Nope.
Emphasis added is mine. I’m for countries that allow for abortion, up to a point anyway, even covered by the State as it is in the UK, up to 3 months, that’s my opinion.
Now @McNulty here can be a lesson in learning not everything is in black and white and while you may have an opinion others have an opinion which may be one that you don’t agree with but never the less has merits of its own, in the real world most things are like this and looking from another’s perspective is helpful.
The argument with regards Wade vs Roe doesn’t hinge on the merits of if you agree or disagree with abortion, the issue is in the right of each state to make it’s own law. Unless passed through Congress as a law each State can choose to make it’s own law how it sees fit and the Supreme Court should not be “effectively legalizing the procedure”
At least that is my understanding.
I agree.
I again politely ask you to keep the conversation to the topic and not on me or my perspectives, or how I view things. If you’d like to know my stance on a certain issue, feel free to ask but please don’t assume it.
I’m looking further into this.
This is a pretty good breakdown:
Roe v. Wade is a 1973 lawsuit that famously led to the Supreme Court making a ruling on women’s right to an abortion. Jane Roe, an unmarried pregnant woman, filed suit on behalf of herself and others to challenge Texas abortion laws. A Texas doctor joined Roe’s lawsuit, arguing that the state’s abortion laws were too vague for doctors to follow. He had previously been arrested for violating the statute.
At the time, abortion was illegal in Texas unless it was done to save the mother’s life. It was a crime to get an abortion or to attempt one.
In Roe v. Wade , the Supreme Court decided two important things:
*** The United States Constitution provides a fundamental “right to privacy” that protects a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion.**
*** But the abortion right is not absolute. It must be balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women’s health and prenatal life.**
Legal Arguments
Each side of Roe v. Wade used several arguments before the Supreme Court. Below, we outline the main arguments.
Texas Defends Abortion Restriction
The state put forth three main arguments in its case to defend the abortion statute:
- States have an interest in safeguarding health, maintaining medical standards, and protecting prenatal life
- A fetus is a “person” protected by the 14th Amendment
- Protecting prenatal life from the time of conception is a compelling state interest
Roe Claims Absolute Privacy Rights for Women
Jane Roe and the others involved based their case on the following arguments:
- The Texas law invaded an individual’s right to “liberty” under the 14th Amendment
- The Texas law infringed on women’s rights to marital, familial, and sexual privacy guaranteed by the Bill of Rights
- The right to an abortion is absolute - women are entitled to end a pregnancy at any time, for any reason, in any way they choose
How The Supreme Court Decided Roe v. Wade
The Court split the difference between the two arguments presented. First, the Court recognized that abortion does fall under women’s privacy rights.
The constitutional right to privacy comes from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Due Process Clause does not explicitly state that Americans have a right to privacy. However, the Supreme Court has recognized such a right going all the way back to 1891. Just one year before Roe , the Supreme Court held that “in a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.” In Roe v. Wade , the Court decided that this right to privacy extends to a woman’s control over a pregnancy.
The justices acknowledged that being forced to continue a pregnancy puts a lot at risk for women, such as:
- Physical health
- Mental health
- Financial burdens
- Social stigma
The Court was skeptical of the state’s argument that Constitutional protections begin at conception. The Constitution doesn’t provide a definition of a “person.” But, it does say that its protections cover those who are “born or naturalized” in the United States. After examining other cases relating to unborn children, the Court concluded that “the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.”
The Roe v. Wade decision also includes a discussion of the different views on when life begins. Many in the Jewish faith, for example, believe that life begins at birth. But, the prevailing view in the Catholic faith is that life begins at conception. Doctor’s views vary, but they tend to lean toward the belief that life begins sometime before birth.
But, the Court found, it is not up to the states to decide when life begins:
“[W]e do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake.”
However, as we mentioned above, the Court did not agree that the Constitution guarantees an absolute right to an abortion. In other words, the privacy right does not prevent states from putting some regulations on abortion.
The Court created a framework to balance the state’s interests with women’s privacy rights. Acknowledging that the rights of pregnant women may conflict with the rights of the state to protect potential human life, the Court defined the rights of each party by dividing pregnancy into three 12-week trimesters:
- During a pregnant woman’s first trimester, the Court held, a state cannot regulate abortion beyond requiring that the procedure be performed by a licensed doctor in medically safe conditions.
- During the second trimester, the Court held, a state may regulate abortion if the regulations are reasonably related to the health of the pregnant woman.
