Especially at a time when the country is more polarized than ever. This is just horribly timed and will further split this country apart. This will be our century's dredd scott - the court "thought" this would settle the issue. But it won't:

"Although Taney and several other justices hoped the decision would permanently settle the slavery controversy, which was increasingly dividing the American public, the decision's effect was the opposite."

THOMAS, J., concurring

“For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

But he isn't particularly interested in that, because he is a political hack.

Thankfully, he is at least wrong about Obergefell, which was decided on different, and much firmer, grounds than the right-to-privacy cases. But carrying out the logic from this decision to others does indeed threaten Griswold and Lawrence, and especially Griswold, which was basically the direct precedential precursor to Roe.

Obergefell and Lawrence rested more strongly on Griswold directly (or through other non-Roe cases) than on any innovation from Roe, as I recall.

(Note that Thomas’ explicit attack on “all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents” strikes much more deeply, though, than just the Griswold line of privacy-related cases; the incorporation of the Bill of Rights as applicable against the States is substantive due process, and even the application of even the rational basis test requiring some connection to some legitimate public purpose for any legal distinction, are all part of the substantive due process precedent of the Court. I guess, if this Court wasn’t nakedly partisan and selective in its logic, this could be a hopeful sign for Dems on state gun control, since if there were a serious reconsideration of that precedent the incorporation of the second Amendment – the only Amendment with a purpose clause explicitly stating that it is for the benefit of the states – against the States would be on the weakest ground of any of it.)

More generally griswold was one of the landmark decisions at the core of finding a (non-enumerated) constitutional right to privacy.

>The Court today declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine’s application in other, specific contexts. Cases like Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965) (right of married persons to obtain contraceptives)*; Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003) (right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015) (right to same-sex marriage), are not at issue. The Court’s abortion cases are unique, see ante, at 31–32, 66, 71–72, and no party has asked us to decide “whether our entire Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence must be preserved or revised,” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 813 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Thus, I agree that “[n]othing in [the Court’s] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Ante, at 66.

>For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7), we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents, Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 9). After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated. For example, we could consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

>To answer that question, we would need to decide important antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify those rights. See id., at 854. That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach. See ante, at 15, n. 22.

This is actually in important and interesting legal question, because the Court has largely side stepped determining a mechanism for how to identify those rights, and did so in Roe.

He did not concur with overturning Roe - that was decided 5-4.

Your point is well made - this is going to be catastrophic for our country. No good can come if it. But it can’t be the position of the court to do what’s expedient over what is constitutionally correct. Or should it be? What does it profit a country to uphold the constitution and lose its democracy.

Reproductive rights are essential to women's liberty and equality, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The unborn child has a competing right to life that is also guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Roe/Casey balanced these competing interests well, and today's decision blows that up and eliminates any notion of reproductive rights for women.

Rights are not supposed to be subject to the whims of political majorities.

They kind of are, when they're controversial and as weakly justified as Roe was.

The Democrats really botched this, when they put all their efforts into puffing up Roe than creating other supports.

If anything, this will force conservatives to solidify and clarify their views on abortion which will allow voters to decide where they land on the spectrum of abortion rights. Whereas before, conservatives just deferred to "abortion bad. look at supreme court decision".

Also, is it not the case that most Americans support some abortion rights? Thus, this could force conservatives to move center on the abortion spectrum in order to appease their constituents.

> The seven to two judgment in Roe v. Wade declared “violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” a Texas criminal abortion statute that intolerably shackled a woman’s autonomy; the Texas law “except[ed] from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the [pregnant woman].” Suppose the Court had stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as the Court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force. Would there have been the twenty-year controversy we have witnessed[?]

[1] https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/

(edited to add forgotten source)

> I can think of one person who said that:

congratulations, really pushing the boundaries of what is possible here.

Stop educating people on biology (and in the post genome sequencing world), stop women from having reproductive control, stop LGBTQ folks from participating without fear, stop the free thinking people, stop it all in the name of that olde time religion (which itself is mostly a modern nostalgic reconstruction).

Very harmful to our ability to focus and succeed on technological transformation.

While today is certainly a dark day for the US, that paints an inaccurately rosy picture of the past to make us look even worse than we are today.

Our literacy rate has never been higher, belief in evolution is at an all time high, more people have college degrees, and access to accurate information has never been easier. We are in a short-term downswing on many axes, but the long term trends are towards science and education.

You are absolutely correct that we are more polarized than we have been since the Civil War.

