How Can Roe vs. Wade Be Undermined?.....

[Barbarella]

.....Isn't it the law of the land & therefore hard to undermine much? You have clinics closing, you have the buffer zone law repealed....HOW CAN THEY DO IT?

Is there a "State's Rights" clause? How can an iron-clad law of the land, Roe v. Wade be so weakened and broken?

[dpareja]

It's a decision of the Supreme Court, and so all this stuff is setting up a test case in the hopes that the Court will decide not to practice stare decisis with respect to its precedents in this matter. (Roe has already been weakened by various Supreme Court rulings anyway.)

[Ultimate Paragon]

It's complicated.

[Barbarella]

It's a decision of the Supreme Court, and so all this stuff is setting up a test case in the hopes that the Court will decide not to practice stare decisis with respect to its precedents in this matter. (Roe has already been weakened by various Supreme Court rulings anyway.)

I get it. The Supreme Court passed it, so they can repeal it. Boy, was that a big DERP on my part or what?

So, do we have to wait until these guys croak or can a President replace them? There must be a way to stop them!



What I don't get is why the LGBT is having all these victories while women's rights is not. I applaud the LGBT's victories but you'd think women's rights would be big....since women are 50% of humanity and are considered more "mainstream". I mean....

One group's a small percentage that, until now, was considered "against-the-grain", "underground" or whatever.

The other is HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE!

Maybe it's because of those factors. LGBTs are an oppressed minority while "woman as second banana" has been "business as usual" for several millenia.

[Ultimate Paragon]

It's a decision of the Supreme Court, and so all this stuff is setting up a test case in the hopes that the Court will decide not to practice stare decisis with respect to its precedents in this matter. (Roe has already been weakened by various Supreme Court rulings anyway.)

I get it. The Supreme Court passed it, so they can repeal it. Boy, was that a big DERP on my part or what?

So, do we have to wait until these guys croak or can a President replace them? There must be a way to stop them!



What I don't get is why the LGBT is having all these victories while women's rights is not. I applaud the LGBT's victories but you'd think women's rights would be big....since women are 50% of humanity and are considered more "mainstream". I mean....

One group's a small percentage that, until now, was considered "against-the-grain", "underground" or whatever.

The other is HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE!

Maybe it's because of those factors. LGBTs are an oppressed minority while "woman as second banana" has been "business as usual" for several millenia.

I think another factor is that not everybody agrees that women are entitled to abortions, not even feminists.  Not all opposition to abortion is born from misogyny.  For many, there are other, more sympathetic and understandable reasons.

[Barbarella]

It's a decision of the Supreme Court, and so all this stuff is setting up a test case in the hopes that the Court will decide not to practice stare decisis with respect to its precedents in this matter. (Roe has already been weakened by various Supreme Court rulings anyway.)

I get it. The Supreme Court passed it, so they can repeal it. Boy, was that a big DERP on my part or what?

So, do we have to wait until these guys croak or can a President replace them? There must be a way to stop them!



What I don't get is why the LGBT is having all these victories while women's rights is not. I applaud the LGBT's victories but you'd think women's rights would be big....since women are 50% of humanity and are considered more "mainstream". I mean....

One group's a small percentage that, until now, was considered "against-the-grain", "underground" or whatever.

The other is HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE!

Maybe it's because of those factors. LGBTs are an oppressed minority while "woman as second banana" has been "business as usual" for several millenia.

I think another factor is that not everybody agrees that women are entitled to abortions, not even feminists.  Not all opposition to abortion is born from misogyny.  For many, there are other, more sympathetic and understandable reasons.

True, even I feel that third-trimester procedures is morally ick (but if the woman's like is in absolute danger, then it is a sacrifice that, sadly, must be made....of course, the kid could survive as a preemie). That said, it's not just abortion, it's women's rights in general.

I know most of the big issues is due to super-wealthy business types....be it the military-industrial complex, preventing reforms, preventing the implementation of good solutions, putting band-aids on problems, etc. I would love to know how to stop these guys. I wish they would all die! I wish more good, loving, altruistic people aimed for positions of wealth & power so they could change things & not let stupid sayings like "Power Corrupts" prevent them. Power does not corrupt! Power corrupts IF YOU LET IT!

When will it end? Until roughly 6000 years ago, men & women were mostly equals. That's 6000 years out of over 200,000 years of Homo Sapiens Sapiens and a couple million out of the years as hominid precursors. WHY CAN'T WE SNAP OUT OF THIS BRIEF STINT OF UNNATURAL GENDER IMBALANCE?

I'm sorry for the anger. I'm sorry for the ranting. But all of these reactionaries popping up is making me nuts. Sure, I've also have said that it's because Progressiveness is winning that the Regressives are a flare-up because their days are numbered...but this brief flare-up in this new, Aquarian/Modern/Liberal/Future/New Age/21st Century/Dwapara Yuga is unrelenting & not shrinking like it's supposed to.

I WANT PROGRESS AND I WANT IT NOW! PROGRESSIVES ARE SMARTER, MORE EDUCATED, MORE SAVVY! HOW CAN WE LET A BUNCH OF BACKWARDS REGRESSIVES RUN CIRCLES AROUND US?! WE SHOULD SEE THEIR SCHEMES A MILE WAY & STOP THEM BEFORE THEY START!

