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An Abortion Crossroads at the Supreme Court. The Court must consider the Constitution and long-time precedent.
Wall Street Journal ^ | November 30, 2021 | WSJ Editorial Board

Posted on 12/01/2021 7:11:28 AM PST by karpov

The Supreme Court takes up its most important abortion case in years on Wednesday, and the question will be how the Justices maneuver their way out of a thicket they should never have entered 50 years ago. Will the Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, settle for an incremental ruling that upholds a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks, or will it overturn its misguided precedents and return the regulation of abortion to legislatures in the states?

These columns have long supported a policy of legal abortion before viability, albeit uneasily as technology has revealed the development of the fetus. But we have had no hesitation in saying that Roe v. Wade (1973) and its progeny, notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), were wrongly decided. Abortion is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, and its regulation is a classic example of police powers reserved for the states.

Roe in particular is one of the worst decisions in the Court’s history, on par with Plessy v. Ferguson (“separate but equal” on race) and Korematsu (internment camps for Japanese-Americans). At a stroke, the Court overturned 50 state laws and turned abortion into a pitched political battle that nonetheless could not be settled politically through the ballot box.

As the great legal scholar Alexander Bickel wrote in “The Morality of Consent,” the Court simply invented a trimester medical analysis. “One is left to ask why. The Court never said. It refused the discipline to which its function is properly subject. It simply asserted the result it reached.”

That mistake has distorted American politics and law for a half century. It has heightened political polarization and made the Supreme Court a partisan battlefield. With nowhere else to turn, abortion foes have looked to the Court for redress

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: abortion; dobbs; prolifeping; supreme
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Can someone post an archive.md link to the article?
1 posted on 12/01/2021 7:11:28 AM PST by karpov
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To: karpov

There is What Should Happen, based on the Constitution and law, and then there is What Will Happen, which is no change.

As cynical about everything to do with Government (big G), i don’t see anything changing for the better. I see Clarence Thomas writing a brilliant dissent. And the rest of them will go off and powder their noses.

Smoke and mirrors show. “Prove me wrong”.


2 posted on 12/01/2021 7:17:19 AM PST by drSteve78 (Je suis Deplorable. STILL)
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To: karpov

Congress should have the courage to change the law. Instead, fearing their next election, those cowards toss it to the black robed tyrants to decide, thereby covering their congressional backsides. We are not a nation to be ruled by nine judges.


3 posted on 12/01/2021 7:18:49 AM PST by bk1000 (Banned from Breitbart)
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To: drSteve78

Addendum: There will be no disappointment, because there is no expectation. It would be an aberration to think otherwise.


4 posted on 12/01/2021 7:21:28 AM PST by drSteve78 (Je suis Deplorable. STILL)
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To: karpov
These columns have long supported a policy of legal abortion before viability...

.... or, another glaring reason why the WSJ and the entire DC-birthed neocon enterprise is and always was a total fraud.

5 posted on 12/01/2021 7:29:36 AM PST by AAABEST (NY/DC/LA media/political/military industrial complex DELENDA EST)
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To: karpov

The Wall Street Journal:
Pro legalized murder, for almost 50 years.

“These columns have long supported a policy of legal abortion before viability, albeit uneasily as blah blah blah.”

According to Science (both top embryologists, and Intro to Biology 101) the life of a zebra (or a giraffe, or a hippo, or a human being) begins “when the sperm fuses with the ovum to form a new complex with distinctive DNA, that proceeds to florish and grow in a continuum. in other words, human life begins at conception, a hard scientific fact.

Thus the Wall Street Journal says its okay to kill some humans on a whim. To the Wall Street Journal, some humans have no rights whatsoever. Whatever.

But what does the Constitution of the United States of America say?
It says that no person shall be denied equal protection of the laws.
That means, obviously, that the laws that protect us against premeditated murder must be enforced with full force against one who procures, performs, or assists in any abortion.
Anyone disagree?


6 posted on 12/01/2021 7:29:37 AM PST by OVERTIME (Tammie Lee Haynes)
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To: drSteve78
Let's all remember that legalized abortion was instituted in the U.S. primarily as a way to control the population of black people.

Perhaps Roe v. Wade will be overturned once black people figure out that this is why the Republican Party has publicly opposed abortion for decades but never seems to get around to doing anything about it even when the GOP is in full control of Congress and the White House.

