OT Roe V Wade In Trouble

Discussion in 'Blazers OT Forum' started by Chris Craig, Nov 28, 2021.

  1. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    https://www.yahoo.com/news/long-awaited-moment-staunch-roe-005740859.html

    WASHINGTON - Judge Clarence Thomas said at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991 that he hadn't given that much thought to whether Roe v. Wade was correctly decided.

    But Justice Clarence Thomas took only months to reach a conclusion: the landmark 1973 ruling guaranteeing a woman's right to abortion should be discarded.

    "The power of a woman to abort her unborn child" is not a liberty protected by the Constitution, said a dissenting opinion from four members of the court, including Thomas.

    Thus began three decades of official Thomas opposition to the notion of a constitutionally protected right to abortion.

    It will reach its zenith Wednesday, when Thomas and the most conservative Supreme Court in decades will consider a restrictive Mississippi abortion law that opponents and advocates alike agree is almost impossible to square with Roe and the precedents that have flowed from it.


    The review coincides as well with something of a high-water mark for the 73-year-old Thomas, now the court's longest-serving member. He sits on a court with more justices who think like him than at any other point in his career.

    These days, his colleagues offer unprecedented deference. After years of not asking questions at oral arguments, Thomas this term has asked the first question in every hearing. That is because no one jumps in until he has finished his low-key inquiries.

    His seniority on the court means that he decides who writes the court's opinion when he is in the majority and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. is on the losing side. That is a bit more commonplace now as the court has grown more conservative. With five justices to his right, Roberts's vote is no longer always key.

    Thomas's influence has grown outside the courtroom as well. His former clerks - there are more than 125 of his "kids," as Thomas calls them - held many high-ranking positions in the Trump administration, including for a time the role of the administration's top lawyer at the Supreme Court. Ten have lifetime appointments in the federal judiciary.

    One of those former clerks, recently hired Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, will be arguing the case for the state's law, which prohibits almost all abortions after 15 weeks, months earlier than the court's current abortion precedents allow.

    If the court reaches the question of whether Roe should be overturned, Stewart will not have to worry about at least one vote.

    "Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled," Thomas wrote in a dissenting opinion in 2020. The case concerned restrictions on abortion clinics and the doctors who perform the procedure, whom Thomas repeatedly referred to as "abortionists."

    "The Constitution does not constrain the States' ability to regulate or even prohibit abortion," he added.


    It is one of many times Thomas has written on the subject, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., noted last month when he gave the keynote speech for a celebration of Thomas's 30 years on the Supreme Court.

    Take his jurisprudence on unborn life," McConnell said at the conclusion of a day-long retrospective of his Supreme Court tenure sponsored by conservative groups.

    "Every time without fail, Justice Thomas writes a separate, concise opinion to cut through the 50-year tangle of made-up tests and shifting standards and calmly reminds everybody that the whole house of cards lacks a constitutional foundation," McConnell said.

    Thomas has written that Roe cannot be sustained because the Constitution is silent on the subject of abortion. He has complained that the court bends its own rules and procedures to protect Roe and 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed the right and was the decision Thomas objected to in his first term on the court.

    In 2019, he related abortion to eugenics, praising an Indiana law that would have made it illegal for someone to perform an abortion because of the fetus's race, sex, disability or diagnosis of Down syndrome.

    "Each of the immutable characteristics protected by this law can be known relatively early in a pregnancy, and the law prevents them from becoming the sole criterion for deciding whether the child will live or die," Thomas wrote.

    "Put differently, this law and other laws like it promote a state's compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics."

    While the rest of the court wanted additional lower courts to weigh in on similar laws in other states, Thomas warned: "Although the Court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever."

    "In terms of abortion, Justice Thomas is the tip of the spear," said Thomas Goldstein, a lawyer who frequently argues before the court and was a founder of SCOTUSblog, which closely chronicles the court's every move. "He is a driving force for overruling Roe v. Wade. And that position will make a decision that doesn't go so far and instead cuts back on Roe seem pretty modest."

