A Kentucky woman Friday filed an emergency class-action lawsuit, asking a Jefferson County judge to allow her to terminate her pregnancy. It’s the first lawsuit of its kind in Kentucky since the state banned nearly all abortions in 2022 and one of the only times nationwide since before Roe v. Wade in 1973 that an adult woman has asked a court to intervene on her behalf and allow her to get an abortion.
Pregnancy comes with medical risk to the mother. Restricting abortion access is a clear violation of the 14th amendment.
Abortion is healthcare.
I mean, “other people” also comes as a health risk. This by itself is not an argument.
And if I interact with you the state doesn’t try to deny me medical treatment for whatever condition you gave me.
Sadly even that isn’t true anymore. Someone I used to work with died recently of an unknown upper respiratory infection after being turned away by his local hospital 3 times. He eventually coughed until something ruptured and he died due to internal bleeding.
He had a decent paying job with health insurance and likely contracted his infection at work, yet he was denied admission to the hospital for some reasons that his widow and daughter may only find out with a lengthy court battle they can’t afford.
Welcome to the dystopia, it’s just getting started.
state run hospital or private entity? only asking because the answer is obviously the latter and this is an apples to oranges argument
I wonder if he was turned away for being unvaccinated…
I don’t know but I suppose it could be a possibility. My assumption is that he was probably turned away because of understaffing. The hospital he was trying to go to was almost completely staffed with travel nurses a year or two ago and many of those nurses left as working conditions deteriorated. It’s all just speculation from me though. The whole thing is quite sad but also infuriating.
Do you mind sharing the state?
He lived/died in Arkansas.
Yes, the healthcare system needs to be fixed. That is definitely a concern with the healthcare system, but unless there was a law denying them treatment that is a different discussion.
Unless it’s a pregnancy.
That was exactly the point, yes.
Keep in mind, the main reason why your camp uses this rhetoric is because you want to tie abortion rights to the constitution. That way, it becomes mandatory for all states to respect them.
Yes, all states should protect women’s rights, are you kidding?
The other side thinks abortion is not a right.
Your side wants it to be a right so states can’t decide for themselves.
As the constitution is written right now, tying abortion to an amendment is a stretch. This is why the ruling that gave constitutional protection of abortion was overturned.
The only good faith argument I’ve seen is that democrats should’ve tried harder to explicitly add it to the constitution. That way they don’t have to contort the interpretation of amendments to suit their agenda.
But, as tribalists go, it’s okay when your tribe does it (14th amendment) but bad when other tribes do it (2nd amendment.) And the worst people of all are the ones who call it out.
You 160 years ago.
That’s completely true. Good thing we amended the constitution to ban slavery so it can’t be overturned as easily as Roe v. Wade.
So you’re saying we can’t amend the Constitution to codify abortion rights but it’s a good thing we amended to Constitution to ban slavery?
No. What makes you think I’m saying that?
Is the nation more or less divided than when slavery was banned?
Too bad it’s effectively impossible to amend the Constitution anymore.
Yes. In an ideal world we would be able to add abortion protections to the constitution.
Unfortunately, in the world we live in, I feel it’s up to the states to prove their way is better. Just like with marijuana.
Meanwhile on the other side States are trying to make it illegal to pass through them on the way to get an abortion, and to ban the abortion pill Federally.
Sounds less like “letting States decide for themselves” and more like “letting these states decide for everyone else.”
How about letting people decide for themselves?
“letting states decide for themselves” is the narrow end of the wedge. just like how the confederacy wanted to “let states decide for themselves” about slavery, then insisted the federal government override free states, tried to militarily annex territories that wanted to be free states, and put it in their constitution that no member could be a free state. they’ll “let states decide for themselves” as long as they make the right decision, then they’ll decide federally for the states that “decided for themselves” wrong.
conservatives only respect two freedoms: the freedom to do what they want, and the freedom to force you to do what they want.
A factual correction: the Confederacy did not want to let states decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The main difference between the US and Confederate constitutions was that the Confederate one explicitly denied states the right to ban slavery.
that seems to be what I said
I’m all for that.
Of course, they’re not above that. They absolutely want to push the needle so they can push it further. Overturning Roe v. Wade was just another step along that path.
One of these is to allow women to terminate a life threatening pregnancy or one that they don’t want, perhaps from rape, or because they can’t afford to have a child and it would be living in poverty.
