Comment by eatonphil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eatonphil | Hacker News Reader

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The senate minority leader already started talking about banning abortion across the entire US [0]. The states are gearing up to fight each other when they pass laws banning abortion for their citizens in other states like Texas either has done or is doing [1]. And on the other side you've got Connecticut allowing their citizens to counter-sue [2].

So no matter what side you're on it doesn't seem like it's about to be diffused. It seems like without federal law one way or the other states are going to be fighting each other. It sounds like chaos.

Edit: Also, although it's tempting to think of "red" and "blue" states, the minority party in each state is humongous. Almost 40% of New York state voted for Trump in 2020 [3]. Desantis in Florida only won his election by 49% [4]! And a higher minority percentage in Mississippi voted for Biden in 2020 than minority in New York voted for Trump [5]. As much as it is easy to think of there being separate political halves of the US it's just not the case. There is huge Democrat and Republican presence in every state.

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

[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/09/texas-republicans-ro...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/nyregion/connecticut-texa...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_gubernatorial_ele...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

Congress almost certainly does not have the power to ban abortion due to the tenth amendment. The supreme court ruling that the constitution gives no right to abortion means the power to create legislation about abortion is no longer granted to congress, which means it's reserved to the states under the tenth.

This seems a little naive considering Congress has found plenty of ways to coerce states into implementing laws (national speed limit which was later repealed, national drinking age, etc.) by threatening to withhold funding and these laws have stood up to a tenth amendment challenge. Similarly the GOP could threaten Medicaid funding for states if they don’t restrict abortion, which would be disastrous for the state and thus impossible to ignore.

National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius disagrees. I believe all the highway funding stuff worked because they could claim interstate commerce.

In the case of Medicaid funding, I thought the outcome of that case was that the Federal government couldn't threaten existing Medicare funding but it was allowable that any future Medicaid expansion be denied to states if they didn't comply with the ACA. The makeup of the court has changed since then though and in general the conservative portion of the court did generally vote to say that coercive use of federal funding was unconstitutional, so hopefully that remains the same when the ideological nature of the case is reversed.

In any case, I hope you are right friend!

A "federal law" will go back and forth between ban and allow until which point the corrupt SCOTUS steps in and says the federal government is only empowered to ban it across the country, but cannot allow it across the country.

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