SCOTUS - Let Texas abortion law and challenges to it go on

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Supreme Court allows challenge to Texas abortion law to continue but lets SB8 stand

So, now you have legal abortion in Texas if you can pay really a lot to your lawyers?

From what I can tell, this case was solely about the enforcement mechanism of the Texas law, not any other component (6 week limit, for example):

Source: https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/12/court-leaves-texas-six-week-abortion-ban-in-effect-and-narrows-abortion-providers-challenge/

Eh...

Since you put it that way, it's more like abortion opponents are taking Roe back to its roots. If your goal is to dismantle abortion, the Roe decision really only says that it's unconstitutional to deny women the right to abortion. The decision never said states couldn't regulate abortion to death. If they can wear it down to the point women have a greater incentive to have babies and not abortions, and if they can wear the medical community down so that no doctor would ever want to perform one, then it's not a matter of whether abortion is legal or not. It's perfectly LEGAL. It's just nobody is doing it. Once you reach that stage, people can again ask hard questions about whether it is moral to do so, or whether it is harmful to do so, and then pass laws banning it outright. But we're also talking a generation or so down the road when we might not even be alive.

Think of it like banning slavery. Most everyone agreed that human slavery is immoral and harmful to society. The problem was having an economy built on slave labor. You could avoid a civil war the more you squeeze plantation owners to free slaves in order to compete against mechanized farming and automation. You could, say, establish a government-subsidized program to buy slaves, train them in factories for a year, and automatically convert them to a paid workforce. You can't have slaves on the plantation if there are no slaves. And then it's like--why is slavery even technically legal? You pass laws banning slavery, and nobody ever notices.

Comparing ownership over others to ownership of your own flesh is a bad faith argument.

But, even if a state was to attempt a full ban that would only act like a subsidy for those who wish to sell people RU486 to people in need within that state

It's not an argument. It's the principle of drawing down a policy that people object to, whether it's killing babies or owning slaves. You can't just up and ban abortion after it's been practiced out in the open for so long without expecting stiff resistance. The slavery thing works on the same principle--it's a long-accepted institution considered by some to be a constitutional right, plus it's a cornerstone of the economy. So you begin by making it livable, meaning strict codes governing the treatment of slaves and driving up the cost of ownership. Then you replace slaves with automation, making slave labor too expensive to compete. Then you basically pay farmers to move their slaves out in favor of steam-powered planters and harvesters, which will eventually be upgraded to internal combustion and electric. Then slaves are given more autonomy to the point the word "slave" holds little meaning. Since no one really owns slaves any more by this point, you just abolish it.

Or if that scenario doesn't work out, with a little imagination anyone can come up with any number of ideas on how to gradually chip away at it until there's nothing left.

The furor over Texas and Mississippi is that baby killers are reading the writing on the wall, much the same way slave owners saw what was coming with the ridiculousness going on with federal legislation. The difference is that you don't have an overwhelming number of people who really want this fight bad enough. Nobody is willing to put their own lives on the line to protect abortion. Nobody is building bombs and blowing up buildings over it. Nobody is starting a war. And there's nothing anyone can legally do about it because the laws are carefully-enough crafted as to not directly assault abortion rights in any absolute terms. Roe never said you couldn't put restrictions on abortions, just that you couldn't outlaw abortion. So if you want to go 12 weeks, 6 weeks, or when a heartbeat is detected, it's not the same thing as a ban on abortion. Chip. Chip. And for health/safety reasons, since I suppose abortion is technically an elective procedure, there might be a limit on the numbers of abortions a clinic can schedule. Chip. Chip. Low-income women have more access to services that help them get care for children while having free time to have education and careers--so there's no need for abortion or even putting a child in foster care. Chip. Chip. Offer grants to single moms to create incentives for having children. Chip. Chip. If there's no need for abortion, why have it? Chip. If nobody has abortions, SHOULD anyone have abortions? Chip. Chip. Everyone agrees abortion is murder and should be legally treated as such. No chip here because there's nothing left to chip away.

I think what the liberal fear is that they see this as a future possibility in a world in which their views are irrelevant. Slaveowners couldn't have imagined a world without slavery any more than my grandparents could have predicted there'd be a man on the moon in their lifetime. The idea that women might not have access to abortion is an offensive idea. But it also doesn't imagine that there might come a time when the idea of killing babies in the womb is as unthinkable as genocide. The American justice system was set up in such a way that morals and ethics were considered fluid and evolving. It could be that the next step in that growth or evolution is concluding as a society that abortion is a bad thing. For some people now living, that might be difficult if not impossible to accept, same as a minority of folks in a different area of history wouldn't have imagined a world without slave labor.

I'm not making any predictions that Roe will be overturned. I'm not predicting abortions will be banned. I'm predicting the opposite, that the Supreme Court will ultimately uphold Roe. What I'm saying here is that if abortion opponents are ever going to succeed one day, maybe 100 years from now, it's going to take significant shifts in politics and society. It's possible if or when that day comes, nobody who genuinely cares about will be around to raise a stink over it,

I didn't address this part. Do you mind explaining what you mean by this? It would certainly raise some interesting questions. Like, you can't sell RU in Texas, but you could order it online and have it discreetly shipped to you? Then a doctor isn't technically performing a medical abortion because that doctor is practicing medicine across state lines. So now you have to decide if your neighbor took RU whether you want to snitch on them.

I'd like you to clarify a bit more about what you meant. It seems to me this is just another reason attempts to ban abortion will fly about as well as a lead zeppelin.

Also, it's not my main purpose to argue for/against abortion (although I don't hide my thoughts on it, either). I can see arguments on both sides, and I'm not in favor of a total ban, anyway. A total ban would force the issue on more people's backyard. No, little 12 year old girls are not constantly getting raped. But what about those few who are? Should they be forced to live with that...not to mention having to carry a baby to term at that age is much riskier for the mother? Or what about the mother who has an embryo implanted in her liver? It's happened before, and that means terminating a pregnancy can become necessary. I'm all for banning abortion for when it is unnecessary. So, to summarize:

1. A growing embryo is a person
2. It is sometimes necessary to kill people.

Therefore...
3. It is sometimes necessary to kill babies.

In contrast to:

1. Murder is the unjustified, unnecessary killing of a person
2. A growing embryo is a person

Therefore...
3. Unnecessary and unjustified abortion is murder.

There is little use in arguing that an embryo or fetus is not a person. If it's a human being, it's a person, and attempts to dehumanize human beings at any stage of development are nonsensical. Euthanasia and assisted suicide for the elderly are likewise nonsensical.

So a more worthwhile discussion is whether abortion is necessary and justified. An ectopic pregnancy in the liver that will most certainly rupture and kill both the baby and the mother is a condition that makes terminating a pregnancy necessary and justified. Having a baby is inconvenient? Look, my boss is inconvenient. But since it is possible to give birth to a living baby and immediately give the baby away, you don't have to obligate yourself to the child any more than I have to sign a new contract next year.