I already have a pretty good idea of how I think this is going to go. You don’t get to be a Supreme Court Justice without either already having, or developing an ego the size of Saturn. And the Mississippi 15 week abortion ban case is the cliffhanger case for this session of SCOTUS, kind of like Who shot JR? It will likely be the last major decision the court releases before it slinks off in disgrace.
It is highly likely that the June decision will likely gut Roe V Wade and send abortion rights back to the states. If that happens, the Democrats will almost certainly use the decision as a main plang in their general election campaigns.
And it would normally make perfect sense. After all, depending on the poll you look at, the popularity of Roe v Wade is anywhere between 65-71%. You know what the popularity rating for a total ban on abortion is? 15%. Unfortunately for the GOP, that 15% is about 25-30% of their most loyal base, which is what they’re pandering to.
Normally, the main problem would be the old adage, A week is a year in politics. And that is generally true. Things change rapidly and constantly in politics, and those of us who aren’t political junkies, or highly motivated by an issue have a short attention span. The decision will likely come in early June, and the election isn’t until November. Plenty of time for minds to fade.
Except for the fact that the stupid Republicans just won’t STFU and let the public forget about it. After almost 50 years, this is their victory lap, and they intend to take it. In anticipatory glee, they are fighting like a bunch of kittens in a sack to pass the most restrictive abortion laws they can to enact after the Court does its dirty deed.
Texas already has the infamous SB8, which places a bounty of $10,000 on anyone who assists a woman in obtaining an abortion. But then they jumped the shark. County deputies indicted and charges a Texas woman with murder two for the crime of performing a self abortion, with no reference to any applicable Texas law for the charge. Fortunately, the DA saw the blatant stupidity, and dropped the charges. But this is just a taste of what’s to come.
And neighboring Oklahoma isn’t taking this shit lying down either. Following the passage of SB8, Oklahoma saw a 40% increase in abortion cases in their clinics, largely from Texas women crossing the border to get abortions in safety. So the Oklahoma legislature passed a law making abortion illegal in any case other than saving the life of the woman. But they must like shark meat too. Because they went on to make it illegal for an Oklahoma resident to cross state lines in order to obtain an abortion, and then cross back into Oklahoma and go home. Stupid, say HI to unconstitutional. Unconstitutional, meet stupid!
But the party is just getting started! Right now, there are 26 GOP controlled states that are all in the process of coming up with their own restrictive abortion laws and bans. Remember what I said about A week being a year in politics? That doesn’t work if you don’t shut up and let people forget!
Remember, the popularity for Roe v Wade is between 65-71%, which means a healthy number of GOP voters. Most likely largely lower income women, and middle class women. How do you think a lower income GOP woman feels in Texas right now, with her access to abortion effectively shut off. Or the same for Oklahoma? Even middle class women in Texas and Oklahoma are going to feel the pinch of buying an airline ticket to go somewhere else, pay for the abortion, a day or two in a hotel to recover, and then fly back home?
The Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. They spent decades blithely ignoring the importance of the judicial system, especially the Supreme Court, while the GOP took a long term approach to eventual court domination to obtain their goals, which took almost a half a century. And now Democratic women are up in arms over the potential loss of their reproductive rights.
But now the GOP is throwing the Democrats a serious, gold plated lifeline. They are going so far, so fast, and being so arrogant about rubbing everybody’s nose in it, that they’re ignoring the fact that they’re alienating a sizeable portion of their base heading into a general election. The Democrats need to capitalize on this, and capitalize hard!
I get the political implications, but this is a lives lost situation. We can’t hope for a burning factory with doors chained to improve working safety conditions. This is a slow moving disaster, but a disaster none the less. Women’s lives will be lost, are being lost. Waiting for political winds to fall another way is too late.
Murf, I have to disagree with your “The Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves” bit. The PARTY and most of the truly politically savvy Democratic voters kept warning everyone but the DEMOCRATIC VOTERS were the ones who really fumbled everything. THEY were the ones who kept on with the “Who cares about the Supreme Court” narrative. Back in 2016 even–you couldn’t get the Hillary-haters to give two shits about the Supreme Court (even with McConnell’s blatant theft of Obama’s rightful Court nomination) as incentive to vote for her. Even during midterms, the Party and the politically savvy pleaded with voters to get out and vote because of the importance of the Supreme Court. But, again, the VOTERS put the Supreme Court at the veritable bottom of the pile when it came to the issues that mattered most to them (the fewer the available options of “important issues,” the more likely the Supreme Court came in at the bottom).
I think at the time people believed that the SC would be fair in their rulings. Remember how all of them were approved by almost the whole senate? And to be honest, I always thought there was some “rule” that said that they couldn’t take rights away from people, only give them. I was actually shocked when I found out that was not true (may be 10-15 years ago), when shit started getting ugly
You know something? Ultimately this is a young person’s issue (i.e. under 40). If they do not care enough to save their own lives and those of their loved ones, they pretty much get what they deserve. Young women have been warned this was coming for a very long time but they could not pull themselves away from their asinine tic-tok videos, the kardashians, etc. Have fun girls at your new jobs as brood mares for the state. It could not have happened to a more vapid and deserving bunch of twats.
Careful, your misogyny is showing.