2y ago

A Far-Right Court Just Admitted a Truth That Abortion Foes Want to Hide

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.

The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.

162 comments

a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
Except it is every clear that they don't care about the life of the fetus either since the publicized cases pretty much all involve a fetus that would die within hours of birth.
- 6th Grade Biology taught us that an 'ectopic pregnancy' is, by definition, unviable. By their own Book, God creates ectopic pregnancies so They can have the pleasure of destroying an innocent soul.
  
  Reminder that, in Ohio, Republicans pushed a bill that would have required doctors to reimplant ectopic pregnancies in the uterus. A medical technique that doesn't exist. So doctors who didn't do this non-existent technique would be "guilty of murder" and doctors who tried it and failed (because it's not a thing we can do) would also be guilty. And either way, the woman would likely die.
  
  That's the thing. It's okay when their god kills a fetus for fun. But we're never supposed to no matter what.
- Philosophically, the law should not involve itself in trading on lives. I actually find this heartless abortion position more consistent than the others and appreciate the soulless honesty of it.
  The fact that nearly everyone agrees there should be at least some cases where abortions are legal means pretty much everyone believes that abortion should be legal and just hasn't fully thought out the underlying ethics.
  Because it means basically no one really believes in the unconditional right to life of a fetus - if it has an unconditional right to life, it doesn't matter if it came from rape or incest and it doesn't matter if it's going to die within minutes of being born and it doesn't matter if it's life threatens the life of its parent. None of those factors should remove the right to life.
  And so since pretty much everyone agrees there should at least be exceptions for some of these situations we must conclude that there is not an inviolable right to life. We clearly think that the right to life of a fetus is just fundamentally lesser from the right to life of an independent and viable living person.
  Meanwhile the right to autonomy over your own body still looks pretty unimpeachable to me. Seems to be that the state continues to have no right to forcibly modify or control your body and that it can sooner limit basic freedoms like movement and association before it violates that. The only time we seem to think it's okay to violate body autonomy is if the person has a fetus in their uterus.
  What conservatives really want is to be able to dictate the calculus. They want to be able to tell people with a uterus what to do. They want to pick and choose who is and isn't pregnant and offer as little agency as possible to the individuals. That's always been the most important motivation and goal to these abortion bans. They want a breeding slave class and they're just too dishonest with themselves to admit it.
  
  A rape exception alone shows they are totally inconsistent on the question of "life" and "rights."
  
  Many ethical stances around abortion aren't phrased around the right to life, because usually ethics has a pretty hard stance on that right. So the real ethical question isn't about the unconditional right to life, It's actually about your right to another person's body or bodily autonomy.
  Generally it breaks down to, just because a person requires the use of your body to survive does not mean you have a moral or ethical requirement to provide sustenance (your body) for that person.
  Qoute from a nytimes article:
  The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, in 1971, put forth the most famous version of this argument as it related to abortion: Imagine that a woman woke in bed intravenously hooked up to a famous violinist, Thomson wrote in her seminal and controversial essay, “A Defense of Abortion.” The musician in this scenario suffered from a rare medical ailment, and only this woman’s circulatory system could keep him alive. His survival requires her to sacrifice her own bodily autonomy. Must she? Is she a murderer if she does not?
  Phrasing it as right to life automatically discounts the real ethical question, does this being have a right to my body?
- And in any event, once it's out of the womb, it needs to get a job and pull itself up by its bootstraps and eventually stop eating avocado toast if it wants to afford a studio apartment.
  
  Don't forget not owning a phone, having Internet/Netflix and/or a TV.
  I still chuckle about an article called "boomer economics", or something like that, which demonstrated how much a certain set of people distort the costs of things like the above vs. the reality. Tvs are exceptionally cheap as compared to, say, 1970s prices, phones are nearly essential, as is the Internet and the cost of Netflix (and avocado toast) is negligible compared to making rent/mortgage.
Wait wait wait….. wasn’t “death panels” what the right was screaming about with Obamacare?
- Death Panels are only good when Insurance Corporations and Republicans are making the decisions.
- You're thinking of the bad kind of death panels. Those are the good kind of death panels, obviously.
- It's always projection with fascists.
- Yes, because "death panels" is just emotional language, not a well-defined thing. So polemicists on the left and right use it to try and make people angry about something they might not otherwise be angry about.
  The fact that polemicists on the right labelled something as X in order to criticise it, but then later people on the right generally support something that polemicists on the left also labelled as X, is not indicative of anything at all, because there is no reason to think that the common labelling represents any actual similarity between the two things, or even represents any underlying truth whatsoever.
  This is even more the case because the people who push these lines often deliberately (misguidedly, in my opinion) pick labels used by the other side for something they dislike, thinking it will aid the cause. This means there's a motivation to stretch labels inappropriately.
  
