The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say he would have upheld the Mississippi law without taking the additional step of erasing the Roe precedent altogether.
SCOTUS ruling: finally Biden gets it. Congress needs to codify things if they want to thwart the courts. Congress has had decades to "fix" Roe vs Wade which was known to be tenuous at best when first "passed." Likewise, gun control and the second amendment. Congress has had decades to "fix" these issues.
My analogy: SCOTUS is like a goalie on a soccer team or a hockey team. One can't blame the goalie for a loss. It's a team sport, and if it's that important for the team, in this case, the US Congress, needs to change the constitution before it reaches SCOTUS. And, yes, it can be done: Dred Scott, prohibition, prohibition repealed. This was not a SCOTUS issue, this was a Congressional issue, but something Congress never wanted to touch.
Whether one agrees with SCOTUS or not, one must acknowledge the court is at least ruling based on strict reading of the constitution.
The fact that US Congress has had decades to fix these issues tells me all I need to know about the US electorate.
No stuttering, no stammering, nothing to suggest any senility. It's great to get the whole speech without detractors clipping and taking out of context. If this link breaks, I'm sure it will end up on YouTube eventually. He does have an interesting "tick": scratching around his right nose with his right index finger and/or his right pinkie finger.
The remarks were often incorrect and disingenuous but that doesn't take away from the clarity with which he delivered those remarks.
Some liberals take the SCOTUS ruling all the way back to RBG -- upset that she did not resign while Obama was president, which would have certainly changed the composition of the court. But those making that argument are missing the point: if the SCOTUS ruling is what the majority of voters in 40 states wanted, then Congress could have codified Roe vs Wade long ago. The fact that Congress did not codify Roe vs Wade tells me that this is still not settled ... by a long shot.
Later: apparently there are at least twenty states that will "ban" abortions - to some extent -- which means that there was no way that Roe vs Wade would have been codified. Forgetting the court's ruling, it is interesting that the minority refuses to admit we live in a democracy.
Later: looking at the split ruling, 6 - 3, and 5 - 4, and looking at his past rulings, Chief Justice Roberts seems to be voting "on feelings" when it comes down to really tough decisions, trying to appease his personal conscience and maintaining a relationship with both "sides," as it were. The majority in this case, seemed to decide based on strict interpretation of the constitution; the minority, in the 6 - 3 decision, clearly are ruling based as if they are running for some future political office (which of course is not going to happen).
Later: fallacy. Roe vs Wade was not overturned. Every state in the union is allowed to make no restrictions whatsoever regarding abortions. Even the state that was the center of contention, Mississippi, can go forward in the future and change its law(s) on abortions. In addition, it appears there are 30-some states that will not change its law on abortions, allowing abortions to continue. Practically the entire west coast is still pro-abortion: California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Montana (?). Same with the Atlantic coast, north of the Mason-Dixon line, namely New York, Massachusetts and the rest. At the end of the day, this appears to be a states' rights issue as prescribed by the constitution. The "right to privacy" has never held water for me with regard to this question.
Later: women across the US still have unlimited access to abortions. Yes, some will be severely inconvenienced but corporations and others are stepping up to make sure no woman is denied an abortion in the US. It is interesting that I'm not hearing any personality saying he / she will move to Canada in light of this ruling. This speaks volumes. On other issues, there were any number of personalities who said they would move to Canada if the outcome was one they could not accept. Somehow folks know there is a bit of hyperbole involved in discussing the ruling in this case.
Later: the fact that California, much of the midsection of the US, and most of the northeast, including New York will still allow abortions, the practical effect seems very limited. It will be interesting to see the number of abortions performed annually in 2021 will compare with the number of abortions performed annually in 2023. My hunch: the change will be less than 10 percent.
Later: the biggest impact this ruling will have? Huge amounts of dollars will flow into the Democrat party. We'll start seeing those numbers next month and leading into the midterm elections.
Later: Fox News said Biden misspoke / lied when Biden said that this ruling makes the US an outlier. Fox News compared the abortion laws in various states with the abortion laws in western Europe. In that regard, the US is not an outlier. Many western European countries have much stricter abortion laws than many of our US states. However, and this is very, very interesting because it takes us to a new argument. In all western European countries (to the best of my knowledge), have national abortion laws. With this ruling today, the US no longer has a national standard or a national abortion law, and based no that, the US is definitely an outlier. That, of course, brings a new article: if SCOTUS wanted to absolutely turn-over Roe vs Wade, it could have banned abortions nationally. But this is very common for SCOTUS: threading the needle. In this case, the court was able to sidestep the issue and turn it back to the states.
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