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If all paleoPaulie wants to DO about abortion is hold press conferences and overturn Roe vs. Wade (a necessary first step in any event) all he will accomplish is to send the matter back to the states where New York, California and a handful of other states will (under "state's rights" theories) guarantee that most abortions will still occur. If paleoPaulie can play the constitutional two-step by cramming unconstitutional earmark after unconstitutional earmark for his constituents into appropriations bills which he then hypocritically votes against with his pseudo"constitutionalist" dainty little pinky in the air, then he can do more than punt to the states on the very lives of the unborn innocent.

Protecting the babies from being sliced, diced and hamburgerized (which can be done by defining them as "persons" under the 14th Amendment and thereby prohibiting state denial of Equal Protection of the Laws under actual laws passed by Congress which is authorized by the 14th Amendment to do so) is a LOT more important than federal subsidies to the shrimping industry in Galveston and to Galveston trolleys and to Galveston local buses and to Galveston infrastructure and to other paleoPaulie pork projects and more important by far than Scarlett O'Paulie's pose of constitutionalist "virginity."

I agree this "send it back to the states to decide" stuff won't work with abortion. We tried that back in the 1860s over another "highly contentious hotly debated moral issue", slavery. Stephen Douglas' "popular sovereignty" plan blew up in his face when they tried it in Kansas, and the same thing would happen in "swing states" with abortion if they threw it back to the states. The pro-life and pro-choice camps would descend into a swing-state and an all out war would break out.

Abortion is one of those issues that isn't going away and needs to be banned nationally via a human life amendment, or having the Supreme Court reverse itself in the way Brown v. Board of Education created a national reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson.

And the funny thing is when Harriet Miers was caught making the same kind of "federalist" remarks Thompson made about abortion in 1994 (to paraphrase... 'I'm reluctant to say the federal government should come in and criminalize a woman's right'), there was a huge backlash against her in the conservative community and it derailed her Supreme Court nomination -- NOBODY stood up and praised her "federalist" credentials for opposing federal involvement.