    If other justices say the court's precedents must be respected and overturned in the rarest of occasions, Thomas is an exception the other way.

    "In my view, if the Court encounters a decision that is demonstrably erroneous - i.e., one that is not a permissible interpretation of the text - the Court should correct the error, regardless of whether other factors support overruling the precedent," he wrote in 2019.

    As a result, Thomas is the court's most prolific justice when it comes to writing solo opinions that call for reconsidering the court's precedents.

    At the symposium on Thomas's jurisprudence, Notre Dame law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett said her fellow Thomas clerks became familiar with it.

    "Justice Thomas has since the beginning had a practice of saying, 'In an appropriate case, I'd reconsider all of American law,' " Garnett said, to laughter.

    Sometimes, the justice's persistence pays off, now that the court's membership has changed. He has complained for years that the court has not taken up challenges of state and local gun control laws that have been upheld despite the court's 2008 ruling that the Second Amendment afforded an individual right to gun ownership in the home for self-defense.

    The newly constituted court - with three members chosen by President Donald Trump - agreed and heard arguments last month about the right to carry a weapon outside the home.

    His call to reexamine the court's landmark press protection ruling New York Times v. Sullivan is still a minority position, but he has been joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch. Other once lonely positions may attract new support.

    In an evaluation of Thomas for NPR at the 20-year mark, Goldstein said Thomas's solo opinions were like "planting flowers in a garden that he thinks are going to bloom a long time from now. And whether that's going to happen is going to depend on the court's membership.".

    Ten years later, "I think that Justice Thomas's biggest and boldest constitutional theories are still a long way from being adopted," Goldstein said. "You can see similar themes in newer decisions - such as rules lowering the bar separating church and state. But the biggest effect of his bold thinking so far has to make other very conservative views seem essentially mainstream."

    Thomas's idiosyncratic views and his resistance to compromise still make him the justice most likely to write a solo opinion. In the term completed last summer, he was in the majority 81 percent of the time - the lowest of all six conservatives and just ahead of the liberal justices.

    Thomas has a growing conservative fan base outside of the court - and still also faces stout liberal opposition. His wife Virginia Thomas's conservative activism and closeness with the Trump administration remains a sore point.

    Earlier this year, she apologized to Thomas's clerks for a rift that developed among them after her election advocacy of Trump and endorsement of the Jan. 6 rally in the District of Columbia that resulted in violence and death at the U.S. Capitol.

    And Thomas's controversial confirmation, almost derailed because of sexual harassment charges by Anita Hill, is hardly forgotten.

    "I still believe Anita Hill," protesters yelled this fall before Thomas gave a speech at the University of Notre Dame.

    But these days, Thomas is able to shrug it off.

    At the event marking three decades on the court, Thomas said he was celebrating "not because of me but because of you all and what we're trying to defend in this great country."

    "I appreciate the senators who voted for me, all 52 of them," Thomas said, as the crowd began to laugh. "Hey, all you need is 50."
     
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  2. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    The usual crew of men will cheer.
     
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  3. Buffalo Custard

    Buffalo Custard Well-Known Member

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    The American Taliban: too stupid/fanatical to grasp the concept that disaproving of something on theological grounds doesn't mean it is appropriate for the government to ban it.
     
  4. Lanny

    Lanny Original Season Ticket Holder "Mr. Big Shot"

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    The governor of Mississippi disagrees with this statement. He believes the new Mississippi law might work under Roe v Wade.
     
  5. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    But, a conservative supreme court won't see it that way.

    A SC with a majority of conservatives including two men who have sexually harassed/assaulted women want to take a women's rights away to her body. It doesn't seem they will be stopped.
     
  6. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Clarence Thomas lied his ass off. If he really had no opinion on abortion, he was arguably the only American over age 12 who could say that. And he voted against reproductive rights and women's rights generally on every case.
     