  That’s a lot of words for “both side bad”
  
  Using the term this way is to point out the hypocrisy. Republicans are against "death panels" in Obamacare. These were nothing but a means to decide how certain end of life care should be done, and exist in every medical system going back to when we were striking flint to make fire. Republicans have just handed women actually bad death panels in the form of judiciary and legislative branches that can hold back medical care until it's too late.
  
  No. The right mutters aloud what they're thinking then cat he's themselves and points a finger at the left saying "ummm... I mean.. THEY want the thing I was just fantasizing to myself about".. later the right does the thing and the left calla it out.
  The vernacular is the same bc the left is calling the right for the same behavior the right falsely accused them of.
  Not bc both sides bad same
  Shut the fuck up. Stop equivocating. One side has infiltrated the govt with an autocrat at the steps of the executive branch. The other are at worst disconnected over educated corporate-gifted, while releasing weed convictions, dropping student debt, and feeding poor kids.
  
  The difference, of course, is that in this case there is an actual panel and death is actually on the table.
People who believe in a sky god are creepy as fuck.
- Maybe so, but the war against abortion isn't based on religious texts. It was ginned up by pieces of shit who tied it to the bible artificially by painting a complex issue as a black and white case of "murder". Which is bullshit to anyone remotely understanding of reality.
  
  It may not be directly tied to religious works. However, religion is being used to prop it up, as usual. I still agree that people can practice what they wish, though I'm beginning to feel strongly that religion is a plague and we'd be better off without it. Yet, I suppose, evil fools would just find something else to cower behind.
  
  Most of religion isn't based on religious texts. The texts are just the marketing material. Once you're inside they're largely ignored.
  
  Tell that to the Catholics
- 1000 flies eat shit. 1000 flies can't be wrong.
  That's their mentality.
  
  It's more than that. You know all those stories of things God did in the Old Testament? The plagues and the disasters and famines and droughts? To them, those aren't just stories, that's shit that actually happened. That's shit that they think should happen to people they think are evil. They believe that God has an active and vibrant presence on His Creation, and that He would never allow evil to prosper in it. To this date, no plagues of boils or locusts has descended upon them. None of their leaders have been smote by bolts of lightning from the sky. None of their megachurches have been razed to the ground by pillars of flame. None of their firstborns have mysteriously died in the night. In the lack of all this divine punishment, what other conclusion can they draw but "We must be doing something right!"? I mean how many times have we heard one of them say something like, "If what I'm doing is evil, then may God strike me dead!"? And then, the smiting doesn't happen. What else could they think?
- Nothing about the anti-choice movement is religious; it's tribalism. Same way as gun rights have nothing to do with the sky god either.
  If we're being honest, the only strictly biblical argument on the topic of abortion leans heavily pro-choice and sometimes even pro-abortion-as-punishment. Throughout most of history most Christian branches have been neutral or passively negative on abortion, usually considering it a minor sin that it wasn't their job to prosecute (yes, occasionally either banning or encouraging it as well). The idea that life begins with conception is distinctly non-traditional (Judaism or firstgen Christianity) and was picked up from the Pythagorians.
  It's important to differentiate cultural mores from religion. Organized Religion can make you convince yourself something is wrong when you are otherwise strongly predisposed to find it right (or vice versa). Cultural mores is more like "omg, you can't see my ankles how dare you!". They're like behavioral "dialects", much like happens in language. Technically, when I say something is wicked pissah, I "inhereted" that from the Mainers despite my not being from Maine. That doesn't mean it came from my religious ties with them. My parents and peers taught it to me. Same as all my fucked up knee-jerk morals I grew up with.
- Sky Daddy**
  