I'm sorry for the all-caps, but I'm angry. I know you want to laugh at me ('There goes Spuki, again...') but I'm angry & frustrated.

[Barbarella]

Anybody going to answer? How can a bunch of dumb Regressives outsmart the smarter, more educated & savvy Progressives?

[Vypernight]

Anybody going to answer? How can a bunch of dumb Regressives outsmart the smarter, more educated & savvy Progressives?

3 words.  Jesus, the LORD!

[Barbarella]

Anybody going to answer? How can a bunch of dumb Regressives outsmart the smarter, more educated & savvy Progressives?

3 words.  Jesus, the LORD!

No, seriously, tell me.

Screw it! The Progressives will turn to PLAN B: We will all move to Canada! We will create a vast movement, we will all move to Canada & help the poor among us to do so as well! Then, with our voting power, we will Create Canada as the Ultra-Progressive Powerhouse! The new Land of Liberty! We will start over, regroup, gain power & we will be the shining light of earth! The Supreme, Ultra-Progressive Superpower!

[Cerim Treascair]

... yeah, good luck with that, Spuki.  The rest of us will be over here in reality.

[Barbarella]

... yeah, good luck with that, Spuki.  The rest of us will be over here in reality.

Yeah, I dun goofed, again.

Anyway, after calming down, I shared some ideas. Some might be iffy in the "reality" part but others seem fine.

So! What do you think?

[Ironchew]

.....Isn't it the law of the land & therefore hard to undermine much? You have clinics closing, you have the buffer zone law repealed....HOW CAN THEY DO IT?

That's one prong of how the anti-Roe v. Wade crowd undermines it, though. First they stuff religious nutjobs (Scalia, etc.) in the SCOTUS, then they get state legislatures to pass blatantly unconstitutional laws (clinics closing, etc.) with the specific goal of bringing that case up to the SCOTUS and having a more religious-nutjob-friendly Roberts court reverse the Roe v. Wade ruling. The judicial branch isn't supposed to be this beholden to money and politics, but that's what we've been dealt.

So, do we have to wait until these guys croak or can a President replace them? There must be a way to stop them!

Well, yes, you can convince two thirds of the House and Senate and three fourths of the state legislatures to ratify an amendment to the U.S. constitution with very clear pro-abortion language in it, but Republicans would be dead-set on obstructing that.

I think another factor is that not everybody agrees that women are entitled to abortions, not even feminists.  Not all opposition to abortion is born from misogyny.  For many, there are other, more sympathetic and understandable reasons.

Not all opposition is equally justified in their assertions, though, and the anti-abortion arguments are either thinly-veiled appeals to religion or fall apart entirely without it.

This is another issue where I feel progressives are spineless and they defer too much in language to the anti-abortion crowd. I'm pro-choice, but more importantly I'm pro-abortion because I believe a parasite is never automatically entitled to the organs of a host. It's the same with life-saving transplants -- donors are never forced to transplant organs into a dying child for that reason. I don't wish there were less abortion procedures taking place; honestly, I don't care how many are happening. The consequences of denying abortions to women who need them are worse than the sentimentality of a dead fetus, full stop.

[Sigmaleph]

Anybody going to answer? How can a bunch of dumb Regressives outsmart the smarter, more educated & savvy Progressives?

I'm not exactly an expert on the matter, so the following is just about baseless speculation. That being said:

A) Have you established your premise first? I don't know of any conclusive research on IQ vs political affiliation* and I have no strong expectation of results either way.

B) Have you established your other premise (that progressives are losing)? One of the common memes in the reactionsphere is that societies tend to evolve inexorably leftward. They think it's a bad thing and will destroy us all, but at least on historical scales they are right. The most liberal point in recorded history is, if not right now, within a couple of decades at the most. Maybe what you see as conservatives winning is just local fluctuations and the overall trend stays the same.

It's not rare to see both conservatives complaining about how liberals are always winning and liberals complaining about how conservatives are always winning. I would guess that the ways society seems broken to you are the ones that jump out the most.

C) Assuming that progressives are smarter on average, does that matter? Many of the solutions you propose (strikes, boycotts, etc.) aren't being implemented, not because nobody thought of them, but because of coordination problems (there's no point in boycotting if you don't know that a sufficient number of other people will also be boycotting). There's at least some evidence than conservatives tend to be better at top-down organization, which whatever other drawbacks it may have it does simplify organization. I don't know if it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me.


*Pre-emptive disclaimer: 1) Yes, IQ is not a perfect measure of intelligence. It is, however, the closest proxy available. 2) Yes, there are individual studies that say liberals have a higher IQ. There are also studies that say the opposite. It's why I specified "conclusive".

[Barbarella]

No matter, I feel better now. I was in a funk and spouting nonsense. The tide's turning anyway. I'm embarrassed I even wrote what I did. I think I'll build a contraption so I can kick myself in the butt.

Or take a trip to North Carolina.....

....I deserve it.