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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

For one, the construct of "red states" and "blue states" is wrong. It would be more like city states. Texas is barely hanging on to the idea that it is a "red state" as you would call it. A bit more domestic migration to the cities and it could easily become another "blue state."

Most states that appear to lean in either direction at the governmental level have very substantial opposition voter populations. This is the biggest reason nobody is seriously going to consider secession, aside of rhetoric for the base.

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This still doesn't explain why states are so hell bent on regulating policy within other states instead of letting them make and learn from their own policy decisions

I cannot answer that. It is obviously bipartisan, however, because conservative state legislatures are attempting to regulate abortion access in other states.

I know there are periodic federal bills, but how are state legislatures regulating access across state lines? Is this issue of local residents that travel for it?

They're regulating local citizens that travel, which still has jurisdictional issues afaik. E.g. a state can't generally file charges against a citizen for possession of marijuana if the possession occurred in another state.

I'm not sure what happens in the case of an abortion provider from a legal state visiting an illegal state. My suspicion is that they might try and be rebuked on jurisdictional grounds. It's an even weaker case than local citizen travel, since no part of the acts occurred inside the jurisdiction.

I assume the theory is that the fetus is a Texan and the state has an interest in protecting them.

No they’re not. A few are trying to regulate their citizens traveling to other states to get abortions. Meanwhile the mainstream position on the left is imposing a standard that under 30% of Americans support (elective abortions to 24 weeks) in every single state.

> No they’re not. A few are trying to regulate their citizens traveling to other states to get abortions.

Impressive gymnastics.

A US citizen in Egypt can be prosecuted under the FCPA for paying a business related bribe in Egypt. Would you say that’s closer to “trying to regulate business practices in other countries” or “trying to regulate the conduct of their own citizens?”

US states are not sovereign nations, and the US constitution speaks very specifically to both interstate travel and interstate commerce.

That goes to whether the regulation is permissible or not. We are talking about how to characterize the regulation. Regulating one’s own citizens while they are traveling elsewhere is different than trying to regulate a different state.

> That goes to whether the regulation is permissible or not. We are talking about how to characterize the regulation.

I don't know what hair you're trying to split here, but the gymnastics are getting even more imporessive.

> Regulating one’s own citizens while they are traveling elsewhere is different than trying to regulate a different state.

Missouri's law, for example, would allow Missouri citizens to sue out-of-state physicians who perform an abortion on a Missourian but have never lived, set foot in, or done business in Missouri.

Looking forward to the incoming sequence of twists and flips.

Can you please omit swipes and name-calling from your posts here? especially on divisive topics and regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

This topic generates strong feelings for obvious and legitimate reasons. But that makes it more important (not less) to follow the site guidelines. That's why we added this one:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Red states versus blue states is still a meaningful axis even on top of the urban/rural divide. Georgia voted for Biden and has two Democrat senators, but on say abortion it's closer to deep red Ohio than to Connecticut. Democrats in Baltimore or Philadelphia, moreover, have only a vague resemblance to Democrats in San Francisco or New York City.

I guess my county (Anne Arundel, MD) is technically "blue" at the moment--it went for Biden +14. But in 2018's "blue wave" it went for Larry Hogan +38. Maryland, despite being solidly Democrat, is pretty conservative in a distinctly mid-Atlantic way.

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