Sammie the Slug Alito is hopping mad this weekend. If he had his way even thinking about getting an abortion would be criminal, much less actually obtaining one. His dissent to an Emergency Ruling of SCOTUS to block an appellate court ban on the abortion drug Mifepristone being mailed to Louisiana shows he thought he’d at least get four of his conservative, GOP Justices to join his crusade to stamp out abortion. However he, and his buddy Thomas (who wrote his own dissent albeit using different grounds) to pound sand.
Now, as Raw Story reports he’s super pissed that blue states have as they put it ‘outsmarted’ him. When he wrote the Dobbs decision striking down Roe v Wade he had dreams of it quickly leading a federal law banning abortion nationwide. As we know, things didn’t turn out that way. It had been confidently assumed by the six Federalist Society groomed Fascist GOP appointees that women (and a whole bunch of us guys too) would raise hell for a couple of months then ‘get over it.’ Then, like I just said as soon as Republicans got the chance they’d ram through legislation outlawing abortion in the U.S. Instead, anti-abortion legislators have seen voters, when given the chance reject their zealotry. Even in Red States!
As with 2026 I for one can’t for the life of me understand how ANY woman who cares about abortion and reproductive rights wouldn’t have gotten out to vote for Clinton, or then Harris given the stakes of what allowing Trump to appoint Justices to the Court were. Clearly some of the GOP politicians in robes are spooked by the reaction to Dobbs but one never knows. It’s a long time between now and Jan. 2029 when a (hopefully) Democratic candidate can appoint Justices and with even Evangelical’s support softening a bit it Alito, Thomas or for that matter Roberts (also in his 70s) decides to retire or dies Trump will keep SCOTUS firmly aligned the way it currently is by appointing fire-breathing 40-year-old zealots that will make Alito, Thomas and even Robert Bork (remember him?) look like liberals!
For now however I really think SCOTUS conservatives are with two exceptions spooked. When that crazy-assed district judge Kacsmaryk in Texas tried to ban Mifepristone Chief Justice Roberts didn’t want SCOTUS going anywhere near that mess. Nor I believe does he want them involved in it now. Emergency (Shadow Dockett) rulings are issued they are ‘Per Curiam’ as in unsigned with no total vote recorded. However individual Justices are allowed to issue concurring or dissenting opinions and in this case Alito and Thomas did. The Court is famously opaque but in recent years, slightly less so and the linked article says indications are the vote was 7-2 to allow Mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth and mailed anywhere in the country.
Most abortions are medically induced, which gets us back to why Alito is so pissy. He was certain that at least in Red states he’d virtually outlawed it. Hell, doctors have been afraid to provide them even to save the life or health of the mother in all too many cases fearing criminal charges (and prison) from anti-abortion prosecutors:
On a Slate podcast bonus episode of “Amicus” released Friday, host Mark Joseph Stern and legal scholar Madiba Dennie, author of “The Originalism Trap,” dissected the dissents from Alito and fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas after the Supreme Court preserved telehealth access to the abortion pill mifepristone in a 7-2 emergency order.
“Let’s turn to Justice Samuel Alito, whose dissent is slightly less crazy but way funnier because he’s big mad,” Stern said.
Dennie agreed, noting Alito’s particular fury that more abortions are now happening in Louisiana than before Dobbs because of telehealth mifepristone access. “It seems like he really thought Dobbs was going to end abortion in red states forever, and he’s sore as hell that blue states outsmarted him,” Dennie said.
What has to gall Sammie Boy so much is that abortions, because of better access to the abortion inducing medication regime have actually increased! That was the unintended consequence of the Dobbs ruling he was oh so proud of. Abortion providers had been gearing up for the worst and setting up to ensure that women ten weeks or less pregnant could obtain abortion medications. Without having to visit a doctor in a Red state.
Now he’s being openly mocked for having been ‘out smarted by Blue states!’ As one of the commenters noted Dobbs was never about ‘returning freedom to the states’ but outlawing abortion – and he failed. To be sure he’s made things a lot worse for an awful lot of women and their families. People have been forced to have children they didn’t want to have and been bearing financial burdens because of it, even before the current mess. Women have been denied care or had it delayed enough their health has been ruined and some have even died. Sammie (and Clarence too) doesn’t care about any of that however.
The pundits had more to say. Stern says Alito’s dissent indicates he has a ‘selective view of state sovereignty.’
“In Alito’s view, red states have absolute freedom to persecute abortion providers and patients, while blue states have no authority to protect them,” Stern said.
Dennie went on to bring up a Civil War era comparison where free states would refuse slave states’ demand to return slaves:
“Here, again, we have judges like Alito suggesting that unfree states should be able to reach into free states and impose their laws on everyone else—to impose their unfreedom across the whole country,” she said.
This still isn’t over. The case is headed back to the appellate court but I think they will get the message and just let it languish. I’ve already said Roberts doesn’t want abortion in front of SCOTUS. He’s become as political as any GOP elected official and he knows it’s a loser for his Party. However Alito and also Thomas won’t let this go. Thomas’ dissent as I noted took a different tack, providing fodder for those who want to bring back what would now be a novel application of the ancient Comstock Law. That’s another subject for another time. For now just be glad Sammie got SLAPPED DOWN. I don’t know about you but thinking of him fuming brings a smile to my face!
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