Breaking... US Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade

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?🤔

How can you type that without seeing the irony? Abortion involves killing/removing what would eventually be a baby, a life that will never get to be lived once aborted. It's the direct removal of what would be a life, whereas something contagious, especially covid, is based on the hypothetical that you may harm another life. There's far more variables at play in the mix of potential covid contagion, whereas there's really none when it comes to abortion. One is a guarantee of something, whereas the other is a potentiality.

It's a Catholic-dominated court thanks in part to a Scotch-descended Protestant (Trump).

Ordinary American Protestants weren't either very worked up about abortion (it wasn't on a lot of people's radar afaik, though an early pro-life movement existed) nor especially open to Catholic influence in 1973. Now they are both.

That's how the ball bounces.

@Loafing Oaf 'Well of course the judges themselves are never going to admit their decision was motivated by their religious beliefs.'

I agree with you, but this is a problem for all conspiracy theories.

The relevance is that you can't legally claim the laws against disestablishment of religion have been breached because the judges are secretly letting their religion influence them and sneakily not telling anyone.

The legal decision itself has no references to Papal Bulls, Catholic dogma, the Bible, metaphysics etc.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on any compelling arguments put forward in any of the dissents.

There's a lot to unpack in the concurrences alone so haven't had much time to disgest the dissents yet.

No you didn't, you made and continue to make a broad comparison between extremely different situations. Pregnancy is not a transmissible virus to others in the general public.

The real irony is conservatives continuing to wail complaints about minor pressure being put on them months ago to conform to public health guidance while around others while at the same time applauding the big government enforcing birth on women.

There is no 'moral or logical flexibility' by me on this matter, if the government was sending people to jail for not getting vaccinated then I'd similarly oppose it. You're the one that is all over the place, twisting yourself in knots trying to maintain any semblance of consistency

The SC, including the man in question that you are quoted, are proven to twist truth to suit their ideology.

'Personal religious observance' is not doing it in the most public place on the field - on the halfway line.

Again, the Conservative hypocrisy is caught in full view where now a teacher can lead a class in prayer in a public secular school while not being able to mention that they are gay to the same students.

Utter nonsense. Unlike those who are cheering this decision by the SC, I am treating each person as a human being and not pushing my opinions on anyone's unique situations. I am calling for each individual to be given their right to choose what suits their life, that myself nor 'big-government' mostly full of old white men should be telling them what to do with their bodies.