What Alito Gets Wrong About the History of Abortion in America

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Patricio Da Silva, Jun 28, 2022.

  1. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    This article was written before the recent R v W Dobb ruling, it is a commentary on Alito's draft ruling. Since it has been said to be pretty close to the final ruling, and it is Alito's writing, I think the article's commentary is valid.

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/02/alitos-anti-roe-argument-wrong-00036174

    The truth is that abortion is deeply rooted in our nation’s history — in practice, in morality and in law. Abortion was not always a crime — although Justice Samuel Alito speciously claims otherwise in his recently disclosed draft majority opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

    “An unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973,” Alito asserts in the draft opinion.

    The logic that Alito uses in the draft opinion leans heavily on history — history that he gets egregiously wrong. Alito explicitly dismisses the distinction between ending a pregnancy before or after quickening, a distinction that my research has found was critical to the way American women and American physicians traditionally thought about pregnancy. In early America as in early modern England, abortion before “quickening” was legal under common law and widely accepted in practice.
    [,,,]
    ...he insults 21st-century Americans by citing the words of a 13th-century judge who endorsed human slavery and a 17th-century jurist who sentenced witches to execution and defended marital rape.

    These first laws also referred only to inducing miscarriage after quickening. It is essential to recognize that these laws did not criminalize drugs used before quickening. The nation’s earliest laws assumed the existing common law right of women to regulate their menses — and to abort early pregnancies.

    In his draft opinion, Alito chooses to ignore these early statutes, which preserved the quickening distinction and the many judicial opinions stating that cases could not be brought for abortion when the woman wasn’t “quick with child.” He had this information at his disposal; those cases are easily found in the amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court by two major professional associations of historians in the United States, representing the views of more than 10,000 scholars and teachers. Yet in his draft opinion, Alito relies instead upon just one legal writer, whose work most scholars reject because it “distorts the evidence,” and he conveniently dismisses the significance of quickening in a footnote.

    Instead, Alito begins his version of the history of abortion laws with the 1860s and 1870s, when states began to adopt laws that eliminated the legal significance of quickening and criminalized the ending of pregnancy at any stage. This second wave of laws was pushed by a small group of self-interested white, male physicians who were anxious about their status as both doctors and as elite American men.


    And there is considerably more in the article. I can't put it all here, but let's just say this author exposes the fact that Alito is egregiously uninformed, and in my view, wholly unqualified to be deciding for half the population's rights, over 165 million women, a right they enjoyed for 50 years, a right which was voted 7-2 affirming of whom five of those justices were appointed by Republicans and subsequently upheld in 17 reproductive rights cases spanning those five decades, and he has the audacity, with a smug, cavalier brush, declare, 'R v W was egregiously wrong from the beginning'. Who the **** does this man think he is to write in such a subpar standard we should expect from a SCOTUS justice?

    The unmitigated arrogance of Alito has cast a stench on the court that will take years to clear the air, he literally shat on the court's legitimacy with an epic blunder that America hasn't seen since Dredd Scott.

    And, of course, most republicans are so blinded by their hatred for Roe they can't smell the damage done to the court. .

    Repealing Roe saves lives? I got your 'saves lives' right here:

     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
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  2. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I imagine you'll start a fund to bus women to states with legal abortions?

    Seems like the best way forward. Other than the deep South every state likely to ban abortion borders one that won't.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
  3. CornPop

    CornPop Well-Known Member

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    Alito didn't ignore quickening statutes. He directly included them as evidence of no federal right to abortion. At the time the 14th amendment was ratified there were abortion laws in every state. These "quickening" laws were state laws and were the only state evidence of pregnancy at the time because we didn't have ultrasounds in the 1700 and 1800s. Whether or not states had laws allowing or banning abortion pre-quickening is more evidence that this is a state issue and not a federal one. When the 14th amendment was ratified there is no evidence that there was a presumed federal right to an abortion. You proved yourself wrong, again.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
  4. Cybred

    Cybred Well-Known Member

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    So you have no problem with the states stripping away people's rights. Got it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
  5. CornPop

    CornPop Well-Known Member

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    Until Roe, there was no federal "right" to an abortion for states to take away. The court invented that right and people pretending it always existed while using "quickening" arguments from the 1700 and 1800s have no clue as to what they're talking about. The factual history negates their argument entirely.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
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  6. Cybred

    Cybred Well-Known Member

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    All rights are invented.
     
