The Supreme Court, and abortion.

[mammajamma]

3 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

It'll work by scaring off abortion providers.  Realistically, what doctor is gonna put their livelihood on the line in this climate?  Doesn't matter what a lower court judge does, the writing is on the wall that SCOTUS is going to overturn Roe/Casey.  When that happens, any action to protect the abortion providers by a lower court judge will become moot.

SCOTUS has still not indicated that they think this law is constitutional, or that they'd overturn a federal judge who ruled it unconstitutional. In fact even the craziest of the justices indicated that the law was questionable. They just didn't want to step in the mud if they didn't have to (they'd actually have to if a federal judge ruled it to be unconstitutional)

[bearrock]

3 minutes ago, mammajamma said:

SCOTUS has still not indicated that they think this law is constitutional, or that they'd overturn a federal judge who ruled it unconstitutional. In fact even the craziest of the justices indicated that the law was questionable. They just didn't want to step in the mud if they didn't have to (they'd actually have to if a federal judge ruled it to be unconstitutional)

 

Many legal scholars, including those who follow abortion issues closely, think this is a precursor to overturning Roe/Casey.  If you were an abortion provider, would you risk eventually being liable for 10K per procedure or would you wait to see how the dust settles?

[mammajamma]

3 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

Many legal scholars, including those who follow abortion issues closely, think this is a precursor to overturning Roe/Casey.  If you were an abortion provider, would you risk eventually being liable for 10K per procedure or would you wait to see how the dust settles?

I'm sure there are some firms that can convince 1 heavily funded clinic. The damages are pretty easy to argue in court. But I do see your point. Guess we'll see

 

Also, is the fine really 10k per procedure? I thought 10k was just the bounty to someone who reports it

[bearrock]

3 minutes ago, mammajamma said:

I'm sure there are some firms that can convince 1 heavily funded clinic. The damages are pretty easy to argue in court. But I do see your point. Guess we'll see

 

Also, is the fine really 10k per procedure? I thought 10k was just the bounty to someone who reports it

 

It's not a bounty, it's a private cause of action.  It's like allowing you to sue your neighbor for owning a gun or going to church.  You sue and if you win, you get the judgment awarded in your favor, the minimum amount being set at $10K.  

[mammajamma]

26 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

It's not a bounty, it's a private cause of action.  It's like allowing you to sue your neighbor for owning a gun or going to church.  You sue and if you win, you get the judgment awarded in your favor, the minimum amount being set at $10K.  

How do you sue someone without showing damages? That's not how our legal system works. Again, the chilling effect may have worked for now, but I don't see how this law lasts very long

[bearrock]

6 minutes ago, mammajamma said:

How do you sue someone without showing damages? That's not how our legal system works. Again, the chilling effect may have worked for now, but I don't see how this law lasts very long

 

It's statutory damages.  It's a particularly whacky statutory damages, but the concept itself is not novel.  For example, copyright infringement has statutory damages too, because proving actual damages becomes a difficult issue for the copyright holder.  

 

Now, you're right in a sense that this law wouldn't fly in a federal context because Congress couldn't confer standing by statute without actual injury.  But standing in a state court is a matter of state constitution, in this case Texas (I have no idea what TX constitution provides on standing).

 

[skinsmarydu]

Has anyone noticed that the women have left the conversation here? 

We know our stance and don't need to discuss. 

The men are carrying on.  Thanks, fellas. 

[Larry]

1 hour ago, skinsmarydu said:

Has anyone noticed that the women have left the conversation here? 

 

Actually, no.  

 

(Ducks and runs.)  

[tshile]

Isn’t the best way to get a case fast tracked to scotus, to have a bunch of states start enacting the law?

 

Edited September 4, 2021 by tshile

[Jabbyrwock]

8 hours ago, skinsmarydu said:

Has anyone noticed that the women have left the conversation here? 

 

I just assumed y'all were out making us sandwiches.

 

7 hours ago, Larry said:

(Ducks and runs.)  

Out of the way @Larry!!!!

[Corcaigh]

9 hours ago, skinsmarydu said:

 

We know our stance and don't need to discuss. 

You accept that your actions have consequences. 
 

If you didn’t want to be forced to give birth, you shouldn’t have been born a woman.

[skinsmarydu]

14 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

You accept that your actions have consequences.

If only men did, we might not even be having this "conversation". 

(But I get the humor.)

