They wouldn't know if Julius Caesar or Marie Antoinette came first and wouldn't care. You may think I exaggerate but a poll on the US general public's currently functioning knowledge base discovered that about a third of Americans have never heard of Napoleon.
Knowledge of WWII is pretty hazy too. A Spiegel investigation about German kids being bullied in England found out that the British kids who yelled Auschwitz at German kids didn't know what it was; it was just an insult word to them. An American novelist who wrote a novel about 1930s France found out that many of his readers didn't know that France had been occupied by Germany a few years later which rather eliminated the tension in his plot.
I guess if you don't know the basic facts of WWII, they won't influence your current thinking.
As George Santayana wrote, ffd, "Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
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