22 years of downhill might be short term for a nation but it’s not for people

And yet, without knowing it, ahead of you was the Civil Rights Act, the women's liberation movement, the environmental movement and the Clean Air Act, increased support for interacial relationships, gay rights.

In the midst of that dark time, it would have been hard to believe any of those could be ahead of you. Who knows what could be ahead of us now?

I have elementary age kids and it is fascinating seeing how that generation is growing up. They are so much more community oriented and caring that my generation was. They seem to understand that there are hard problems to be solved and that they won't be solved alone.

I'm filled with sorrow at the world they are inheriting, but I have a lot of optimism that they will do a better job with it than we have.

There's nothing metaphysical about observing that we have imperfect knowledge of the future and some potentialities are positive.

> I've already discounted the idea.

That's a personal choice of attitude and perspective, not an objective property of the universe. You're welcome to it, of course, but it's probably not accomplishing much for you.

> Everything ends eventually.

All the more reason to make the most of it and find the joy we can while it lasts. If it's going to end either way, why obsess about it?

Also, due to having to argue basic shit like the value of a pluralistic educated democracy when we have the physical problem of climate change bearing down and really wanting our attention. I marched for Roe v Wade in 1988 the first time, protested against stupid wars in 1986, helped build what I thought would tie humanity together in an enlighten network of discourse in the 90s as a programmer, had kids in the 2000#, and now back to Roe v Wade. Meanwhile the CO2 is 420 ppm and we haven’t got a damn Mars 100 picked out yet (Sci fi reference there). I want Red Mars with more realistic population distribution, not Parable of the Sower.

Most Americans support some form of universal access to health care as well - some variation of single payer, or public option, or similar. That is nowhere reflected in state-level policy in many many states.

The distribution of Americans who support the right to abortion is also not even.

In States where the distribution of "anti" outweighs "pro" all citizens will lose the right. So human rights are lessened in the United States.

It is a tragic day.

13 states have trigger laws going into effect with this. It’s not going to move the needle at all. The red states will ban it. Blue won’t. And it’ll still be a hot button topic in the reversed states. Red candidates in blue states will want to outlaw it. Blue candidates in red states will want to allow it.

One would hope, but they have only been veering further to the right on this issue. In the past year, multiple states have passed the most extreme abortion laws this country has seen over half a century. Texas will literally throw women in jail if they are caught leaving the state to get an abortion.

But those evil Democrats want to teach kids that there is nothing wrong with being gay, so I guess it equals out?

I do not know how any sane person can still support the GOP, especially after the Jan. 6 insurrection and this SC ruling.

In 1992 Republicans ran on abortion and lost badly. In 1994 they ran on everything-but-abortion and won big. So there is precedent for them to lose badly if they overplay their hand now.

Next up on the chopping block will be voting rights. SCOTUS will act to ensure that disenfranchisement is perfectly legal and that attempts to help disenfranchised people vote are illegal.

We are currently in a recession that will likely turn into a depression of epic proportions. Republicans are going to walk away with the midterms and next presidency. They will use the food/stability crisis we are as justification for further attacking blue states and attempting to bend them.

That's assuming they don't just impeach Biden then throw him and his staff in prison once they have control of the Senate and House.

Republicans lost in 92 because of the "economy stupid" and, after sixteen years of incumbency, the pendulum swung to "throw the bums out." They were trotting out "Family Values" when people had actual concerns about their material conditions as we were in a relatively minor recession.

Note that a man is not required to donate blood to save an adult human, even if there is no risk to him. The equal protection clause extends that right to your own body to women, and that is fairly sound constitutional reasoning.

The constitution doesn’t mention a million specific things, but it protects our freedoms anyways.

A democracy is a place to gradually expand equal protection of the laws to all people. Each change seems radical to the people accustomed to undemocractic flaws, but the outcome has been very successful these last few hundred years.

Why did Roe v Wade rely on an unwritten right to privacy rather than the equal protection clause then?

Something to do with some bad uses of substantive due process stuff in early 1900s.

Just one comment away from implying that this case is straightforward, and you're bringing up esoteric case law from 100 years ago. I don't point this out to denigrate you, but to highlight just how complicated law can be, particularly when it comes to landmark SCOTUS decisions. I thought I heard on the news that the majority opinion was 90 pages long, but I can't find a reference. However detailed it was, for the next month, literally millions of people will be on Twitter making 280-character-limited reductio ad absurdum comments about it.

[0] https://www.sss.gov/

The draft is also a temporary measure. As with other wartime restrictions of civil liberties, like curfews or rationing, it would not be tolerated if continued outside the context of a war.

