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I’m 28 pages into the Alito draft (98 pages total).

Early on he disses the 1973 court for relying on ancient history, then proceeds to cherry-pick ancient history for a framing more consistent with his bias. That seems a little weird.

But more importantly, Alito makes a case that in U.S. history antipathy to abortion was the norm, and cites some very obscure (to me) authorities on the subject. The person he cites the most (cherry-picks) is a man who wrote a book on abortion history in 2008… his name slips my mind. That guy relies heavily on “custom and culture” but does not really explain the variety of rationales that abortion laws were born of.

The one thing that stood out, though, is virtually all of the custom and culture was from a period prior to 1920, when women first gained the right to vote. Women were lesser beings, chattel whose main purpose was being a vessel for reproduction.

So I’m guessing RBG’s view that the primary issue in the right to choose dispute is/should be definitely a matter of equal rights for the sexes.

I'm guessing that RBG should have retired years ago and we might not find ourselves in this mess right now. Hubris.


That hasn't really changed much. It's baked into every major religion.

We built this patriarchy.

There are murmurs of women choosing self-sterilization so they never have to worry about future pregnancies. That's one way of denying the Right future children to groom.

I, too, have given abortion, and the abortion debate, a great deal of thought, of late. I, too, have failed to finish Justice Alito's disingenuous screed.

But, I've been involved in debates on the issue for decades, and have always been of two minds about it. On the one hand, I understand those that see abortion as akin to infanticide - even though they are biologically wrong, and morally simple. On the other hand, as a strong advocate for civil rights (and a card-carrying member of the ACLU), I fully appreciate the importance of the right at issue, and its profound effect on individuals and society.

There is a slippery slope on both sides of the debate, and ideologues like Alito prefer black-and-white answers in a living-color world. Moreover, his answer, unsurprisingly, is entirely wrong, as well as wrong-headed. Down that path madness lies.

Abortion - the deliberate cessation of a pregnancy - has been a fact of life for as long as civilizations have existed. Until very recently, it was not considered a moral issue at all, and a practical necessity for a society. Where it was "outlawed" it was usually for racist or misogynistic reasons - preventing slaves from aborting potential "dividends" or ensuring wives dutifully presented heirs for the benefit of husbands - even at the risk of their own lives. For time immemorial, abortions have been the "safer" option over carrying a pregnancy to term - which is truer today than ever (in the US it is 14 times riskier to carry to term). The motivations for making it illegal have been far from moral (such as undercutting competition).

At this juncture, however, we need to be more pragmatically attuned. It is reliably estimated that 1/4 of all women 15-45 will have an abortion in their lifetimes. Moreover, prohibition only affects the female half of the population directly. Further, the effects of anti-abortion laws fall, as they always have, disproportionately on the most disadvantaged members of society, which creates a greater burden on all of us. Additionally, pregnancy is always a period of uncertainty. At least 20% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage (loss of the fetus before the 20th week of gestation). All of these factors militate toward accepting abortion as an overall public good, which is reflected in polling as well.

I really have no idea what the Supremes will actually do. I suspect the problem will be the basis of the current Abortion thing - privacy. As far as I can tell it was a right to privacy that made abortions legal. Now, my question is going to be whether we will lose any privacy should they make Abortions illegal. I have wondered, for years, why they didn't legislate the entire thing instead of relying on the Supremes to leave it alone. Should they continue then if we think that Abortions are pesky just wait when folks are told that they no longer have any right of privacy in anything.

THEN its gonna get real interesting!

At this time two years ago, there was a Constitutional right to an abortion as set out in Roe and Casey per the SCOTUS’ answer which was clearly yes.

The proof is that courts enforced it, and people complied.

It can’t possibly be that Alito’s decision, in whatever form it is finally rendered, makes it so that there was never a Constitutional right to an abortion. That doesn't make sense.

The majority in Roe and Casey both said there is a Constitutional right to an abortion, and so it was.

That is really the problem with Alito's "reasoning".

There is a faction in the legal community, well represented on this Court, that is perfectly comfortable ignoring vast swaths of the Constitution and constitutional understandings that have existed for a century or more: the 9th Amendment simply doesn't exist; there is no substance to the 14th Amendment. I have referred to it as "Antebellum thinking", and it is.

Prior to the Civil War, especially after the Dred Scott decision, "States' rights" were paramount and the federal government had no authority to legislate things like "opposing slavery", recognizing blacks as human beings - literally - or ensuring equal protection of the laws for anyone. Lest one believe the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments changed that, the Court, for decades thereafter continued to flout the literal language of the Constitution to impose its will in the Civil Rights Cases and Plessy v. Ferguson.

This reasoning still obtains with Alito and his co-conspirators. Language like "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; "due process of law" and "equal protection of the laws" are quaint notions. Given that - and there is no exaggeration here - nothing we recognize as "civil rights" are immune from reversal by this Court.

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Decent Americans must not remain silent in the face of Christian versions of Sharia Law from Republican states and SCOTUS, or next year's "Mother's Day" will become "Forced Motherhood Day"

Since one of the basic considerations in the abortion debate is the threshold of "viability", I have been thinking about what that means. I don't actually agree that viability (being able to exist outside the womb) is the issue - the better question is when does the fetus become a person. This has to do with what I think of as the soul (I'm not a religious person, but I do imagine that there is a resident of the body that is kind of like the driver - call it consciousness - that somehow chooses to move into the new corporeal form at some point. If this soul exists outside of physical form, then it is most likely not affected by the death of the body.

Now here I will shift to imagine what a religious person (particularly a Christian in the case of abortion, but also many other religions and philosophies espouse) should see as the correct context for birth and death. Life on Earth is a temporary condition, and not all that important in the eternal scheme of things.This concept, which is a teaching of many religions, is contrary to the obsession with preserving life at all costs. The preservation obsession arises from uncertainty and a fear of death, even for those convinced that Heaven awaits them on the other side. While this contradiction seems extremely weird, it is actually well aligned with the common human affliction of thinking our delusions are reality.

Time for the good part of yesterday's musings: let's assume that the soul has the power to choose which body it wants to enter for the ride of a life, and the body doesn't become a sentient person until the soul straps into the operator's seat. Keep in mind that the new body is in the process of being manufactured, by some magical preprogrammed process, in an older body that also possesses a soul-driver that has its own suite of desires. Isn't it the case that the new soul basically moved in the the existing person's house without getting an agreement first to be provided with full-service accommodations for decades, rent free? It's very much like the mother is being forced into slavery. You'd think the woman would get some say in the matter - an agreement or contract, with compensation.

As for the sanctity of life, death (which many folks, especially religious ones) is merely the moving on of the soul to the next place. It can, and does, happen all along the timeline of a life - so what makes abortion, the intentional rejection of slavery by a woman, an unacceptable choice? El Soul just gets to cut the line and get into Heaven sooner!