The way to give them incentive to confront reality is to provide a legitimate threat to their comfort and security if they refuse to. So, the question is: what’s morally acceptable way to provide that threat?
I think the Republican party has the situation well in hand.
Gonna be a lot of abortion clinics along the border of Texas and Mexico being built soon.
Bet people could make a killing* off of them.
EDIT: *financially
The guy I’m travelling with grew up in Utah. Apparently there is an insurance company that will contribute $500 to fly people to San Diego so they can buy their own medications across the border.
Better deal for both the patient and the ins co.
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nvm I read the tweet wrong lol
Mexico only legalized abortion a few months ago.
Why not? Current SCOTUS will let him.
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You are forgetting the seminal decision in Fuck You, Stop Me vs. the United States
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this is not quite true. an expert will be correct 99 times out of a hundred, where a good job will be completely invisible to a regular person, but if they commit an error on 1% of cases, it means technocrats are out of touch with reality? c’mon now.
we magnify the mistakes way too often. consider that every passing day without a food borne rabies outbreak is actually a massive win over a decade like the 1940s, and the apparatus that inspects all the food is 10x more effective and efficient over a decade like 1990s.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing about anything. I’m not saying expertise is bad because experts are wrong sometimes. I am saying that it can be very problematic when the experts in charge live lives in their insular expert bubbles. Experts will always be exposed to disingenuous populist attacks of the kind you are describing, but those attacks will land more when the technocratic class has obvious blind spots for what is happening. Just look at the legal profession or the journalism profession try to deal with the crises they are facing right now.
I am very much in favor of having experts lead their fields of expertise. That drives good outcomes like the food safety outcomes you’re describing. But I think all of these professions, including my own, need to do better at engaging in the real world and not just managing abstract faith based systems. When lawyers insist that everyone is equal before the law (even though there is blatant structural racism across the whole justice system), when journalists insist that objectivity is an absolute good (even though in practice it just results in them amplifying fascist lies), these are big problems that weaken institutions. We need strong institutions to deliver the good outcomes like the type you describe for food safety, and pure technical expertise isn’t enough when all these institutions are under siege.
Kind of interesting from a Peter Coy newsletter today: There’s a world where the SC ruling on Dobbs could be completely paradoxical and internally inconsistent. Basically, the court has to decide 3 questions:
- Is Mississippi’s ban on >15 week abortions constitutional?
- Does Roe v. Wade require the ban to be found unconstitutional?
- Should Roe be upheld?
The key here is that answering yes to both of the first two questions implies that the answer to the third question must be no. But given the makeup of the court, it’s possible to get to a yes to all 3:
This is all obviously academic because the substance of Roe/Casey is going to be gutted by the ruling regardless of whether you can technically say that Roe/Casey were upheld. But I thought it was still interesting to think about.
What’s the basis for Barrett being on team “Roe should be upheld”?
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I think that’s a more confusing way of looking at it than is necessary. The big question is whether they can rule that the ban complied with the requirements of Roe/Casey, right? If they decide that actually the 15 week ban is not an undue burden and is consistent with a viability threshold, then the case is decided and there’s no need to address the question of whether to overturn the prior case law.
If they decide that, for example, the 15 week ban is actually banning abortions pre-viability or meets the criteria for an undue burden under Casey, then they have to take the next step of deciding whether Casey/Roe is actually good law.
IMO the most likely scenario is the former. They punt on the Roe/Casey issue and simply say that this law is OK under those frameworks, probably with some dicta from Alito/Thomas in a concurring opinion about how those cases really should be overturned though. Then in a few months we’ll have Alabama or some other state intent on racing to the bottom institute a ban on abortions after 6 weeks or something to force the issue.
Somewhere between wishful thinking and reading the tea leaves of her questions during oral argument.
I’m actually not sure this is true. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the question is morphed a bit. In their July briefing, the petitioners (Mississippi) framed the issue like you said, asking whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.
But then in their October reply brief, they shifted to asking for an outright overturning of Roe and Casey.
I believe the justices commented on this evolution during oral argument, but don’t remember specifically what they said. And I’m guessing that the court is under no obligation to rule on a question just because petitioners want them to.
I think this would be curious - is there any source that suggests 15 weeks is anywhere close to a viability threshold?
Ultimately, I think it’s a coinflip between these two outcomes:
- Roe and Casey are affirmed, but Mississippi’s law does not present an undue burden.
- Roe and Casey overturned entirely. Lol at there being any constitutional right to abortion.
On one hand, this is a distinction without a difference in terms of women’s access to abortions in Mississippi. On the other hand, an outright overturn of Roe triggers a bunch of state-level auto-abortion bans and it opens the door to overturning all of the related cases on same sex marriage, interracial marriage, birth control, etc.
Something to keep in mind that people always forget. Places like Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, etc. already only have like one or two abortion clinics in the entire state. Things are already really shitty for women trying to get abortions in these states.
There is a heartbreaking video of girls going to the one in Kentucky and they have to wear something over their heads to protect their identity while people guard them and Trumpers scream at them calling them whores and murdering sluts etc
It was way more fucked up then I even expected
Yeah the thing to keep in mind about this case and all the potential dominoes that will fall as a result, is that this is only going to widen the divide between sane blue states and the rest of the country. Not only in terms of general quality of life, but economically as well, since we’ll have the trickle-down effect of anyone with a brain leaving once they turn 18, companies pulling out, etc.
Not that I’m aware of. I think 22-24 weeks is the medically accepted cutoff. But the court went from a trimester based cutoff in Roe to a viability cutoff in Casey, and viability is a murky concept that is going to be very situation dependent. I don’t think it’s a stretch for them to say something like “the reason for a trimester based or viability based threshold was to balance the interests of the unborn fetus with those of the pregnant person, and to ensure that the pregnant person had sufficient opportunity to abort the pregnancy if they wish to. A 15 week ban accomplishes both of those things while also creating a bright line rule”.
I guess that’s still overturning Casey in part, but it’s different than addressing the underlying constitutional questions in Roe.
Also to be clear, I’m not saying that would be good reasoning or that it would be a just outcome. But I think something like that is more likely than a straight up reversal of Roe.
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