  7. Haakzilla

    Haakzilla Well-Known Member

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    ...would love to hear conservatives view on this mindfuck of a situation where out one side of their face they are screaming about "medical freedoms" in regards to choosing not to get vaccinated vs. the other side of their face screaming that "medical freedom" does not apply to women here in regards to choosing to have an abortion :dunno:
     
  8. Haakzilla

    Haakzilla Well-Known Member

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    ...and fwiw, he was indirectly responsible for the planning of the infamous January 6th "Stop the Steal" rally :sigh: this guys seems to have some pretty nefarious views outside of the court as well.
     
  9. Lanny

    Lanny Original Season Ticket Holder "Mr. Big Shot"

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    Here's what I believe. This is a secular matter. Also, adults in their right mind should be able to reach whatever decision does not affect others and it's not our business to interfere. If she is judged it will be by her maker not us.

    The life she aborts must be viable for her to be prevented from stopping it. I believe viability begins somewhere around the start of the sixth month of a pregnancy. There has to be a compromise and this seems as fair as you can get.
     
  10. Orion Bailey

    Orion Bailey Forum Troll

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    waves hand…

    Im personally against abortion.
    However, I will vote against restrictive abortion laws, because i do not feel i have the right to make that decision for someone else.

    not all us conservatives are the same. ;)
     
  11. barfo

    barfo triggered obsessive commie pinko Staff Member Global Moderator

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    Roe v Wade wouldn't be in trouble if it had just kept it's legs together.

    barfo
     
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  12. Orion Bailey

    Orion Bailey Forum Troll

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    abstinence is the best form of protection.
     
  13. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Fine. Women can try Lysistrata approach.

    Trouble with six month ban is late term abortions are done in emergencies. Shit happens. Sometimes shit happens late in pregnancy. No woman wants to wait around in order to have a late term abortion. Either a crisis in her health, severe fetal abnormality not detected earlier, or some other crisis. How many if you want to tell the woman whose fetus had no brain that she had to give birth and care for the offspring for life?
     
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  14. RR7

    RR7 Well-Known Member

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    generically, sure. But teaching it that way tends to lead to higher pregnancy rates over preaching safe sex with condoms.
     
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  15. Orion Bailey

    Orion Bailey Forum Troll

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    green font. Like thats a realistic answer… abstinence.
     
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  16. Lanny

    Lanny Original Season Ticket Holder "Mr. Big Shot"

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    Her choice ans I'll stand by her since she's an adult in her right mind. I would imagine that her maker will be kind to her.
     
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  17. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Yes, some people choose to carry problem pregnancies. Operative word is choose. In some cases it's not a child with disabilities, it's a child with no abilities. I mentioned case in another thread of a fetus that had absolutely no brain activity at all, and the life of a woman whose child was born with the condition. Forty seven years caring for a body with no brain. After a right to lifer murdered Dr. George Tiller, a film was made about his patients who had late abortions and why.
    There are not loads of people seeking to adopt a child with no brain, or who can never move.
    What not, as Dr. Tiller said, trust women? I know it's hard to believe but women really aren't stupid and a woman really is the one most qualified to decide her pregnancy. Not a state legislator, a senator, a judge, or a screaming picketer outside a clinic.
     
  18. Lanny

    Lanny Original Season Ticket Holder "Mr. Big Shot"

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    It would seem to be insane to carry a child to term that is brain dead. But as a fully functioning adult it's her choice. What if someone told me I had no right to death with dignity, I'd break his nose in an instant. Nobody's gonna tell me what to do unless it affects someone else. Your right to extend your fist ends where my nose begins.
     
  19. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Like I said, her choice. What I or some other woman might decide is irrelevant.
     
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  20. Buffalo Custard

    Buffalo Custard Well-Known Member

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    I have a simple suggestion: anybody who wants to outlaw abortion should be required to sign up as a living organ doner. Fair is fair. If her uterus is government property, so is your lung/heart/kidney. If the government can decide a fetus is more important than a woman, they can decide that rich CEO's life is worth more than yours.
     
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