- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.org
…
“The president has been adamant that we need to restore Roe. It is unfathomable that women today wake up in a country with less rights than their ancestors had years ago,” Fulks said.
Biden has been poised to run on what has been described as the strongest abortion rights platform of any general election candidate as he and his allies look to notch a victory in the first presidential election since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
Last month, Biden seized on a case in Texas, where a woman, Kate Cox, was denied an abortion despite the risk to her life posed by her pregnancy.
“No woman should be forced to go to court or flee her home state just to receive the health care she needs,” Biden said of the case. “But that is exactly what happened in Texas thanks to Republican elected officials, and it is simply outrageous. This should never happen in America, period.”
What good would codifying Roe have done?
Edit: perhaps I should be more specific: what good would attempting to codify Roe have done?
The attempt would have allowed the voting base to identify who voted “nay,” and vote them out. Even if the bill fails, if people scream the names of the representatives and senators that prevented it from passing, well those people would be primaried. That’s why they won’t even hold a vote on something that should be as simple as:
US statute XXXX: All people in the US have the right to reproductive healthcare. No medically approved procedure, treatment, or medicine shall be banned.
Done.
They won’t because so much of the country is sick and fucking tired of this
issuered herring that anyone that votes against it is very likely to be primaried.I’ve seen similar arguments for other cases. If Dems do it and not all Dems vote for it, the anti-Dem left says “all Dems are at fault and they’re doing nothing”. If Dems are united behind it but Republicans block it, then it’s “Dems knew the GOP would block it, and they’re doing nothing”. If Dems do it and it passes, but then the courts block it, then it’s “they knew the courts would block it and they’re still doing nothing”. If the Dems do it and it passes, then it’s “that wasn’t important compared to 15 other issues, and they’re still doing nothing”.
It’s a Hobson’s Choice.
If what you want is a list of names, then you can do that without them calling a vote. Go to your representative’s town hall events and ask them their position. If you don’t like their answer, find a primary opponent. Doubly so if you live in a gerrymandered district where Dems will always win (the mathematics of gerrymandering is that you give your opponent safe districts, but fewer than your side has). The Tea Party figured out this formula and it’s one thing the left ought to learn from them.
Codify would have meant drawing it up and adding it to the constitution as a human right. An amendment. The Supreme Court can declare something unconstitutional, but if it is in the amendment, it is what the SC would rule as acceptable. (Not saying it always appears that way these days)
You should look into what it takes to add an amendment to the constitution. Barring civil war, aliens landing on the whitehouse lawn, or similar galvanizing incident, I’m doubtful the US will be unified enough to be capable of passing an amendment to the constitution on ANY topic for ANY purpose during the lifetime of anyone reading this comment, and I’m doubtful we could have done so within at least the past 20 years.
To add to that, even amendments that only affect the overall structure of government, with no particular favor to any political party, are almost impossible to pass. For example, the last amendment ratified was the 27th, and all it did was prevent Congress from passing its own salary increase and having it take affect before the next election. Simple nuts and bolts stuff. It was proposed in 1789 and wasn’t ratified until 1992.
For an abortion amendment that would be so obviously divisive? Forget it. Waste of everyone’s time.
Don’t forget that when an amendment does get ratified, you’ve got to really nail it or else people will still be fighting over the verbiage.
You’d think “keep it simple stupid” would suffice, but look at how we interpret this:
IANAL, but I see a few things as I read it:
Should I be able to buy a nuke? An ICBM? A tank? Live grenades? Where is the line drawn? When does it transition from “civilian hunting and defense” to “military fetishism” to “para-military/militia” to “military”. Because it must be somewhere. And I feel like there’s one group of those four that’s really being a stick in the mud over it.
United States v. Miller did interpret the Second Amendment along those lines. It was a challenge against the NFA’s ban on short barreled shotguns. Ruling was that because a short barreled shotgun isn’t something a militia would use, the government could ban it.
That leads to an interpretation nobody likes. You can ban short barreled shotguns, but not stuff a militia would use. Stuff like fully automatic weapons or rocket propelled grenades.
Yeah the fucking ERA failed.
I do think there’s a chance for an explicit right to privacy as an amendment but it needs to be really campaigned on as it’d give the democrats most of what they want socially
Codify means laws, generally not amendments.
If it were just made a law then it would be ruled unconstitutional according to the SC, thats why I said amendment. No way 2/3rds support on both the senate and congress will happen anytime soonq. I agree with your definition though
Could be, but given that the argument that they used to overturn RvW was, :it’s not our job to write the laws, the states and Congress have that job:. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that even the current SCOTUS isn’t that blatantly hypocritical.
That would never pass.
Not currently no. I agree. I was just answering what codify was likely said to mean in that context