Breaking... US Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade

What clear comparison? One is a healthcare choice that only affects the woman involved. The other is a communicable disease that kills vulnerable members of our society. Your mental gymnastics in a desperate attempt to portray a comparison doesn't make it in anyway valid.

Last week tonight featured abortion ruling - spot on as usual. He really didn't go easy on the democrat "response" and rightly so.

This isn’t the “gotcha” that you seem to think it is — and that’s coming from someone who was highly critical of the Covid approach and the societal hysteria that came with it.

There are quite a few degrees of difference in severity between temporarily imposing measures that require people to be vaccinated to access certain workplaces or bars / restaurants and literally forcing a woman to undergo a pregnancy which poses significant and potentially lifelong physiological, psychological and socioeconomic effects. Pregnancy, particularly unwanted pregnancy, is a potentially tremendously scarring thing for both a woman’s body and her quality of life.The Covid vaccine was literally designed to lessen the risk of people contracting a potentially serious illness. Notwithstanding that, the “Left” (whatever that means in today’s broadbrush world) did not advocate literally forcing people to get vaccinated — there may have been certain people who “talked” about it, but it was never popular enough on any side of the sociopolitical spectrum to ever be implemented.

It’s rich to talk about moral and logical flexibility when you are comparing mere “talk” about holding someone down and shoving the vaccine into them, and the very real, solid and widely-advocated stance of literally forcing a woman to undergo a full pregnancy against her will as being one in the same thing.

'Notwithstanding that, the “Left” (whatever that means in today’s broadbrush world) did not advocate literally forcing people to get vaccinated'

In Italy, Canada, Australia, and some smaller countries like Lithuania, the authorities were for disemploying people and destroying their livelihoods if they didn't meet this "health requirement".

That is very extreme pressure. It counts as putting people under duress albeit it isn't literally forcing them to take it that's true.

Personally I think that things like "small government" are incoherent.

A government excerises authority full stop. Authority is exercised in favour of 'the good' (however you define that)

An atheist-dominated state is going to allow abortions and a broadly Christian one probably won't or will limit it more.

So the only question is a sort of wonkish constitutional one about whether authority should be devolved to the state level or not.

Hispanics migrating to California and Texas may increase religiosity in these places. Hispanics are traditionally Catholic but many are Protestants as Evangelicals are all over Latin America making converts.

Also Mormons have more children than ordinary non-Mormons so from an anthropological point of view they may increase and expand beyond Utah in the future.

Imagine two or three Mormon-dominated states instead of one!

Mental gymnastics?

You either support the notion of bodily autonomy or you don't.

What was proposed by some during covid was that the choice to take a vaccine should be removed for what was to some considered the greater good. That took choice away from the individual, in which case bodily autonomy was not worthy of respect. In the case of abortion bodily autonomy should never be taken away. There is clearly a conflict here stemming from people's beliefs and not a rational analysis of the the constant in the two situations, namely bodily autonomy.

I never stated that people were being held down and forcefully vaccinated against their will.

I highlighted that there are a cohort of people who were happy to in theory do away with bodily autonomy when it came to covid but now want bodily autonomy respected in the case of abortion.

None of your long winded emotional diatribe did anything to contradict that.

Don't judge me by the standards you set for yourself please.

You are aware this decision has been condemned by many Jewish groups in the US because as you point out, it's a Christian-derived one. Judaism puts the rights of the woman first.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/06/24/us-jewish-groups-lament-supreme-court-roe-v-wade-reversal/

And, at least till the other recent decision in the US, there was separation of Church and State, something the RCC has been against forever but that's a side discussion.

I clearly stated that I'm talking about a cohort of people on the left who were advocating for vaccine mandates.

When something doesn't suit your opinion it's easy to dismiss it out of hand I suppose.

This isn't a gotcha. It is both. In my scenario I specifically mentioned abortion services would be needed as you will still have medical ones. Without the law going nuts the doctor and woman involved can make the appropriate decision without wondering if this corner case was written into law or not.

People have suggested ways of taking responsibility but not like that, or that, or that. You only want them to take responsibility in ways you deem appropriate. I say again that this is about control and nothing to do with the unborn because even the suggestions that don't involve abortion don't give enough control and so they are unsuitable.

Like I said when this thread started, they aren't even discussing the matter on legal terms. I haven't seen even one attempt of them making a legal argument against the decision. The thread is literally full of appeals to emotion: "think of the poor women", "you're killing women", "you hate women", "you want to control women". For a class of people who consider themselves the shinning lights of society, the intellectually minded, there's a serious lack of any of that in this thread as predicted.

