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Sadly Wife Dorn, you are wrong. Women of "every other state" no longer have access to the health care that should be their inalieanble right. Or should I say, was their inalieanable right. Prior to yesterday's abhorrent decision/ploy, several states had already banned or restricted access to abortion with more triggering that ban as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. So much so that if your son were to rape your grandaughter and she became pregnant, she would have to carry the fetus to term. Or if your husband raped your daughter. Ponder that. Atrocious. Appalling. Fact."So-called trigger laws are legal measures to ban or restrict abortions that would take effect automatically or with little effort upon Roe v. Wade’s overturn.Thirteen states — Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming — enacted trigger laws ahead of Friday’s ruling, according to the Guttmacher Institute"Loraine is right to a certain extent. Trump tipped the scale to the extreme right. But Clarence Thomas has been on the bench since 1991 after having been nominated by Bush Senior. He is a nasty piece of work as is his wife, a white woman. Thomas is black. Ginny Thomas has recently been found to have participated in the Jan 6 attempt to overthrow the election results. I mention their race because the Constitution has given them the right to marry. To Clare's point, in his decision yesterday Thomas also took aim at contraceptive rights, the rights to privacy in one's bedroom and the legality of gay marriage. What it seems he missed in his appaling hubris, is that very position may undermine his right to marry his white wife.But Wife Dorn, you are correct each state has the ability to enact laws governing abortion. Tragically, roughly half will now be banning or severely restricitng abortion if they haven't already. My heart aches for American women. Any woman, any person who does not possess the right to control their lives and bodies as they want and/or need. I have lived that life. But make no mistake, this is the tip of an iceberg that has fallen off the shelf and flowing rapidly in the water toward the next target.And if I may, this American trajectory should be seen as the harbinger of what's to come in this country so long as Boris remains in power. It is the identical rhetoric and mindset. We had a wall. You have Rwanda. Get rid of your populist because now you see where it can lead if he's left to rot out what remains of your democracy and innate decency.

David Lesniak ● 1549d

Broadly speaking John Dorn's wife is right - it is indeed the case that if something isn't referenced in the constitution AND is not legislated for by Congress, then it is up to the individual states what they do.  But it isn't quite that simple (it never is!).Since Congress hasn't legislated on the matter, then one needs to look at the Constitution.  The problem is that there are many things that the Constitution doesn't mention explicitly, so it has always had to be interpreted.Broadly speaking (and I simplify a lot!), the Roe vs. Wade judgement is rooted in the 14th Amendment which, amongst other things, says that people shouldn't be deprived of liberty without due process.  Now "liberty" isn't defined in the Constitution, so over time the Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean the liberty to do things rather than just not being locked up - which seems to be a reasonable interpretation.Equally, due process has been interpreted over time to mean not just doing things in accordance with laid out rules, but also to mean "substantive due process" - i.e. not putting obstacles in the way of people exercising their liberty. Again, that seems a reasonable interpretation.The net result was that the Supreme Court (via a detour into the right to privacy) found that having an abortion was a liberty of which you should not be deprived.Now, while I like the effect of Roe vs. Wade, I tend to agree with John Dorn's wife that, legally speaking, this was an interpretation too far - but the point is that the matter isn't black and white - and your view on whether this is a matter of "finding" rights or a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution may, I suspect, depend on your views on a) abortion, b) the relative balance of state and federal rights and c) how one should interpret legal texts (originalism vs. textualism).The fundamental problem, in my view, arises because back in the 70s Congress was too cowardly/divided to debate and legislate on the matter (as legislatures in other countries have done), and once Roe vs. Wade was passed, it was then happy to drop a hot potato.  Which meant that when the judges on the Supreme Court had a different set of philosophies, the precedent was ripe to be overturned.

Andrzej Kowalski ● 1548d