A political war of all against all massively raises the costs of expressing a viewpoint which other people don't like. That makes it harder to participate in the political process, and easier for the powers that be to discourage any political participating which they find inconvenient.

(As a commenter says above though, I do think that in this particular case the takedown was probably not politically motivated.)

> Can we explore that a little?

Many people do structure their thinking that way for the simple reason that business molds itself to it's container; the shape of which was previously defined by a combo of politics and technological feasibility.

>Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?

No, but they are the legal one. Two different things there.

>Who should push back?

Citizens have duly elected representatives and Senators to sort that out. The continued conscious decision not to sort it out, is alas, a Hallmark of the carefully laid checks and balances of our system to keep the frivolous or overly controversial from getting rolled into the law of the land... Nope, couldn't keep a straight face. Intent is there though.

>If your "better nature" excludes companies from participating in the political process, how does it feel about companies donating to political parties e.g. to facilitate the building of oil pipelines across exempt areas of land, or to rezone land for mega warehouses, or to bust unions, or to facilitate casinos?

The political landscape is arguably better off without business being able to directly effect it via campaign donations/lobbying/writing bills. Business should inform. Not drive, politics.

I also find companies making political donations at the behest of management to be suspect, especially since no one generally asks the laborer where the company should rout their political interest slush pile.

Not that I was asked. Just had an answer in mind and figured I'd share.

> If not, and SCOTUS has overreached

All SCOTUS has done is decline pre-enforcement review of the Texas Law on threshold grounds that won't apply once there is an actual enforcement action; while this is hugely significant in practical impact, it very much does not address the moral, or even legal, status of the law itself.

(Now, is the Texas Legislature overreaching and setting itself as the moral arbiter of women’s bodies? That's another question.)

> (Now, is the Texas Legislature overreaching and setting itself as the moral arbiter of women’s bodies? That's another question.)

Right.

SCOTUS chose not to answer the question, even though it is the only institution that can speak to it authoritatively.

“Not to Speak Is to Speak. Not to Act Is to Act.”

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

> SCOTUS chose not to answer the question

As far as I know, the question hasn’t even been asked of SCOTUS. All that was asked was for an injunction against the law while it goes through the lower courts.

Which they refused to do, ergo inaction.

Not then OP, but companies donating to political parties seems like a pretty obviously bad idea, and I wish we would ban it.

At this point it's a US Constitutional matter. Nothing short of a Supreme Court shakeup or a Constitutional amendment would do anything.

By better nature in this context is assuming this was done for content neutral reasons. I hope it is a non-politically motivated application of their terms of service. As in the site, due to its nature, is generating a traffic load that is beyond the capability that they wish to serve or as another poster had pointed out it could be they are collecting pii information in violation of terms of service. It is the idea that we should attempt to assume they are acting in a content neutral way rather than assuming they are attempting to police people's thoughts or speech. GoDaddy does have a suspect history of these things but at the end of the day I do not know because, rightly they would not comment on it except to their customer and I do not believe that the customer has released a press statement of what they were informed.

Your question about the supreme Court by its nature is invalid. Supreme Court interprets or applies the laws under the constitutional framework. It is the people or their elected representatives that establish the laws. The supreme Court does not become an arbiter of women's bodies ever. The people or by proxy the people's Representatives may do this by having passed laws and the supreme Court determines the constitutionality of those laws. Now if you were to say the Constitution could become the arbiter of women's bodies that is a possibility, as the amendment process would allow for this.

Supreme Court activism is another buzzword used by people of all kinds of political persuasions. It has become that anyone who disagrees with a supreme Court ruling simply calls them as Court activism. There are cases that I have disagreed with but I believe it is a lot of hyperbole to toss around a supreme court activism. If there is supreme Court activism the remedy is constitutional amendments.

I do not believe that companies as an entity should be politically active. This is one of those areas where the supreme Court disagrees and has granted companies as an entity to have the legal right of freedom of speech and participation in the political process effectively unrestricted. I do not know how they reached the conclusion that companies as an entity are granted personhood and therefore the enumerated rights granted to peoples but they did. It's quite evident when you follow the money in politics that laws that companies tend to support almost always pass regardless of the popular support of people. When there are laws that have massive popular support of the people but the companies do not support they rarely pass. This shows that there is not equal representation. A company does not have the representation power of an individual person it has the representation power of all of their employees and the monetary power that those employees generate but the company often does not follow the political ideals of their employees.

> Your question about the supreme Court by its nature is invalid.

That's an interesting comment - "invalid". I was asking for your opinion when I asked "Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?"

How can it be invalid to ask for your opinion?

Perhaps you meant it would be irrelevant what anybody's opinion was of the role of SCOTUS because in your schema, the role of SCOTUS is prescribed as "Supreme Court interprets or applies the laws under the constitutional framework." For you, perhaps that is absolutely clear and precise, and not at all subjective or political.

But have you considered that SCOTUS has discretion about which cases it chooses to hear? In this case, the Texas legislature has passed a law that the applicant tried to challenge as unconstitutional.

Is the legislation unconstitutional, and if so, how?

We don't know, and we haven't been informed at all by SCOTUS because it decided 5-4 not to hear this case.