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Comment by usrn | Hacker News Reader

It's still not nationally banned. You won't have to leave the country to get an abortion and if you care strongly about it you can get involved in state level politics or move. Having discussions about it at the federal level just wasted everyone's time since it's too complex to find consensus on and allowed the politicians to get away with other things because of Arrow's Theorem.

EDIT: I'm out of quota, here's my reply: I don't care if it's free'd up legislative time. Because of this precedent the federal legislatures can legislate all they want but it won't be meaningful. What I do care about is that it means people can hold federal politicians more accountable for other things since they don't have to care about their stance on abortion one way or the other since nothing can be changed from the federal level.

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Mitch McConnell is doing press hits saying the republicans are going to enact a federal law against abortion when they retake Congress. Hard to imagine this Supreme Court having a problem with that, given what we’ve all read in the leaked opinion.

It sure doesn’t seem like opponents of abortion have any issues talking about it at the federal level.

That would be overreach and hopefully the Supreme Court would strike it down. The precedent from this ruling actually protects you from that sort of thing, without it the Republicans would be more capable of pushing the states to do whatever they want.

I'm totally shocked at the degree to which people are upset by this since it helps both sides. The only explanation I have is that no one really understands what's going on and they're just "fighting for their tribe."

EDIT: I'm out of quota, here's my reply: This isn't politicization, they're literally interpreting the constitution. Anything other than this would be politicization that would allow populist mobs to run over the states. They're not banning anything, they're giving the power back to you where it belongs.

> That would be overreach and hopefully the Supreme Court would strike it down.

With the way that the Supreme Court not just got politicized, but effectively taken over over the last six years, it is IMO foolish to the extreme to rely on the SC defending anything in the future.

My understanding is the underlying argument is ultimately about fetal personhood and a national ban would be about protecting constitutional rights of the unborn (and having disputes about that rise to the level of SCOTUS for a ruling).

That’s the bit I think you’re missing and why it may not just be about reserved rights for the states or about congressional legislation. I believe this is also the stated goal of some of these orgs and it’s a moral belief they hold.

I'm part way through it and while it mentions recognition of fetal personhood in the past it only seems to use that to establish that there's no precedent for this idea of a right to abortion.

For clarity I’m not talking about the text of this opinion, but the larger argument that’s happening outside of it. I think you’re probably accurate about this decision and its consequences in the short term, but I thought you were missing why this could have a bigger effect in the long term.

Outside of the edit window, but this has some of the context I’m talking about: https://apple.news/AUTfqLmWMSnC7Rz1M7QpH-Q

> I'm totally shocked at the degree to which people are upset by this since it helps both sides.

Besides all the other reasons, there’s thing called empathy which means I want people in states where I don’t live to have nice lives.

But these people have said they don't want it. What about respecting their right to self determination?

You think every single person in Florida, Texas, etc. is against abortion?

Do you think that “pro-choice” means someone will come to your house and abort your pregnancy whether you want to or not?

I know at least where I live almost everyone is against it. The only way to prevent further destabilization of American politics is for us to agree to disagree and live near other like minded people.

I don't know where you are getting this information. All this ruling does is eliminate constitutional rights. It explicitly encourages congress to regulate abortion, and even provides a list of other constitutional rights that can now be rolled back, including condoms, privacy, gay marriage, and "civil rights".

Have you read the politico article (which links to the full document)?

Not yet, that is the point. The first GOP people are openly thinking about nationwide abortion bans [1], banning condoms [2] or questioning if couples should be allowed to use birth control [3].

The problem is, a lot of freedoms the US people take for granted are not backed by a constitutional amendment but by court decisions or executive orders and so they can be revoked pretty easily.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/mitch-mcconnell-national-abo...

[2] https://www.rawstory.com/blake-masters-2657279833/

[3] https://www.newsweek.com/blackburn-says-scotus-ruling-protec...

See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31304444

This ruling actually prevents that.

The ruling specifically allows for a federal level ban.

if the Rs take the house/senate in the midterms, a national ban is on the table

https://thehill.com/news/senate/3480725-mcconnell-says-natio...

If you think this stopped discussions about abortion or freed up legislative time I seriously question your sincerity. Now we get 50 states making their own laws and congress is now voting on it and probably will be a topic for congress more now. And you are saying with a straight face, hey now we can work on more important issues with all our free time! Actually amazing. You don’t get paid to debug right?

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