  Sky Daddeh Baybeh
- Read a comment yesterday that the original religion came from us hearing our own thoughts (simplified). So they're not just creepy AF. They're the ultimate Darwinistic embodiment of batshit
  
  They've done studies on this using an FMRI. They ask people what God thinks about things and the part of the brain that lights up is the same as when they're asked what they think themselves. A different area lights up when they're asked about what other people think.
Something needs to be done about the 5th circuit. They routinely make decisions that are directly counter to established law and the Constitution itself.
- but do not counter state laws
  the US has been letting states make decisions instead of making federal laws stick just like cannabis is federally illegal unless the state says so
  
  State laws don't trump federal laws. Weed is still federally illegal and you can't own firearms if you smoke, regardless of what your state says.
  
  That is where the law collides with practical reality. Enforcing the federal cannabis ban has become something that the government does not have the resources to enforce on its own. Blocking abortion bans on the other hand is comparatively a simple task for the federal government.
I remember going through Roe v. Wade in law school and thinking how shaky the legal foundation was. This is a great case study of why we need to formally adopt laws in congress and not just rely on the whims of the court.
- You're not wrong. No one wants to hear it, but Roe was reasoned terribly. They attempted to appease everyone by protecting abortion but setting limits.
  While laws are a better avenue, I do not believe Congress has the authority to regulate abortion. From where does the authority arise, interstate commerce?
  The Supreme Court could have ruled that the most basic and fundamental right, which is woven throughout the constitution, is a right to bodily autonomy. The idea of controlling one's own body is supported by a host of amendments. Incorporate the right with the 14th and abortion is protected everywhere.
  
  I've always seen it more that the Roe decision is what happens when an anti-choice majority rules on abortion in "reasonably good faith", leaving the opening for erosion when a 14th Amendment Decision would have been steelclad. I don't think they wanted to appease everyone, they just didn't want to compromise their legal ethics OR their personal morals.
  And I guess I don't think it would have been steeclad because Dobbs wasn't about leaning around Roe insomuch as saying "Roe was wrong" because "the fetus is special and should be treated as such" (paraphrase because I'm too lazy to look up the offending line in Dobbs right now). Bodily Autonomy could easily be overturned by a bad faith judiciary by simply pointing out DUI laws, or even "the spirit of drug laws"... OR just saying "the fetus is special" the same as they did in Dobbs.
  In fact, call me paranoid, but I question whether the current SCOTUS wouldn't overturn a national abortion protection on States Rights grounds, finding some reason to disqualify the Commerce Clause from being applicable.
  
  Or, leave it to the states like a federalist country.
- As long as we have a congress that’s split around the 50/50 line on issues like these, laws will never get passed.
  
  Even if a law got passed, it would get repealed when the other side gets the majority. This needs a constitutional amendment and I really don't see that happening ever.
  
  Could they not have codified it in the ACA?
I remember how US conserves would look at euthanasia laws in the Netherlands and falsely claim that there are death panels there who decide when you will die.
Turns out they weren't just only lying, they were fantasizing
I'm so glad I got my tubes removed when I did, because there's a long waitlist now. My sister just gave birth and had severe complications ... I cannot imagine if we had lost her over a law like this. It sounds harsh, but you can always make another baby if the uterus is saved (or adopt one of the hundreds of thousands of orphans in the USA).
Yep. When DARVO-ists like Palin were bleating about "death panels" they were demonstrating their usual projection.
Conservatives and the Republicans are a death cult. They should never be allowed into office, ever.
withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
Where an individual reasonably believes an attacker poses a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, any person is justified in using any level of force - up to and including lethal force - necessary to stop the attack.
If the claims made in this article are accurate (and they very well might not be), then In setting the standard of care at the point where a person reasonably fears "grievous injury or near-certain death", the courts may have inadvertently justified the use of force in self-defense and/or defense of others against any executive using the power of their office to attack an individual.
- Indeed, language like this puts a bullseye on healthcare professionals that already have/had one because of COVID and the fascists spreading wild conspiracy theories. This is almost a 2 birds with one stone stroke for them, you make abortion something any medical professional wants to distance themself from out of fear of their own life, but you also help undermine the whole medical field by would-be parents afraid to go to a hospital with complications as they may not come back out (or having suffered irreversible health effects).
- While this would in theory work for justifying the actions of the mother it does nothing to help enable medical professionals in providing care. The court ruling basically tells all medical professionals that they may not perform abortions for any reason. It's a death sentence pure and simple and now the hospitals are only allowed to sit back and watch.
  