- During the third trimester of pregnancy, the state’s interest in protecting the potential human life outweighs the woman’s right to privacy. As a result, the state may prohibit abortions unless abortion is necessary to save the life or health of the mother.
Significance of Roe v Wade
Many think of Roe v. Wade as the case that “legalized abortion.” However, that isn’t exactly true. What it did was change the way states can regulate abortion, and characterized abortion as something that was covered under constitutional rights of privacy.
It may come as a surprise that Roe did not have much of an impact on the number of abortions performed each year in the United States. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in the years before Roe was decided there were over one million illegal abortions performed in the U.S. annually. After Roe , that number remains around one million, performed legally. Plus, the rate of deaths occurring as the result of abortions dropped dramatically in the years following Roe .
Since the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade , judicial interpretation of the constitution is that abortion is legal. However, after Roe, many abortion opponents have been pushing for stricter abortion laws. The opponents haven’t been able to ban abortions outright, but have brought about certain exceptions that place limitations on abortions.
A number of states have placed restrictions on abortions in certain circumstances, including parental notification requirements, mandatory disclosure of abortion risk information, and restrictions on late-term abortions.
The issue is still a hotbed topic in presidential debates and across the nation. States continue to pass abortion regulations that are often challenged in federal courts. But, few make it to the Supreme Court.
This has led many to wonder: Could Roe v. Wade be overturned?
Interesting Facts
Sarah Weddington was just 26 years old when she argued before the Supreme Court as one of Roe’s attorneys.
Jane Roe is not the real name of the woman who filed the famous lawsuit. It’s an alias.
As the Court points out, banning abortion is a relatively new concept. Laws like the one in Roe emerged in the United States in the late 1800s.
Norma McCorvey (the real woman behind “Jane Roe”) became a prominent voice for the pro-life movement in 1995.
In 1973, there were no female justices on the United States Supreme Court.
Public Reactions
Some viewed the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade as “judicial activism,” – meaning the judges based their decision on personal views rather than existing law. But, supporters of Roe say it is vital in preserving women’s rights and freedoms.
Many opponents of the decision argue that because the text of the Constitution doesn’t explicitly talk about abortion, it should be left up to the states to regulate. Others say that a person should be protected by the Constitution at conception. Under that logic, abortion violates the Constitutional rights of the unborn child.
The Supreme Court even recognized the polarizing nature of the abortion issue in its opinion:
One’s philosophy, one’s experiences, one’s exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one’s religious training, one’s attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one’s thinking and conclusions about abortion.
As Justice Harry Blackmun (who wrote the decision in Roe ) points out, abortion will never be a simple issue. It remains a hotly debated topic because someone’s opinion on it depends on their view of the world, and when they believe life begins.
Related Cases
It’s no surprise that Roe would not be the last time the Supreme Court addressed abortion rights. In later cases, the Court upheld the privacy rights tied to abortion. But, they did modify some of the frameworks created in Roe .
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
The Supreme Court revisited Roe v. Wade in 1992 when reviewing Planned Parenthood v. Casey . In that case, the Court once again established a woman’s right to choose. But, it changed the framework created in Roe . Instead of requiring states to regulate abortion based on trimester, the Court created a standard based on “fetal viability” - the fetus’s ability to survive outside the womb. Viability is usually placed at around seven months (28 weeks), but it can be as early as 24 weeks.
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
In 2016, the Supreme Court evaluated abortion regulations once again. Texas passed a law in 2013 that placed a series of restrictions on abortion clinics in the state. Among the other requirements, abortion providers had to have “admitting privileges” at a hospital no more than 30 miles away.
Admitting privileges give a doctor the ability to:
- Have their patients admitted to a hospital as if the doctor were an employee there
- Treat their patients how the doctor wishes without the need for approval from another doctor at the hospital
When this requirement took effect, Texas went from having 42 abortion clinics - to just 19.
The case reached the Supreme Court around the time of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. So, there were only 8 justices to hear the case. In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court found that states cannot place restrictions on abortion clinics that create an “undue burden” for women seeking an abortion.
In one sense you’re right. It’s not law. It’s judicial fiat, which is sacrosanct in that no elected legislature can repeal or modify it. No subsequently appointed Supreme Court justices can touch it either because it’s “precedent”, which makes it doubly sacrosanct.
