Posted on 06/30/2022 12:29:39 AM PDT by Morgana
Australians living in the United States have been left shocked by the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling - with some even considering a move back Down Under.
The landmark decision had recognised Americans' constitutional right to abortion and legalised it nationwide.
But as of last Friday, federal protection for abortion in the US is removed, meaning the decision of abortion legality is in the hands of the states.
Australians both at home and living in the US shared their reaction to the news.
Freelance writer Sophie Hanson, who moved to New York City in 2019, told Crikey that she was 'sickened'.
'The fact that only six unelected people can make a religious-based ruling that impacts half the country is horrid, dangerous and hypocritical,' she said.
'When a gun has more rights in this country than my uterus, that's pretty messed up.'
While Ms Hanson and her husband have chosen to remain childless, the news has still made her frightened for the future of the country.
She explained that if the government implemented a nationwide abortion ban she'd consider moving back to Australia.
'I am terrified of a future where hardline Christian Republican Mike Pence, who’s right now calling for a national abortion ban, wins the presidency. If he does, that might convince me to move,' she told Crikey.
Digital strategist Michael Chaitow, who also moved to the US in 2019, expressed his view that America was heading 'in the wrong direction' after overturning Roe v. Wade and still persisting with lax gun laws.
He described the US as heading towards a 'less safe, less equal and less healthy society'.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Suggest they abstain or use condoms, birth control pills, etc. if they do not want to get pregnant. They prefer the American people to finance their sexual habits that create a need for their birth control of choice which is abortion.
Go on....GTFO!
That’ll show ‘em. Not only didn’t we become superstars like Paul Hogan, whom everyone keeps saying is a has-been from yesteryear’s fad (I thumps ‘em for sayin’ that, I does). But now they stopped...sob...killing babies in some states! Oh, the horror! Paul Hogan! This is not the America that made you great!
If they have no such authority, where did the 18th Amendment (Prohibition, and its later abolition) alterations come from?
The logic around constitutionality rather falls down when 103 years ago the USA was able to do that. There’s no natural right to get drunk and no natural obligation to ban it.
The basis of a ban on the sale of alcohol was, decades of lobbying by teetotallers and religious leaders saying it would ameliorate poverty and other societal problems.
That’s the precedent. If a powerful enough lobby had the support in Washington and its argument for a ban on the sale of gas guzzlers would ameliorate pollution and other envoy problems, what would prevent it being passed as an amendment (which could then be repealed by further amendments)?
It's called an Amendment. There's a process for it. Learn how it works before bloviating.
What do Aussie FReeepers think of these folks moving back down under? Please, please, PLEASE don’t tell us to keep them for ourselves!
I’m really beginning to despise the Anglosphere.
My, we are slow today.
Which bit of the unamended Constitution talked about making or selling booze?
Hint: it’s probably next to the same bit of the unamended Constitution that talked about making or selling 21st century road vehicles powered by polluting fossil fuels.
If a Constitutional amendment can prohibit one, it can prohibit the other.
And a further Amendment can revoke a prior one.
The processes exist. The precedents also exist. So the hypothetical scenario is valid.
After a horrible lockdown and forced vaccing from the “conservative” government (the also banned guns back in the early 90’s, the “right”) Aus has gone from the frying pan into the fire with the election a Labor government, why anyone would want to go there is beyond me.
The good news is the new opposition leader sounds like a boss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dutton
18th Amendment gave Congress a mandate to outlaw alcohol.
Hint:
Shove it, you smarmy jackass.
You are exactly right....they sound like good Democrats to me, you can keep them. We have enough of those idiots down here already.
Part of the problem is people - including yourself it seems - not understanding what actually happened.
Virtually all the vaccine mandates in Australia were imposed by state governments (the heaviest ones by socialist state governments) and were opposed by the conservative federal government. Unfortunately because of the way the Australian constitution works, all the power in this case was with the state governments - they have total power and responsibility over matters of public health - and so even though the federal government opposed the mandates, they had no power to stop them.
Unfortunately a lot of people - including a lot of Australians - don't understand this - and so, yes, some people wrongly blamed the conservative federal government for things that were being done by the states.
And, frankly, it didn't help us that sites like Freerepublic were constantly pushing the narrative that Australia as a whole had gone crazy over COVID, when it was really only two Labor governed states where 95% of the stupid crap was happening.
The election though, was mostly about other issues - it is unusual for a government in Australia to win a fourth term unless they are seen as having done a spectacular job.
