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That said, the way it worked in the US never made sense to me. The idea of establishing trimesters from a Supreme Court decision seems contrived to say the least, not to mention the way the relationship to the constitution was drawn.
It further baffles me how many people seem to act as if what SCOTUS did was a ban on abortion. States are free to choose, so if the country actually does care it ought to show in the ballot box.
Abortion is only illegal in 5 states of the European Union (Malta, Vatican City, Liechtenstein, Andorra, and Poland) and yet I would oppose a European law establishing the right to abortion on all of its members. It's for them to decide.
Firstly, multiple states have been preparing for the overturning of Roe v Wade, the court case which specified the right to an abortion was privacy and therefore protected. There are multiple decades-old laws on the books that says if Roe v Wade is overturned abortion is automatically outlawed in the entire state. There's no ballot-box here.
Secondly, the Supreme Court has washed its hands of multiple institutions that would allow people to vote in politicians other than politicians already in power in their respective states. The Supreme Court has struck down or otherwise narrowed national mandates curtailing racist voting policies. The Supreme Court has outright stated they will now refuse to take up any more cases about gerrymandering, which is a process where politicians get to choose who votes for them basically. This enforces that pro-choice people will always be split up into districts where anti-abortionists are the majority.
The first point creates non-democratic law activation that bans abortion, followed by curtailing the ability for people to vote against this implementation even if they are, in aggregate, the majority of the state.
Now, it's also important to follow on the third point: the united states of america is a giant country. By land mass it is larger than the entire EU. A single state will dwarf multiple countries. This means that even though you have the right to travel to a state that allows abortion, the travel is long and expensive. They will have to fly, pay money for a hotel, and also not work for a week or more.
Overall, this means a severe curtailing of abortion access to millions of people, who are disempowered as a population to participate in democracy.
That's precisely the ballot-box. Elected officials did that.
>The Supreme Court has outright stated they will now refuse to take up any more cases about gerrymandering, which is a process where politicians get to choose who votes for them basically.
I'm sorry but gerrymandering is orders of magnitude more complex than this. There is not even a widely agreed upon position on what would constitute fair voting districts.
If you truly believe the country simply isn't democratic then its problems are simply so large in comparison I can't imagine caring about abortion at all. The truth of the matter, I believe, is that the national divide on abortion simply isn't solved yet, SCOTUS delayed it, but even after being established as legal in the entirety of the US for a long while a good bunch of US citizens still don't agree with the legality of the practice.
"Only" about 6 in 10 US citizens are pro-choice.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/07/15/key-facts-a...
So we also expect things like human rights to be somewhat consistent. But we seem to be on a waning trend as far as national unity goes.
except in certain cases
tldr; Something created by court opinion can be ended by court opinion
Abortion was guaranteed by a decision of the Supreme Court, which was based on the majority of the court's opinion of what the Constitution says. As the makeup of the court changes, it's opinion of what the Constitution says changes. Without a Federal law or even more powerfuly, an amendment to the Constitution, abortion is left to the states and subject to 50 different constitutions, courts and legislatures. That there has not been law or amendment says that there is not a strong enough majority or super majority of Americans that want that right guaranteed by the Constitution.
And with overturning ROE, I saw it more as forcing the issue to be actually resolved, rather than having a, IMO, wrongful precedent. Aka, it"s a state issue, until it is codified into federal law.
My point more is here, given what happened I am not convinced that this is enough to put up enough controversy to make the government take the necessary action.
I agree that women's reproductive choices should not be subject to control by 50.1% of voters. The problem in this case is too much democracy, not too little.
Citation needed.
2/3rds of US voters did not support overturning Roe. [1]
[1] https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/npr-pbs-newshour-marist-...
The sooner people realize that the "ultra determined" don't actually care about the issue, the better. They care about acquiring power. Pushing on abortion was a good way to get people riled up to vote for them. The people doing the pushing were using it as a tool to manipulate voters, they do not actually care. A lot of people have been made to care, of course, but the people pulling the strings do not. Any issue that can get people passionate will be used this way.
But why? Why did they have an audience? Why did peddling abortion restrictions cause people to vote for them?
I'll tell you why. Because we intentionally gave them an citizenry equipped with the kinds of beliefs and moral compasses with which those sorts of arguments resonate. We spent decades raising people to think that human life is infinity valuable and that even the risk of harm is tantamount to blood in the streets. We have been raising people to err on the side of restricting people's freedom in order to prevent harm, both real harm and the statistical hypothetical small harm. We have done this on purpose so that people become outraged when they hear that some employer's machinery does not conform to the latest safety standards. We have done this so that people shun people who engage in slightly dangerous behavior. Of course, everything has tradeoffs and as a side effect of this we have created a society of people who are happy to err on the side of the fetus to the detriment of the mother's bodily autonomy and vote accordingly.
In short, we are reaping exactly what we sowed.
I have not noticed this. Risky behavior now has challenges on tiktok. Heroin is popular again.