Do you have a historical example of that in the roughly 300 year history of the US? Do you anticipate on recent Supreme Court rulings that they will expand the idea of equality and not reinforce traditional Christian gender roles?

Gradual expansion of equal protection only makes sense if:

1. you are already protected

2. you benefit from unequal protection.

3. You want to appear "nice"

If you have a plan for full equality, sign me up. I have seen some calls for a general strike on Twitter today, but I am unpersuaded that will happen this week.

Here on ycombinator even getting people to understand that the value of their labor is being taken and their orgs are racist and sexist is not an easy sell.

The rulings underpinning several of these are called out as "up next" by Thomas' concurring opinion.

The Senate allows a minority to stop the majority from tweaking the laws in an iterative process, and holds the society back from doing things that require laws, like carbon tax or cap n trade, or even fixing clear bugs in ACA. We don’t have much internet relevant laws passed in the last twenty years, yet the internet and its conflicts have changed quite a lot since Napster. We can’t change the law to let people rebuild flood destroyed buildings on higher ground. All we do is tweak the budget numbers and appoint judges. It makes prospective solutions extremely tilted compared to even a good compromise of a law.

Until people find the middle ground or convince the other side, being stalled is not the worst solution. Dictatorship, civil war, and most other alternatives are worst than stalling legislation.

Take carbon tax as an example. I myself believe human action is destroying the environment and I want to reverse it. But I do not think carbon tax is the way, and I know many moderates on the same position as I am. How about removing all incentives first before imposing punishment? How about triple the nuclear plants, that are safer than never with newer tech, and make it impossible financially to justify carbon based electricity generation? There are dozens of ways to take the first steps without punishing people and getting more money in the government hands. Carbon tax is just shifting money from one hand to the other, and other bad actors will do something bad with it. I prefer to fix this with less money and less power to governments. And there you go. Better stalled than move forward in the wrong direction.

If two wolves and a sheep are deciding on lunch would the sheep consider only having two legs eaten a better deal for everyone?

It’s worth mentioning that the constitutionality of such a law seems highly questionable based on the current leanings of SCOTUS. States’ rights work both ways, and (not a lawyer) I would assume an incredibly broad interpretation of interstate commerce would be needed to hold up a federal ban on abortions.

They just overruled the NYC gun ban. They will pick and choose whatever they want

There is no analogous constitutional right for abortion. Roe v. Wade inferred it from a "right to privacy", which also does not exist in the text.

They have become openly partisan and will pick and choose whatever suits their political leanings. Once they got a majority on the court they no longer need to play ball with the other side

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Carhart#Concurrenc...

The legal theory almost explicitly allows for a federal ban in addition to the state bans that tieggered today.

No it doesn't

Here's the clause:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Where is a guaranteed right to abortion in this? You said Roe "is fairly sound constitutional reasoning", but I don't see you reading a Roe from this without some serious mental gymnastics

Also:

> Note that a man is not required to donate blood to save an adult human, even if there is no risk to him. The equal protection clause extends that right to your own body to women, and that is fairly sound constitutional reasoning.

Donating blood != killing a fetus

If you consider equating the two "fairly sound constitutional reasoning" then that speaks for itself

I don't think that's the argument the earlier post is making. They are arguing that you cannot be compelled to do something to save some else's life even if it won't harm you, and doubly so without due process.

However, I think viewing someone's body as their own property is a better way to frame this. If you decide a fetus is trespassing in your body, where should the state intervene? The state couldn't force you to harbor someone in your home during a winter storm, even if you left your door unlocked and kicking them out would surely result in them freezing to death. If you believe that a fetus has adverse rights against the body it's growing inside of, then you need to make that case.

Choosing not to kill a fetus != saving someone else's life

Using the two interchangeably is like building a house on top of sand

Just as you have the right to defend your home with lethal force, you also have the right to evict by lethal force a fetus.

I don't think it does us any good to shy aways from the uncomfortable aspects of t he free exercise of these rights.

Ideally, people would successfully use other means of contraception and they VAST majority of the time they do. But there are myriad reasons someone may come to the decision that they cannot carry a child to term. I firmly believe that being compelled to do so violates security in one’s person. There’s a long tradition in English common law preceding the US constitution that holds basic the same concept to be true. Historically common law allowed abortion up to the “quickening”, which today we might call viability even though it differs a bit.

Fundamentally I don’t think the state should be able to tell you what to do with your own body. Many important rights flow naturally from this basic premise. I think this is a principled approach rather than working backwards from an outcome.