7 posted on 12/01/2021 7:29:46 AM PST by Alberta's Child ("All lies and jest, ‘til a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.")
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To: karpov

Scholars, ‘legal experts,’ wonks and nitwits can pontificate and opine about the Constitution and ‘precedent’ all they want. Whether ‘long-established’ or not, NOTHING is permanent when the Constitution itself allows a USSC court to reverse itself. If they want it (Roe) to be irreversible, then they can go try for an amendment to the US Constitution. Good luck [See Equal Rights Amendment].

It has happened before and will happen again. The abortionists think because one court ceded to murderous doctrine that all eternity is bound by it as if the abortionist came down off the mountain with is scribed in stone tablets.


8 posted on 12/01/2021 7:33:07 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: karpov

Oral arguments going on now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRe4mYcEqBM

Sotomayor compared a brain dead person to an unborn baby. What a POS.


9 posted on 12/01/2021 7:37:02 AM PST by NoKoolAidforMe (Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil. Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
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To: Gaffer

As far as “long term precedent”, there was a time in this country when slavery was a long term precedent.


10 posted on 12/01/2021 7:51:52 AM PST by catman67 (14 gauge?)
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To: NoKoolAidforMe

A better comparison would have been to an unconscious person, say after a bad car accident injury. I mean, both unconscious and unborn people become conscious if you just wait a while. If you don’t kill them first.

Anyhow, Justice Sotomayor could have said that the Constitution says you can kill an unconscious person, just like you can kill an unborn person. Its because of equal protection of the laws. 14th Amendment


11 posted on 12/01/2021 7:55:48 AM PST by OVERTIME (Tammie Lee Haynes)
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To: Alberta's Child

The irony of Black Lives Matter is when the choice is made that not all black lives matter.


12 posted on 12/01/2021 8:00:55 AM PST by drSteve78 (Je suis Deplorable. STILL)
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To: catman67

Exactly. Leftists only cite “precedent” when it suits their goals. On the one hand they tout the “living Constitution” [actually wrong] when they want to grab guns, oppress one race because of the 400 years thing, or just let some tranny fondle your kids unimpeded, but on the other hand when their hallmarks are threatened they are sacrosanct and irreversible.


13 posted on 12/01/2021 8:02:35 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: bk1000
-- We are not a nation to be ruled by nine judges. --

That looks good on paper, but isn't the way things are.

Unpopular decisions are taken up by willing courts and by willing bureaucracies.

Congress will protect this arrangement, it will limit its objection to words.

14 posted on 12/01/2021 8:05:37 AM PST by Cboldt
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To: karpov

The Constitution does not address Abortion. The 10th Amendment outlaws the Roe vs Wade decision. Therefore it must be reversed.

10th AMENDMENT

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The wording and the intent of the 10th Amendment is and was clear in 1973.


15 posted on 12/01/2021 8:06:57 AM PST by maxwellsmart_agent (LKL)
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To: OVERTIME

The MS Solicitor General made a great point that there is no Constitutional right to kill a person. Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer are all gushing about “bodily autonomy” and “undue burden on woman”. Coney Barrett got a good dig in about the same case being made about vaccines.

Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch so far seem on board with siding with MS. All we need is one more.


16 posted on 12/01/2021 8:12:16 AM PST by NoKoolAidforMe (Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil. Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
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To: NoKoolAidforMe

A better comparison would have been to an unconscious person, say after a bad car accident injury. I mean, both unconscious and unborn people become conscious if you just wait a while. If you don’t kill them first.

Anyhow, Justice Sotomayor could have said that the Constitution says you can kill an unconscious person, just like you can kill an unborn person. Its because of equal protection of the laws. 14th Amendment


17 posted on 12/01/2021 8:55:51 AM PST by OVERTIME (Tammie Lee Haynes)
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To: Cboldt
Ironic that NYT is now questioning SCOTUS's "legitimacy" now. The court was fine when they liked its decisions. However, Barrett is on video predicting that SCOTUS won't reverse the fundamental Roe decisions.

"Legitimacy?"

18 posted on 12/07/2021 11:30:52 AM PST by ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas (Re-imagine the media!)
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To: karpov

If the Supreme Court does return the question of abortion to the states can a challenge to Obergfell v. Hodges be far behind?


19 posted on 12/07/2021 11:40:30 AM PST by DoodleDawg
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To: karpov

All a person has to do is take a pill. You don’t have to rip out a living human being.


20 posted on 12/07/2021 11:45:05 AM PST by combat_boots (Hi God bless Israel and all who protect and defend her. Merry Christmas! In God We Trust! W)
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