The other one is an effort to stop people machine gunning children in schools, shooting people for using their driveway to turn around or shooting people though thier front door when they knock on it.
If you think those two stances are comparable and both should be cancelled out because of technicalities then you need to get your head examined.
Okay.
Oh let’s discuss the second amendment. Tell me, who is your commanding officer in your well-regulated militia? What rank do you hold? Where is your uniform? How much compensation are you given for your service? I hope you are not engaged in stolen valor.
Where does the 2nd amendment specify any of that as being necessary?
You can argue it’s a poorly written amendment, but trying to argue it means things that it clearly doesn’t just to support your agenda is playing right into my arguments of tribalism and hypocrisy.
Thank you for proving my points.
It’s not a poorly-written amendment unless you ignore the context of the Articles of Confederation, which is where the phrase ‘well-regulated militia’ came from and in which it was explicitly defined:
That was unambiguously what ‘well-regulated militia’ meant when the Constitution was drafted, and was its intended meaning. That context has been lost and/or deliberately obscured in recent years – specifically since the 2008 Heller decision that reinterpreted the 2A to ignore that context and how grammar works in order to include the rights of individuals.
Most people today are fine with that reinterpretation (or are simply unaware it happened), but my point is a core amendment was reinterpreted recently in much the same way you’ve been arguing against.
Why was it fine for the 2A but bodily autonomy is a bridge too far?
Well regulated militia.
Those words are not there by accident. You claim that you have a right to a murder machine because of the text, the text says your murder machine is for the purpose of a well regulated militia. So please describe your militia to me.
only republican doublethink can cast police jailing people for receiving basic healthcare as “freedom”.
“Basic healthcare.”
There you go obscuring your arguments to make it seem like there is no opposition.
What is that healthcare? See what I mean about arguing in bad faith?
I’m sure people in Egypt will argue Female Genital Mutilation is “basic healthcare.”
that healthcare is abortion. basic healthcare agreed upon worldwide outside of a tiny sliver of americans in a child genital mutilation cult that has established minority rule.
No, it really isn’t.
Healthcare that’s needed to prevent someone from funny sounds pretty fucking basic to me.
Wtf do you think “well regulated” means?
Whatever you want it to mean.
I want it to mean no one. Hand in your gun to the nearest police department as you are by definition no longer in the well-regulated militia
Okay.
The rule was overturned because the Pope told Roberts and the other Catholics to overturn it.
I’m not so sure about that. Can you share more information? It sounds interesting.
Bodily autonomy enshrined in a nation’s most important document? Yeah that sounds pretty good.
Enshrining it is fine. But taking a weak stance to link it to an amendment that never had it in mind, well, opens you up for its interpretation to get overturned.
It’s not weak. Originalism is weak. It basically asserts that the constitution and all amendments must have been written by psychics who could predict every situation that would arise in the future, forever.
Of course things written decades or centuries ago couldn’t predict what’s relevant today or five decades from now, so of course they should be open to interpretation as the needs of society change. It’s the difference between following the spirit or the letter of the law, and it’s why most laws aren’t merely prescriptive, but outline motivations and goals.
Not really. The constitution is a living document and was meant to grow with the times.
The problem is that it’s next to impossible to add amendments to the constitution now due to how divided the nation is. This means that in order for abortion to receive protection under the constitution, it would need to be tied to an existing amendment that was not drafted with abortion in mind.
That’s why it’s so crucial to make arguments like “abortion is bodily autonomy” rather than “abortion is a guaranteed right under the xth amendment.”
You are contradicting yourself all over the place in these comments.
Okay.
They were arguing against the term “originalist”. Guess you missed that bit.
The ability to remove stuff from your body seems pretty damn important, though. Infected wisdom teeth, fatty tissue removal, cysts, appendixes infected or not…there’s very good reasons why someone might want to be able to remove something from their body. Seems un-American to infringe on someone’s rights.
That’s fair. I think the other side is arguing any angle that will put the power to legislate back into the hands of states.
Pretty sure they are not. Moving the power closer to the people would be making it a personal choice. Also they would happily adopt a national ban.
I agree.
Or, (and I know this is shocking), none of the rights in the Constitution work if privacy and bodily autonomy aren’t protected. Everything just falls apart.
“your camp”
Yes, this is what tribalism results in.
The respecting women tribe ? Count me in.