Obviously there are alternative options to safely get the starving child in your house help. You can easily call the police, CPS, etc to take care of it with no danger to your own body.

You cannot do the same with a fetus inside your body.

Moreover, there are a lot of places where we morally and legally permit people to kill, that doesn't mean that we like killing or condone it in general.

I think I remember the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child stating that (1) children are not the property of their parents and (2) parents have a responsibility for its well-being.

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1990/09/19900902%2003-1...

A couple of comments on this:

1. The Convention document doesn't expressly address it, but instructs in several places that the rights enumerated exist for children 'from birth', implying they do not apply to a potential child before it's born.

2. The United States is a signatory, but did not ratify this, and is not subject to it.

(Obviously the conferring the status of personhood on the unborn is a subject of debate).

The smart move for the pro-choice movement, would be to get some state constitutional amendments on the books.

The problem with this sentiment is that the issue was kicked to the legislatures decades ago. Congress has had decades to take care of this, and they haven't. So now all of the sudden it's a whole "but the Supreme Court overstepped". Well yea, because Congress refused and still refuses to do their damn job. It's easy: pass a law that gives people their appropriate rights and move on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31484169

In short, this is not true. There was a brief window where they might have had 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster, but it's unlikely for a divisive partisan issue like this one. And they didn't have a 60% majority in the House anyway.

To put it very bluntly, the lack of action we've seen from Democratic Party majorities in recent history is very likely because they knew they couldn't pass legislation over Republican opposition. Sure, you can frame it as 'they declined', but that's an uncharitable oversimplification.

No, it’s because they couldn't pass it over Democratic opposition (whether it's actually one or two Senators, or whether those two are pretextual is a matter of debate.)

Republican opposition isn't an excuse with a trifecta. (And, no, the filibuster doesn't change this, since it only takes a majority to change it.)

It used to be the filibuster was rarely used and the Senate actually compromised to create legislation. There is effectively no chance the filibuster would have been removed to pass an abortion bill. It would have been political suicide.

Even if it had, a federal abortion ban would have been passed the next time the GOP held a trifecta. Not opening Pandora’s box was a smart move.

It was with the current majority, and explicitly rejected by key Democrats.

> Even if it had, a federal abortion ban would have been passed the next time the GOP held a trifecta.

It still will.

Because I think this one probably does. With how divided we are today, and this issue in particular, I don't think you can rely on a 50%+1 majority to pass a law one way or the other. That is like a coin flip. It seems guaranteed to lead to chaos, as each new majority rushes to redress the 'mistakes' of the preceding Congress.

And to be pedantic, the Democratic party does not have a current majority in the Senate. It's 50/48/2 Republican; Sanders and King caucus with the Democrats but King in particular is very centrist, endorsed the Republican Collins for her reelection bid, and votes with the Republicans most of the time. Maybe you think that is just nitpicking, but I wonder what you think about a 50/50 Senate depending on the VP to break ties. To remove the filibuster. To pass a nationwide abortion law.

Come on.

No, I don't think it's nitpicking I think it is factually wrong (except that, yes, Sanders and King are Independents). Not only does King vote with the Dems on most important votes, he's not even the most centrist or least loyal to the caucus member of the Democratic Caucus; In the current session, on key issues, if the caucus fails to gather the majority it needs (which usually means there is no vote: Schumer is pretty consistent about that), it is usually Manchin (D-WV) and /or Sinema (D-AZ) — more often the former — that is the problem. (And both of them are to King’s right by both current session and career voting history.)

I believe this is the kind of issue where you'd have to overcome the filibuster, not remove it. This isn't something Democrats were realistically able to do in 2008-2010, and they definitely can't do it now.

I think this issue is one where we can safely say one side is not interested in compromise. We had compromise with Roe, and they fought. We had compromise with Casey, and they still fought. We've now witnessed the culmination of a 30+ year campaign to place a particular style of justice on the supreme court, complete with abuse of process to manipulate nominations and nominees being misleading or (arguably) lying about this specific issue to get confirmed. None of this is indicative of a willingness to compromise, to me.

0%. Democrats did not in fact have a "perfect vehicle" nor did they have a chance to enshrine abortion into the law of the land.

It seems very unlikely that the ACA could have been passed if it enshrined abortion rights.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupak%E2%80%93Pitts_Amendment

The GOP just plays politics better though, so now they're a dog who caught the car they were chasing. The dems have a chance to make that backfire on the GOP in the midterms, but they're awful at getting or wielding power, so I'm skeptical they will.

It's a sleazy move, and I'm not sure why they think people don't see what they are doing.