Before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, the people's elected representatives in each state decided what type of laws related to abortion would be in effect in their state.

Roe v. Wade took away the ability of the people's elected representatives to make those laws.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the people's elected representatives in each state will again decide what type of laws related to abortion will be in effect in their state.

Sounds like a restoration of democracy to me.

Parent:

except it is taking away constitutional right. It used to be that some states would vote for slavery. Would you be ok with that?

How about what the Republicans are doing in state houses across the country to make voting difficult? That make life increasingly difficult for LGBTQ citizens? That block discussion of our nation’s most grievous sin? Does all this threaten democracy, Ms. Eshoo? These developments been threatening democracy for months and months, right out in front where everyone could see them, issues that didn’t require a whistleblower, issues on which grandstanding Republicans have effectively poisoned the playing field with their UNANSWERED jeremiads!!!

SILENCE!!! That how establishment Democrats responded! Bringing squirt guns to knife fights, YET AGAIN!!!

Yes, Roe being overturned would threaten our way of life, given the Right’s agenda and its ominous resonance with “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But speaking out now about threats to democracy on a topic that is virally important but nevertheless peripherally relevant is way, way too late.

The horse is out of the barn!

If this abortion issue galvanizes voters to reject the GOP in the midterms, then establishment Democrats like Ms. Eshoo will have caught a break. But they won’t deserve credit.

I meant Roe being overturned is “vitally” important. I’m a complete novice in discussing abortion, but I hope I sufficiently appreciate how vitally important reproductive rights are to women’s bodily autonomy, their freedom, their lives.

"A lack of confidence in our institutions, in our branches of government, is an unraveling of democracy.”

It's nice to see this rather obvious point acknowledged, but echoing some of Dave Boyce's remarks, it is "too little, too late." Confidence in our nation's institutions, in my opinion, has been on the decline for YEARS.

While we may disagree about what portion of the blame to assign, and where to assign it, for this destructive development, it's my belief that large swaths of the political duopoly have been more than content to allow the decay so long as the players of the game remain in power.

Gerrymandering by states (hardly a "return to democracy, if you ask me), the quid pro quo dynamic that moneyed interests and their Super-PACs create, and a revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street have long been undermining confidence in our institutions.

All the while, our elected officials are content to grandstand and feed us ideological pablum so long as we remain distracted enough by our respective "pet issues" to ignore the erosion of the integrity in the PROCESS.

I've been writing to Representative Eshoo for years, asking her to take the decay of people's confidence seriously. It's a shame that something like this is what has caused it to come into focus.

I have no problem with abortion rights, as long as it's not ridiculously late in the pregnancy.

There was a certain genius in the construction of the U.S. constitution that is very relevant to the unprecedented levels of tension in this country today. 3/4th of all state legislatures are required to amend it. If that threshold isn't met, states get to decide how issues not addressed by the constitution are legislated in their states.

I can't see any reasonable reference to an abortion right in the constitution. Yes, you can try to shoe horn it in through the broad application of ideas like "privacy", but that basically opens up the Supreme Court, however politically appointed it may be from time to time (and its political makeup has varied during my lifetime) to function as 3/4th of the state legislatures on just about any issue there can possibly be.

We live in a big country and there is considerable difference in the culture of our various states. It's not healthy for Californians to be telling Alabama what to do (nor vice versa). It's going to lead to a complete fracture of our country that is well underway.

For this reason, I think overturning Roe vs. Wade makes sense, because it was never a constitutional issue. I don't want 51% of the country, at any point in time, being able to tell every state's residents how to run their lives, and at an abstract level, that is what this issue is really about (making the 3/4 threshold a simple majority).

'Parent of Los Lomitas and La Entrada grads' wrote: "If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the people's elected representatives in each state will again decide what type of laws related to abortion will be in effect in their state.

Sounds like a restoration of democracy to me."


This is a tragically naive assumption of...not only what will happen, but what is ALREADY happening. Some of the states that heavily restrict or are attempting to effectively outlaw abortion outright are attempting to implement laws that enforce abortion restrictions IN OTHER STATES.


The actions by some of these states takes "away the ability of the people's elected representatives to make those laws." Using 'Parent...'s own words, these anti-choice legislatures are destroying the very democracy 'Parent...' claims these actions enable.

Oh, the irony.

"I don't want 51% of the country, at any point in time, being able to tell every state's residents how to run their lives, and at an abstract level, that is what this issue is really about (making the 3/4 threshold a simple majority)."

Except that is EXACTLY what the right wing that wants to overturn Roe V Wade wants and intends to do. They want to be able to tell women how to run their lives. So, I don't understand how you think overturning Roe will result in one part of the country not telling the rest of the country how to run their lives.

It's always been a problem, that the right to privacy - inferred in the Roe vs. Wade decision - was never explicitly specified in the Constitution. It would've been better if it had been explicitly enumerated. The fact that it wasn't always left this ruling vulnerable; people who believe abortion should remain legal (such as myself) need to come to terms with this.

Ugh, you people...

To coin some of the alt-white/Trumpers/anti-vaccine nuts...you people are sheep.

Stop regurgitating the 'never explicitly specified' talking points being spewed by these intellectual lightweights. You're better than that.

There are numerous rights we consider self-evident that have never been explicitly specified in the Constitution. Alito and other alt-white lightweights spew that when they have no logic or facts to defend their faulty assertions.

These alt-white self-proclaimed 'conservatives' preach a 'texturalist/originalist' interpretation of the Constitution/Bill-of-Rights, yet conveniently cast that grounding principle aside when it doesn't suit their personal or political activist agenda. I'll demonstrate.

Here's an example of an 'originalist' interpretation of the Constitution/Bill-of-Rights. From the 14th Amendment:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States"

'born' in a Conservative Republican Originalist interpretation, has a very very clear definition that is undeniably unambiguous by the 18th century authors of the 14th Amendment. Ergo, it is equally undeniably clear that the 14th amendment ONLY protects those who are 'naturalized' or 'born', neither of which applies to a fetus, which by originalist definition of 'born' is nowhere near close to qualifying for 14th-Amendment protection.

Do you know who IS afforded protection by the 14th Amendment, by any Originalist or Conservative interpretation of the Constitution?

The mother.

Case closed.

To be completely accurate, the 14th Amendment came about in the 19th century, after the Civil War and the 13th Amendment that officially ended slavery.

Apologies for being a stickler.