I missed your comment on that, this thread moves quickly 😁

I suppose we come at this from slightly different views. I believe the legislators have abdicated all responsibility to the SC for important issues. It boils my blood to see the likes of Biden and Pelosi grandstand on this when they've collectively sat on their hands for decades. Using the courts as their safety net so they don't have to do the hard work of actually getting the legislation passed.

It should also serve to focus electors minds in State elections to actually get laws passed that they need and not rely on SC rulings, which can and have been overturned for a variety of reasons in the past. Again, it's a collective laziness from everyone involved to just sit back and wave their hands while blaming the SC for them not doing their job.

To your last point, it's definitely an emotive issue and people are looking for someone to blame. I just don't feel it should be directed at the SC in this case. They made a ruling of law, which many don't fully agree with and they will certainly be challenged on this point again in the near future.

That's just not true though.

The Abortion Rights Campaign received a cheque from Soros' foundation. On the advice of SIPO they returned it.

Amnesty International Ireland also received funding from Soros' foundation. They used this funding for other purposes not connected with the referendum, which is allowed.

Together for Yes crowdfunded through their website and applied the donation limits in law applicable to Irish-based and non-Irish-based donors.

Did Love Both or Save the 8th even register with SIPO? IIRC they did not. The Iona Institute also refused, and still refuses, to register with SIPO even though they are a lobbying organisation which falls right within the scope of the legislation. For a long time, the default currency on the Youth Defence donations page was US dollars. There were massive numbers of ads, which Google and Facebook eventually refused to run, for the No side bought in the US and paid for in US dollars. This was an obvious attempt to subvert our politics, but you come out with the Trumpian evidence-free "both sides" rubbish which just isn't true.

Without American lobbyists and dollars it's unlikely we'd have had the 8th amendment in the first place. We were just used by them as a battlefield in their war on Roe v. Wade and the horrible consequences of the 8th here were of no concern to them.

Our constitutional and political environment is in no way comparable to that of the US. The fact we can (relatively) easily amend our constitution, whereas in the US even the most inoffensive of changes such as the Equal Rights Amendment could not get ratified, is a huge difference. They are stuck with a 250 year old document which needed a war and an amendment to ban slavery ffs.

The fact it took us 20 years to legislate for the X case and 35 years to give the people a vote on repealing the obviously deeply flawed 8th amendment will go down in history as stains on our politics however.

Worth noting though that the majority of US voters believe in a woman's right to choose, just like in Ireland.

The 8th Amendment was vile and a real risk to the health and lives of women in Ireland, of course removing it was a cause for celebration. We also knew the legislation which was drafted, and the law we ended up with was exactly in line with this. The situation in the US is very different, with 'trigger laws' in many states. Of course it was easier for religious conservatives to get laws like these passed in southern states when Roe v. Wade prevented the laws from having any effect. Now, they're going to have to own the consequences of their legislation - which will include women dying.

But the court didn't consider that, as I stated, some major religions believe in a woman's right to an abortion but the SCOTUS punted that back to the States, arguably injecting religion into State decisions, in violation of the 1st amendment.

Nor anything stopping bringing a case saying that abortion should be available to those whose religions support it. Some religions like the Church of Satan require aborted fetal material as part of their religious worship. Whether we agree, they might have a case. But now we're off in the weeds.

What's widely under attack, beside the obvious impact of the decision, is the flouting of stare decisis in the 'Constitution doesn't support abortion.' Well, yeah, it was written in 1792. And, the 14th amendment didn't consider it - because it was ratified in 1868, prior to being voted for, by men. If you reject stare decisis, a court can pretty much do what it wants. A Democratic court could vacate this decision using the same (absurd) judicial contortions.

Your bodily autonomy doesn't cover passing a disease to someone else.

You can't try and compare vaccines to abortions and talk about rational analysis with a straight face.

Like I said, mental gymnastics

Except when something is contagious it's not just about you body, is your body and the body of every person around you. So again this desperate attempt to conflate the two isn't going to work.

What's particularly sad, is the re-litigation of the 8th repeal, which won resoundingly and has been repeatedly pointed out its irrelevant to Ireland or this particular thread about the USA. Followed on by the whinging about Covid. Sad, really, nothing ties either of those together and neither is relevant to what just happened in the USA.

Plus all the old anti-choice arguments that were refuted in the run up to the 8th repeal. There's still the thread to discuss something new and novel to say about abortion in Ireland.

This thread's cluttered enough. I'd recommend reading the decision passed down by the SCOTUS, it is about 160 pages for, and about 50 pages against. Really the decision doesn't matter though, the judges voting against Roe and Casey could've just signed their names to a blank piece of paper for all their written bloviating means. FFS referencing Hale.

“Except when something is contagious it's not just about you body, is your body and the body of every person around you.”

Where have I heard that before?🤔