The United States Supreme Court Hands another defeat to the Trumpists trying to take our nation back to the bad old days, this time ruling that, just as in 2016, states can’t backdoor-ban abortion by forcing abortion clinic doctors to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. “Stare decisis,” says Chief Justice John Roberts, who was in the minority trying to preserve the Texas admitting-privileges trick in 2016 and whose concurrence with the liberal wing of the Court today doesn’t say that Chief Justice Roberts has flipped on abortion, just that he expects anti-abortion crusaders to come up with new tactics.
Faster than she could possibly have read the 138-page ruling, concurrence, and dissent, Governor Kristi Noem, whose only connection to the case was another losing multi-state friend-of-the-court brief that she let Jason Ravnsborg scribble his name on for lack of real attorneying to do, reaches for national headlines with her outrage:
“This decision is wrong for a number of reasons,” Noem said in a statement, citing Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion stating that the Constitution does not constrain states’ ability to regulate or prohibit abortion. “The fight for life is unquestionably the right one.”
…Said Noem, “Our work doesn’t stop until abortion is eliminated completely” [“Noem Slams US Supreme Court Ruling on Louisiana Abortion Law,” AP, 2020.06.29].
Translation: Donald! Oh, Donald! We hate unelected judges, too… except when they are our unelected judges!
South Dakotans, if you want to mute Kristi on this issue, you’ll need to show up at the polls this fall and vote out the Republican legislators who back her crusade against women’s rights.
NPR’s Nina Totenberg and Brian Naylor note that today, as after the 2016 Supreme Court ruling on abortion and admitting privileges, a “hefty majority” of American voters support the right to abortion. But a greater number of those who view a right-wing-co-opted Supreme Court as the best route to thwart the will of the majority and make women second-class citizens with the denial of reproductive rights translated their reaction to that 2016 court loss into votes for the Presidential nominee promising to undo Roe v. Wade.
Translation: Yeah, women and doctors successfully defended abortion rights in court, but the fetus-fundagelicals will turn that loss into votes for Savior-Donald this fall, votes that every one of us who believe in women’s equality had better get out, negate, and overwhelm with our own votes this fall.
Noem says she wants to be the one who signs the law that enables Roe v Wade to be outlawed by SCOTUS.
Bankrupt the state much? Npr today.
J. Roberts is calculating 1.) which 13 cases to release next; and 2.) voting in last two cases favorable to the left, BUT instructing the right how to accomplish unconstitutional goals. Likely he hopes to sidetrack big picture democratic fixes to the stolen Garland (Obama’s) nomination. Democrats must boldly, progressively change the court system the 40 year Republican takeover has engineered.
Noem’s reference to Justice Clarence Thomas deserves some clarification. Thomas argued, as Noem suggested, that the Constitution doesn’t prevent a State from outlawing providing health care for women who seek to terminate, or are faced with the unhappy necessity of terminating, a pregnancy. He argued that the since the Constitution does not contain the words “right of privacy,” none exists that would interfere with a State’s decision to deny a woman health care and to jail her if the State saw fit.
What seems interesting about Thomas “right to privacy” argument, however, is that none of the other dissenting justices joined Thomas’ dissent or used his Constitutional theory. Instead, the other dissenters argued the “standing” defense, or that there is a Constitutional “right of privacy” but the State’s interest in controlling a woman’s reproduction decision outweighs that Constitutional “right of privacy.”
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf
Even more remarkable is that Thomas’ argument conflicts with his sworn testimony during his confirmation hearings.
https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1482&context=sulr (quote on p.465)
Bottom line, Thomas either lied or changed his mind and no other sitting Justice, regardless of how conservative, seems to accept his current peculiar legal thinking. That seems to be strong evidence of how far out of touch that Noem is about our Constitution.
Righties just can’t abide uppity women. I’ve got news for them. The vast majority of us are uppity and we’re not changing.
Noem has a curious role for her president, Trump. Two days after Greeley’s JBS packing (or whatever the acronym) was, by the CDC, inspected and written up with rigid and extensive requirements to stem the explosive infection hot spot; the Sioux Falls/Sioux City packing infrastructure was similarly riddled with infection but this time CDC’s regulatory response was neutered and the write up became vague, and hard to determine what actual agency procedural actions were taken. A cover up, essentially.
Together with her other fire cracker favors and “tag-team with Dusty” legislation concerning the national monument and her substantial apparent white supremacy sympathy against minorities in the state, bipartisan investigation of the appropriateness of that role, while setving as our governor, is needed. This in a time of observing Round’s “post-explaining” in an attempt to neutralize caustic behavior of his president, Trump, and always carrying water for the billionaires; and now Thune’s orchestrated, soft public remonstrances of his president, Trump, yet carefully toeing the McConnell reelection line and enabling, as a GOP shill rather than by exercising independent judgement on behalf of his constituency.
Our little puppet state prostitutes every virtue it has by exclusively serving the Republican Party, including Putin’s obvious interest and role in fostering corruption, division and strife across every value of freedom, success and transparency in the United States, deconstructing our democratic form of government.
Bearcreekbat rightly notes Noem’s reliance on a judge who either lied to get his job or has adopted a peculiarly unconstitutional way of thinking about basic rights.
“The fight for life is unquestionably the right one.”
Unless, of course, you are surrendering to a pandemic, and then you leave it up to “common sense” and everyone’s right to decide what to do.
Somehow the wires are a little shorted out in Covid Kristi’s brain.
Thomas and his packmates have situational definitions of “undue burden” when religious freedumb is at stake versus a woman’s right to abort. Guess which activity gets the undue burdens and which religious freedumb didn’t.