  Why wouldn’t health care professionals be able to assist?
  In Texas, the Castle Doctrine is codified under the Texas Penal Code, specifically in sections 9.31, 9.32, and 9.33. Key provision for this would be: The use of deadly force is justifiable if the individual reasonably believes it is necessary to protect themselves or someone else from imminent death or serious bodily injury, or to prevent the commission of a violent crime such as aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, or robbery.
  You could shoot me in Texas if I were robbing the gas station store with a deadly weapon, I would think that OPs argument that a health care professional could help and cite the Castle Doctrine as a defense.
- The conservative judges would have quite the quandary should a dying woman shoot her ectopic fetus.
What the actual fuck.
This is going to put a lot of doctors and medical people in a dangerous spot.
Good luck hiding behind laws when you have a distraught husband who has just watched his wife, and the child he hoped to soon meet, die slowly and horribly.
But it's also illegal for our hypothetical heartbroken and angry husband to beat a doctor to death, or just shoot them because texas, right? That makes it all better I'm sure.
- GOP love this outcome since it gives them more tragedy fodder to push even more extreme measures that fail to address the problem and only serves the wealthy or privileged.
  Blatant, flippant traitors.
When did they try to hide this? They've been pretty explicit about this for a while now
Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
I don't see this as shocking? Courts have had the power of life or death since, you know, the death penalty.
- Show me where pregnant women are being given anything remotely resembling a trial by jury and due process of law before being sentenced to death.
  
  Show me where since the recent supreme court decision, a mother was explicitly denied an abortion and then died as a result of birth. It may have happened, but I haven't seen anything about it
with a conservative anti-abortion Catholic Biden at the helm who supports state's rights and an upcoming election with two people whose job performance as president was on par with each other even mirroring at times (not fulfilling campaign promises, finishing their presidency with a country worse off than when they got in, etcetera) we are really screwed
next news story is going to be how we removed the presidential term limits and will have the same two on the ballot depending on the state you live until the two candidates expire
- Biden and Trump are the same, and the country is worse off now than in 2020? You are clinically insane.
  
  They're not the same.
  A good analogy tho is skydiving instructers, you know when you first go and they have to strap someone to your back?
  Republicans are suicidal instructors, who won't pull the parachute no matter what. They're going to divebomb into the ground and take us with them.
  However some Democrats like Biden believe the only right time to pull the chute is at the absolute last second. To them pulling it a second early is just as bad as a second too late. They have a very specific point where it's ok to open the chute.
  So while they may not be intending to kill us, if anything causes the tiniest delay...
  The result is the same. We smash into the ground and die.
  Which isn't as bad until we get to the point where any reasonable person would understand even if Republicans aren't strapped to our backs, they're going to do everything they can to interrupt Biden from pulling the chute.
  You could argue that means the bad result isn't Biden faults, but that doesn't mean we can't be mad that he's still waiting for the last second to open the chute instead of just doing it as soon as he can.
- Nah, they like term limits.
  The people with the real power aren't running for president.
  The reason both parties supported term limits, was progressives like FDR who would keep getting elected while both parties had to make up excuses for why they were obstructing progress.
  The rich who fund our political machines knows there's no shortage of "pretty faces" they can throw up there. And if they're a revolving door, they can keep telling voters either "it's him or the other party" or "this one will be different I promise".
  
  Term limits are not the win/win everyone thinks they are. There are lots of very bad drawbacks.
  
  Hear, hear! Term limits just mean that the wealthy have to spend a few minutes every two years looking for fresh faces. Also, term limits mean that the crooks in office have to hustle harder to make their fortune before getting kicked out.

162 comments