[The Sisko]

 

11 hours ago, mammajamma said:

SCOTUS has still not indicated that they think this law is constitutional, or that they'd overturn a federal judge who ruled it unconstitutional. In fact even the craziest of the justices indicated that the law was questionable. They just didn't want to step in the mud if they didn't have to (they'd actually have to if a federal judge ruled it to be unconstitutional)

 

10 hours ago, mammajamma said:

How do you sue someone without showing damages? That's not how our legal system works. Again, the chilling effect may have worked for now, but I don't see how this law lasts very long

That’s not the point. They don’t care if it’s eventually reversed. It takes time for a case to make its way to the garbage SCOTUS and if it’s reversed, which I have a hard time imagining happening, they just implement another unconstitutional law and wash, rinse, repeat. That’s the reason the VRA was written the way it was. The parts overturned by the garbage SCOTUS required pre-clearance to prevent this tactic from being used. 

[LD0506]

[The Sisko]

[88Comrade2000]

[China]

#BoycottTexas Movement Targeting Lone Star State Companies Grows Over Abbott’s Abortion Ban

 

Even if companies headquartered in Texas aren’t speaking out and using their considerable clout to condemn GOP Governor Greg Abbott‘s vigilante-based near-total ban on abortion, many Americans are using the power of their voice and their wallets to make a difference.

 

The #BoycottTexas movement is growing, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it would not step in to place a hold on what experts say is a clearly unconstitutional law. The law, signed and promoted by Governor Abbott, is a “heartbeat bill” than bans abortion at six weeks, when anti-abortion activists claim a “heartbeat” can be detected.

 

Abbott, who is running for re-election and has been attracting businesses to the Lone Star State, using what it call its “business-friendly” laws to encourage out-of-state corporations to move there.

 

“Texas offers a business-friendly climate—with no corporate or personal income tax—along with a highly skilled workforce, easy access to global markets, robust infrastructure and predictable regulations,” Abbott’s Economic Development agency claims, despite a near-total shutdown of the state when its electric grid collapsed, and despite the state’s GOP lawmakers passing 666 new laws that just went into effect, including the abortion ban.

 

Meanwhile, some consumers and businesses are furious and declaring they will no longer shop at Texas-based businesses, travel to the state, or hold events there.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PokerPacker]

Anyone interested in membership in The Satanic Temple?

 

https://www.insider.com/satanic-temple-lobbies-members-abortion-pills-religious-freedom-right-2021-9

Quote

The Satanic Temple is lobbying against a Texas law that bans abortions after a mother is six weeks into her pregnancy.

 

The Massachusetts-based group, which runs an officially recognized and tax-exempt religion, says it does not actually worship Satan in any way. Instead, founder Lucian Greaves told PRX in 2019, the group sees Satan as a symbol of "rebellion against tyranny."

 

The group filed a letter to the Food and Drug Administration saying that abortion is a faith-based right, according to The Boston Herald.

It also tweeted that its lawyers have asked the FDA to give its members access to the pills Mifepristone, and Misoprostol, which are typically taken to induce a medical abortion.

The Satanic Temple's letter said the drugs are part of its "sacramental" abortion ritual, per The Herald.

 

It added that because of this, the access to the drugs would fall under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allows Native Americans to use the hallucinogen peyote for traditional rituals, according to Texas media outlet KVUE.

 

"I am sure Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who famously spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about Religious Liberty issues in other states — will be proud to see that Texas's robust Religious Liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions, will prevent future Abortion Rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion," wrote Lucien Greaves, the co-founder of the group, in a statement, per KVUE.

[China]

Meet the Legal Strategist Behind the Texas Abortion Ban

 

If your picture of an anti-abortion warrior resembles Mark Lee Dickson, the bearded East Texas pastor who favors a backward baseball cap and carries around a plastic toy fetus, maybe, after recent events—that is, after abortion became essentially illegal in Texas—it’s time to think again. Yes, Dickson worked hard to achieve that goal, as did freshman lawmaker Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, who carried the bill in the House, and lawmaker Bryan Hughes of Mineola, who sponsored the legislation in the Senate. As did House Speaker Dade Phelan, who promised the Texas Young Republicans at a March banquet that Texas would be the first state in the Union to outlaw abortion. As did Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who has long styled himself as both a protector of women and an enemy of abortion. “Once the lieutenant governor and the Speaker decide they want to pass a bill, it passes,” said a none-too-happy Drucilla Tigner, a strategist for the ACLU of Texas, who was fighting for reproductive rights long before the Supreme Court allowed the abortion ban, otherwise known as Senate Bill 8, to stand last week. Finally, there is Governor Greg Abbott, who signed the bill into law, making it one of the crowning achievements of a legislative session that, depending on which side you’re on, was either a cause for jubilation or a cause for alarm.

