Congress introduces a national abortion ban on its first day back.

[notorious bum]

The ignorant base who supports these incongruent ideologies don't have enough education to realize that education and social programs are how you protect children.

Oh, the sweet benefits of a broken voting and representation system.

[Blubbartron]

As mentioned in the article, it's a tactic, one step in the road towards completely banning it. They want to chunk it down piece by piece until it's such a short time that, combined with the other obstacles, simply cannot be achieved by normal people. My favorite are the obstacles like requiring a woman to come for an examination, force her to look at an ultrasound she didn't need (so she can see the baby and make her feel guilty for continuing), then give her some reading material filled with bullshit (abortions cause breast cancer, cervical cancer, post-abortion depression, shit like that), and THEN tell her she has to come back no less than 24 hours after that visit to actually get the procedure time. When you add in the fact that they're driving hours to get there, taking time off work, etc, it simply becomes unfeasible for a woman to get the procedure done unless she has a great job or some kind of support system.

[Melena]

Remember, regulations are bad unless it involves a parasite in your uterus, then we must have them all regulated.

[Aksannyi]

My favorite are the obstacles like requiring a woman to come for an examination, force her to look at an ultrasound she didn't need (so she can see the baby and make her feel guilty for continuing),

Studies have shown that this isn't effective most of the time. It's usually only the women who were already on the fence about having an abortion who change their mind, most of them end up going through with it anyway. Of course, Christian/Republican based research will tell you differently, but then again, anyone can skew their samples to get the results they want.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I have a dream that one day, krusty old white men won't try to tell me what I can and can't do with my uterus.

Someday, I'm going to be a krusty, crabby old man, and I'm gonna be all up in that bikini bottom bossin around the absorbent inhabitants.

[Aksannyi]

Someday, I'm going to be a krusty, crabby old man, and I'm gonna be all up in that bikini bottom bossin around the absorbent inhabitants.

You're going to be in charge of tampons? Okay bro.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Only the ones who can't pass their driving test.



Sorry, had my fun. Carry on.

[Not Kuno]

I have a dream that one day, krusty old white men won't try to tell me what I can and can't do with my uterus.

These people represent their constituents. This is a religious topic, and in these areas there are just as many religious women who are against abortion as men.

[Aksannyi]

Sorry, had my fun. Carry on.

(I had this gif sitting on my computer so although I have nothing to contribute I hope you will forgive me.)

[Mazmaz]

George carlin said it best, "conservatives want more live babies so they can raise more dead soldiers" or something to thar effect.

[notorious bum]

Anyone have a good video or documentary on the war that was waged against Carlin? lol For some reason I never had much interest in hearing about the shit that was slung at George, but I did grow up learning about the war against Zappa. This is one of those rare moments when I wish I was older, just to have the pleasure of seeing these guys live.

[Xno Kappa]

These people represent their constituents.

A direct result of gerrymandering districts. That has to be one of the most corrupt things in politics imo.

[Gredival]

Day 1 Supreme Court objection. The real question is, wether these law makers read the laws.

Speaking from personal knowledge, no law maker reads/writes their own legislative language. It's sourced out to their aides, who themselves take input from relevant sources (i.e. which interest groups does the politician give their ear to). The party's political leadership may work out an idea in principle, but the implementation will still go to aides.

The same holds true for state legislatures along with Washington.

[Not Kuno]

A direct result of gerrymandering districts. That has to be one of the most corrupt things in politics imo.

Absolutely correct. But it'll never disappear.

[Blubbartron]

Absolutely correct. But it'll never disappear.

It could very easily if enough people pushed for it hard enough. The system could be much like the fractional representation system that a lot of countries in Europe use. People vote for parties, the percentage of popular votes determines the number of representatives each party gets per state, and then the parties themselves vote on the particular representatives.

The first, most logical step is getting rid of the lines. No lines, no gerrymandering. I highly doubt they'd start gerrymandering state lines that have been established for hundreds of years in some cases.

[notorious bum]

[Gredival]

You can just force the states to set up non-political commissions to draw district lines. The problem is that whatever party is in charge of that state will obviously oppose it. But if you look up random Congressional maps, you can tell right away which states have politicians draw maps and which are handled neutrally.

[Sho]

I'm not very familiar with how these things work, but don't the Supreme Court Justices have party alignments as well? If there are enough of them one way or another, couldn't they let this slide?

They have party alignments as well, yes. However, the court is split down the middle 50/50 (liberal to conservative) with Anthony Kennedy being a swing vote, despite being a conservative. With that said, Kennedy has more often than not cast the vote to strike down anti-abortion laws, with the exception of partial-birth abortion laws. He does this by-proxy of Roe vs Wade (hence the reasoning behind him upholding partial-birth abortion laws). If it made it's way to the Supreme Court, there's an exceptionally high chance it would get struck down as unconstitutional.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Would it be treated as law until then, or would a judge impose a stay?

[Gredival]

Also, separately, there's a decent enough chance that Chief Justice Roberts doesn't want to preside over a Court overturn of Roe v. Wade, which would seriously jeopardize the integrity of the Court as a nonpolitical body.

While the Justices all have their own jurisprudence, they are not supposed to be blank slate votes for the parties that nominate them. Souter, who was appointed by Bush, voted liberally as did John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by Ford. Sandra Day O'Connor was a Reagan appointee but was a moderate. However recently there have been more and more 5-4 decisions along party lines. Justice Stevens attributed this to the fact that since 2000 every appointee to the Court has been more conservative than their predecessor.

There was a lot of speculation that Roberts voted to uphold Obamacare specifically for this reason; he may dislike the law personally, but it would be against proper jurisprudence to strike it down, and it was not a battle worth fighting if it cost the Court its legitimacy when there were much better targets.

Would it be treated as law until then, or would a judge impose a stay?

In this case, there is likely to be an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the ban until SCOTUS rendered a decision (if it got that far). The potential for irreversible harm by enforcement combined with an established constitutional right.