Australia also didn't ban guns in the 1990s, but that's another argument. There were some overly restrictive gun law changes in the late 1990s and it is certainly true that the conservative Prime Minister of the time, John Howard, pushed for those, but they were nowhere near as restrictive as a lot of Americans seem to believe, and they certainly constitute a ban on guns - at most, a fifth of guns in the community were removed (and it may have been less than that) and many of those were still legal and could have been retained - it was just there was also a generous buyback at the time (quite a few people sold old guns and bought new ones). And again, it was actually the state governments that passed most of the laws - the federal government passed some that tightened laws around the importation of firearms, but again, constitutionally most of the laws were state laws.
Well, my is ass sure red. :=O
As for guns what a heard was, correct me (but spare the whip please!) if I wrong, what I heard was you needed a reason to own one “other than self-defense” and the National Party leader got himself burned in effigy over supporting it.
(Sigh)
The Eighteenth Amendment which prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” was passed by Congress on December 18, 1917. The motives of the Amendment are self-evident - advocates of abstinence believed it would serve a common, moral good.
On its own, the Amendment didn’t define the scope of “intoxicating liquors” so was unenforceable. So, nine months after it was ratified, Congress passed the Volstead Act to define which beverages were covered.
Are you trying to argue that it just isn’t possible - not even hypothetically - for a prohibition of anything else other than intoxicating liquors to follow the same pattern as the prohibition of alcoholic beverages?
After all, if it can’t happen then that fundamentally undermines the entire point of allowing for Constitutional Amendments. Any Amendment could relate to a new individual right, clarify an individual or States right, or confer powers to Federal Government.
Notwithstanding:
1. Amendment X (”Powers not granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution belong to the states or the people.”) which effectively means that anything undefined in the Constitution or in an Amendment is a de-facto States matter; and
2. Amendment XIV (”No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”) which means a state cannot legislate away a pre-existing constitutional right.
Sort of.
But a lot of this is confusion between terminologies used in different countries, and also in what the law says and what is actually enforced.
How to explain this...
In Australia, it is perfectly legal to use a gun in self defence as long as you genuinely believe you are facing a threat that involves a danger of death or serious injury - you can also use a gun to defend another person from death or serious injury.
But there is not and never has been a specific general right to carry any weapon for self defence. That right didn't exist prior to the 1990s, and nothing changed with regard to that in the late 1990s.
Now what did happen in the late 1990s and the early 2000s is guns were divided up into different categories and the rules for owning particular categories of firearms changed.
The most common guns - basic hunting rifles and shotguns are category A/B - and while technically speaking you do have to provide a reason for owning an A/B firearm, in practice, as long as you are a law abiding citizen without a recent or serious criminal record, in most parts of the country, it's easy to provide a reason as long as you're not stupid. You just say "I want to go hunting."
You want to own a basic handgun, it's a little harder. But there you say "I want to go target shooting" (if you don't have a clearer reason like being a security guard or something).
What you do not do is say "I want to own it for self defence." Never say that or you will screw yourself.
Getting more 'powerful' weapons, things are a little different - it's actually a little difficult to get any sort of semi-automatic rifle (although not impossible) - you will need to give some sort of reasonably credible reason and they may check up on it. And it is genuinely hard to get a high capacity semi-automatic of any sort.
But relatively few Australians ever owned weapons like that unless they needed them professionally, so it doesn't have that much impact.
We have plenty of dumb laws over guns - lots of bureaucratic hoops to jump through - but they're a long way from banned.
And, yes, the Nationals leader was burned in effigy but at the time that happened, it looked like the laws were going to be much stricter than they actually wound up being. And also enforced a lot harder than they wound up being. John Howard was a city based man who had no understanding of firearms - his initial plans would have been much stricter. Fortunately he actually did listen to people like his Deputy Prime Ministers from the National Party who had a more realistic understanding of things.
I'm a gun owner myself. I think the laws are overly strict in some areas, but it isn't really that hard to navigate them. And, fortunately, common sense is generally applied to enforcement - if they wanted to, they could enforce them a lot more strictly.
But we try to keep a little quiet about that, so the lefties who would push for it, don't start kicking up a fuss.
You obviously do have a lot of idiots, given that your new Prime Minister is a commie.
Any Australian is allowed to return home, so we’ll take them.
Honestly they are just embarrassing us overseas.
Australians who don't understand it, annoy me. Americans have no real reason to and it's hardly surprising people might assume the Australian government is actually in charge of everything that happens in Australia.
I do get annoyed at some Americans who won't listen when it's explained and still insist they know better, but you're not in that category.
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