 

But one name has been missing from the list of those who gave life to the so-called Heartbeat Act, the one that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, the moment when those who oppose abortion claim a fetus’s heartbeat can be heard. The man who crafted the unusual legal strategy that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, at least for now, is one Jonathan Franklin Mitchell.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

[China]

 

[China]

Justice Department will 'protect' abortion seekers in Texas

 

The Justice Department said Monday that it will not tolerate violence against anyone who is trying to obtain an abortion in Texas as federal officials explore options to challenge a new state law that bans most abortions.

 

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department would “protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services” under a federal law known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

 

Garland said in a statement that federal prosecutors are still urgently exploring options to challenge the Texas law. He said the Justice Department would enforce the federal law “in order to protect the constitutional rights of women and other persons, including access to an abortion.”

 

The federal law, commonly known as the FACE Act, prohibits physically obstructing or using the threat of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking reproductive health services. The law also prohibits damaging property at abortion clinics and other reproductive health centers.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[bearrock]

2 hours ago, LD0506 said:

 

Two things and this is coming from someone who is pro-choice.

 

The anti-abortion crowd denies that right to privacy is a constitutional right.  It is as fundamental a position difference as when human life begins.  They simply have a completely different position and there is nothing in the text of the constitution to clearly settle the debate.  There could be a sliver of people who believe that right to privacy is a full constitutional right and still think abortion should be illegal.  Those people may have a logically inconsistent position, but many others simply deny that the right to privacy exists at all.  And they may have a SCOTUS that agrees with them.

 

Second, one of the fundamental premise of the hardcore prolifers is that the mother is not without responsibility (save for rape) in the life being created.  That except for abstinence, there always a risk and the mother assumed the risk of pregnancy by having intercourse to begin with.  I don't agree with it and I think the price that the hardcore prolifers would have the mother pay for that assumption of risk is unreasonably high.  But this is not a logics issue where you can show one side's reasoning is flawed or inaccurate.  It's a matter of fundamental values and assumption.  I think they are wrong and they think I'm wrong.  But there's no scientific proof that would establish the appropriate level of punishment that you can dole out for assumption of risk gone wrong.

[spjunkies]

They should allow clinics to open up on federal land in Texas. I am so sick of these red state goofs always getting their way.

[LadySkinsFan]

1 hour ago, bearrock said:

 

Two things and this is coming from someone who is pro-choice.

 

The anti-abortion crowd denies that right to privacy is a constitutional right.  It is as fundamental a position difference as when human life begins.  They simply have a completely different position and there is nothing in the text of the constitution to clearly settle the debate.  There could be a sliver of people who believe that right to privacy is a full constitutional right and still think abortion should be illegal.  Those people may have a logically inconsistent position, but many others simply deny that the right to privacy exists at all.  And they may have a SCOTUS that agrees with them.

 

Second, one of the fundamental premise of the hardcore prolifers is that the mother is not without responsibility (save for rape) in the life being created.  That except for abstinence, there always a risk and the mother assumed the risk of pregnancy by having intercourse to begin with.  I don't agree with it and I think the price that the hardcore prolifers would have the mother pay for that assumption of risk is unreasonably high.  But this is not a logics issue where you can show one side's reasoning is flawed or inaccurate.  It's a matter of fundamental values and assumption.  I think they are wrong and they think I'm wrong.  But there's no scientific proof that would establish the appropriate level of punishment that you can dole out for assumption of risk gone wrong.

 

You know that there are no similar laws that deny males bodily autonomy, right? I am more important that a collection of cells that are attached to me parasitically that can't survive without my body. I was lucky enough to exercise my right to my bodily autonomy. I was thinking the other day what my life would have been like had I been forced to carry the collection of cells that I aborted. It would have been way different, I most likely wouldn't have had my career, or my daughter. I wasn't prepared mentally to raise a child and while adoption was available, my life would still have been different. I might not have come out as Lesbian, living a life of compulsory heterosexuality. Maybe many more children than I wanted. 

 

Women need bodily autonomy to live the lives they wish, just like men. Otherwise we are slaves to pregnancy.