I’m not sure how the thread got on this topic, but I’d like to point out that:
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Planned Parenthood v Casey (not Roe v Wade) sets out how abortion laws will be judged constitutional or not.
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Stare Decisis is an important legal concept, but it will be ignored when a justice thinks the previous decision was wrong enough. On SCTOUS, Roberts seems most deferential to Stare Decisis, so changes to Casey will probably be narrowly written by the 5 conservative justices, if at all.
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This debate calls into sharp contrast a point I often make: the difference between a focus on process and a focus on outcome. This difference is evident in the legislature, the courts, and in citizens. While certainly an oversimplification, the conservative justices are conservative at least partly as they largely adhere to a constitutional interpretive theory which focuses on the process. Liberal justices almost always come to the outcome with which they agree at least partly because it is the outcome on which they base much of their constitutional analysis.
In other words, for liberal judges the end justifies the means and the means are legislation without representation.
Joe Top Down
Fake news. Biden is currently listed as having 40 executive orders, though eight are proclamations/memoranda.
"This compares to four executive orders issued in President Trump’s first week, five by President Obama, and zero by President George W. Bush. "
Trump had five…at the end of two months.
By whatever metric you select, Biden is the best EO’er in US history.
I don’t even know what that means.
Oh?
So it is news?
I’m not a fan of EOs, so let’s just get that out of the way. Using EO to centralize the government is a very narrow path to manage effectively and sets horrible precedents. IDGAF who the POTUS is. The FACT that Joey Mumble has sign dozens of them is not a good thing. We have laws and legislative process. Fucking use them. Trump got shit for signing EOs and then being challenged in Court. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. But, that said, I hope every single one of Biden’s EOs are challenged the same way.
Joe is mainly rolling back Trump executive actions and making administrative changes, not substituting the EO for legislation.
The Lure of Executive Orders: Easy to Implement, but Just as Easy to Cancel
President Donald Trump came to rely on executive action for many of his achievements. But his successor seems to understand that it is best used to repeal someone else’s legacy, not build his own.
Paywall, did they show that Biden is A) only repealing Trump’s EOs and B) not implementing his own policies by EO?
Still waiting for a single actual example to prove this. We’re 0 for 1 with Roe V. Wade. We’re in the ‘repeating the theory over and over again until it’s true’ mode.
Every single one? Regardless of the content, or context, or anything? That sounds knee jerk and reactionary. Rejoining the Paris accord to stop climate change, why would you challenge that?
I managed to access the article. I see the main thrust of his EOs so far has been indeed to reverse Trump’s aggressive EO actions and take pandemic-related measures. We’ll see how it goes over the next few years!
The article gives some historical context of executive orders and states that EOs are no substitute for legislation. About Joe’s actions, here are two selected parts:
President Biden, a more experienced Washington operator, is not using the process to build his legacy, as Mr. Trump tried to do, but as a means of erasing Mr. Trump’s.
In his first 48 hours in office, Mr. Biden cranked out about 30 executive orders, of which 14 target a broad range of Trump executive mandates, with the remainder aimed at implementing emergency measures intended to deal with the pandemic and the economic crisis.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that most of what Trump did can be undone in an afternoon. It’s going to take at least ten days,” said John D. Podesta, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who lobbied for the targeted use of executive action in Mr. Obama’s second term when congressional Republicans blocked his environmental and immigration proposals.
Whether Mr. Biden will also become overly reliant on executive action remains an open question. But as a guide, some on Mr. Biden’s team are using a 140-page law review article from 2001 by Justice Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court, then a professor at Harvard Law School, which charts a middle course, supporting the use of executive power as a tool for regulatory efforts but not as a license to unilaterally dictate every action taken by presidential subordinates.
Two officials involved in the rollout of Mr. Biden’s orders said that his use of executive decrees was not a reflection of an expansive view of executive authority but rather a response to the pandemic and the damage done by Mr. Trump’s policies.
They said his use of executive actions would diminish when congressional action picked up.
It’s probably wise to hold off on the tallying and comparing of the number of executive orders until at least the end of 2024. In any case it’s the quality not the quantity that matters and IMO so far so good.
Clearly, what is done by EO can be undone by EO.
I would think so.
Letting the health officials take the lead. It’s about time. Taking a page out of Tsai Ing Wen’s playbook
When the Biden administration held its first coronavirus briefing Wednesday, there were no cameos from the president, no speakers behind the White House podium jousting with reporters, and no data coming from outside the federal agencies involved in the pandemic response.