  7. CornPop

    CornPop Well-Known Member

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    Depends on your perspective. But, from a government standpoint they are "invented" by legislatures... unless you support fascism and tyranny. Perverting the courts to coerce a desired outcome outside of the walls of democracy is something you only support when you agree with the outcome. When you disagree, it's quite evident how harmful it can be when democracy has no remedy.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
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  8. Cybred

    Cybred Well-Known Member

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    Nope they are all made up.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
  9. CornPop

    CornPop Well-Known Member

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    Again, in democracies they're "made up" by the people who make the laws. You keep skipping over your support of fascism and tyranny. Lying about the history to justify tyranny is a crappy thing to do.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
  10. Cybred

    Cybred Well-Known Member

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    Good thing I'm not doing that.
     
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  11. Rampart

    Rampart Banned

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    you take our "conservatives' " claims pf federalism too seriously. they will begin working on nationwide bans , and will continue bombing clinics and shooting doctors as if this had never happened.
     
  12. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I can only speak for myself. I am pro-abortion but anti-Roe. A constitutional amendment seems like the best way forward but there's not much chance of that. In its absence, you can bus people to states with legal abortion.

    I would oppose any national ban, and certainly oppose bombing or shooting anyone.
     
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  13. SiNNiK

    SiNNiK Well-Known Member

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    Is that an enumerated right or nah?
     
  14. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    It was an invented right not a real one. It was invented by the supreme court and removed by the supreme court. Real rights can't be stripped away. Look how hard it is for your side to end the second amendment.
     
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  15. doombug

    doombug Well-Known Member

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    The states won't do it, the PEOPLE will. But abortion is not a right.
     
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  16. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Why does that matter?
     
  17. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    Good luck getting a response to this.
     
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  18. bobobrazil

    bobobrazil Well-Known Member

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    "States Rights" is the battle call of the confederacy, and was used in the fight over whether some humans were property or not, its not surprising many southern states will outlaw abortion total y, with as much forethought as they did while declaring humans property, the majority does not want this, and the right should celebrate in their victory
    because the right is about to find out what the rest of America thinks about conservative "Christians" in name only
     
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  19. SiNNiK

    SiNNiK Well-Known Member

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    The point is that abortion is not a Right.
     
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  20. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Why? Constitutional Amendments are difficult but certainly not impossible. We have 27 of them. Some, like the 25th seeming quite trivial in overall effect.

    The ERA was almost passed and it had abortion as a right as part. It will certainly be revived now.
    https://www.npr.org/2022/03/22/1086...d-destined-for-the-constitution-what-happened

    Why isn't it? This is a FREE country, short of things that disrupt society everything we want is a right. The Constitution has NO rights in its main body. The Constitution exists to PROTECT our rights not to take them away.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
  21. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Why in GEHENNA is THAT seen as some sort of valid argument? Bloody Bollocks, would you still have SLAVERY? THAT was the ultimate "State's Rights" dispute. Fundamental human rights aren't dependent on geography and they aren't up for a vote. We CANNOT enslave people, not to other people or to others who make up nonexistent "unborn" people who they then "speak" for, not to anyone.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2022
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  22. CornPop

    CornPop Well-Known Member

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    Nobody believes that.
    There is no fundamental human right to kill another human. There is also no federal right defined under the law. The only way to allow abortion in all 50 states is through a federal law or constitutional amendment. You're comparing abortion to slavery. The 13th amendment abolished slavery in America. There's no amendment allowing you to kill humans in utero.
     
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  23. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    There is no other human involved, just one you made up. The "unborn" are like the "undead" a fiction, though nowhere near as entertaining to some.
     
  24. CornPop

    CornPop Well-Known Member

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    This is probably not the correct thread to provide instruction on anatomy and basic science so I'll just leave it you with some advice to look up some basic biology because you're wrong. It's not debatable. You're just flat-out wrong.

    I like turtles.
     
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  25. SiNNiK

    SiNNiK Well-Known Member

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    Rights are enumerated. Abortion is not in the Constitution.
     
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