Some of the most hardcore anti-abortion advocates are hoping to get state laws passed that would not only ban abortion in their own states, but would prohibit women from traveling to another state to get an abortion. A few of them even want to ban the right to speak about reproductive choice options in other states.
It hardly bears saying that this is ridiculous. As an example, consider a few things of varying legality in deep red Texas and deep blue California:
- In Texas it's illegal to purchase or consume recreational marijuana. But it's not illegal to travel to California and do it there.
- In California it's illegal to purchase a high-capacity magazine. But it's fine to travel to Texas and buy one there.
- In Texas it's illegal to engage in assisted suicide. But it's OK to travel to California and do it there.
- In California it's illegal to sell eggs from battery-caged chickens. But you can drive to Texas and eat them there.
- In Texas it's illegal to teach public high school students about the 1619 Project. But you can move to California and get as much 1619 righteousness as you want.
- In California it's illegal for kids to publicly drink alcohol. But it's not illegal to drive to Texas and drink in public if your parents are present.
And of course it's entirely legal in both states to talk about these things in any way you want. It's a massive overreach to try and ban either travel or speech related to abortion.
There are lots of things that are legal in one state but not another. States are the laboratories of democracy, and the Constitution explicitly says that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." Even our current Supreme Court can't pretend otherwise.¹
¹Of course, if that's true it highlights the problem I discussed in the previous post: Republicans talk big, but a lot of people think it doesn't matter because someone always stops them from doing scary, ridiculous stuff. That makes it OK to vote for them.
It's a paradox: we want people to be scared of Republicans, but we don't want Republicans to successfully enact any of the stuff that might actually scare people. What to do?
Well, in TX you can sue someone who helps another get an abortion. Could that include giving them information on out of state clinics?
More along those lines, there is nothing stopping the Texas State Legislature from passing a bill allowing individuals the right to sue people who leave Texas to get an abortion or assist anyone who does, or who use or help provide abortion pills to individuals. Supreme Court doesn't seem too bothered by this sort of non-law law last time it was put before them..
And I suspect that it would work in reducing the number of people leaving Texas to get an abortion or ordering abortion pills.
Let us consider the what the enemy has to say…
Bear in mind, 14th Amendment jurisprudence worked evil not only in regard to the 1st Amendment reversal, but also in Roe v. Wade (1973), Stanley v. Georgia (1969), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). Respectively, the Amendment in the hands of the Warren Court and its progeny made it illegal for conservative States to illegalize abortion, porn, contraception, sodomy, and gay marriage.
https://onepeterfive.com/four-years-catholic-republic/
Go ahead… go after the Catholic Church.
in other words, those rights were returned to the people, not the state.
The court “worked evil”.
Just to clarify: Griswold and the cases following it are based mainly on the 9th amendment and hardly at all on the 14th.
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5461&context=mlr
Goldberg's concurrence made a 9th amendment argument, but the majority ruling only circled very lightly around the 9th and basically dismissed it. As the article points out, this concurrence was the first significant 9th amendment discussion ever (170 years after its adoption). But concurrences are only dicta and Goldberg's treatment was never followed up in any significant way. To this day there is almost no 9th amendment jurisprudence. I think that's both a shame and a fraud, but that's where we are.
Roe's, and ultimately Griswold's, reliance on due process and inferred second-hand rights is what made it vulnerable to all the anti-abortionist "penumbra" ridicule and why Ginsburg ultimately didn't like the reasoning either. A 9th amendment basis would probably be intellectually more sound but past scotuses would have strongly resisted going in that direction (like the Griswold court) and this current roster would just dismiss that line out of hand.
What to do?
Post more cat blogging. People in Texas and California love cats….
If you've learned anything these last years, you never begin a sentence with "It'll never happen . . . "
Meanwhile, make this viral:
https://youtu.be/rP4lFtw0Hfo
Sometimes, I wonder if the Fucking Ricketts Fucking Family was more pleased by the result of the 2016 World Series or the 2016 presidential election.
Wasn't there some law similar to the ones proposed passed in this country that directly contributed to the war of northern aggression?
It's always about the war of northern aggression and a yearning for the south to rise again.
The misery of honor lost and dreams of revenge are learned at the knees of fathers and in kindergartens and during the weekly sermons.
It was Dred Scott, the worst Supremes decision ever, per George W. Bush from his first debate with John Forbes Surfboard in Fall 04.
That would be the Fugitive Save Act of 1850. A law which enabled the slave states to extend the reach of their law and of slavery itself to the fee states. And, specifically, to criminalize harboring escaped slaves in states that didn’t not have slavery and whose domestic laws (to a greater or lesser degree) automatically emancipated slaves who set foot on their soil.
This is exactly what I’ve been apparently wasting my time explaining over the past several months. The reason why Texas law doesn’t apply in California is sovereignty and comity; both of which are nothing but norms regarding how states (Westphalian and American) behave towards one another.
There’s nothing (except those norms) prohibiting states from the extraterritorial application of their laws. This is the essential point which Kevin (and, apparently, everyone else here) fails to grasp. If Texas believes that it’s extraterritorial application of its laws will be supported by the courts and the congress, then its restrictions on speech, abortion, and anything else will apply as directly and strictly in California as they do in Texas.
You don't have to explain to me the irony of the Federalist Society working to bring about the end of federalism. The norm we hold in our hearts about the myth of this nation is about to go on a twenty-five Mike ruck with full gear and extra ammo. All those Cheetos were worth it I hope.
*mile
I figure that if I eat right, continue to exercise, practice mindfulness, etc., I could live long enough to see your twenty-five years and then some.
The only question is whether I would necessarily want to live through them.
Twenty-five mile ruck is metaphor for really hard workout. And I invite you to stay around for as long as you can.
You raise an interesting point. By rights, they should be the anti-Federalist society and the person whose mantle they've appropriated would be the quintessential opponent of their cause. More proof, if any was needed that they are collectively `wolf's heart and dog's lungs'
A new idiom! Love it.
Seconded.
The Fugitive Slave Act was federal law. It was definitely a case of the federal government assisting certain states, but it was federal law. It was not a case of a state trying to enforce its laws outside its boundaries.
Any rational court would simply reject out of hand any attempt by a state at extraterritoriality, which regrettably means nothing to SCOTUS as presently constituted.
The point of the Fugitive Slave Act was that it was essentially enabling legislation for the extension of the slave power's legal regime for regulating slavery and, arguably, slavery itself into the previously sovereign states that had rejected slavery.
It isn't clear that the application of Texas law to acts taking place in California would be illegal or unconstitutional. Comity is essentially nothing more than a norm which calls for states to respect the laws, judicial decisions, and political choices of other jurisdictions be they Westphalian states or American states). It's the difference between a law criminalizing sex for money worldwide and a law criminalizing frequenting a prostitute in California. If you see the prostitute in Nevada (where it's legal), there's no crime being committed in California so no prosecution there.
By contrast, Texas might have a law which says it's illegal to have sex for money anywhere and if you fall into the hands of the Texas authorities you can be prosecuted even though the acts took place in Nevada (where it's legal).
Once upon a time I studied the English doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. As a silly example, it was generally agreed by English political scholars that Parliament could validly make laws about speed limits in Paris, but probably wouldn't do so because it simply couldn't enforce such laws.
The US does not operate under a doctrine of legislative supremacy, especially not when it comes to state legislatures. At the federal level, attempts at extraterritoriality that other countries regard, correctly, as infringements on their sovereignty, are commonplace. However, the main reason for the existence of the US federal government is to deal with matters involving more than one state, so there is neither need nor reason for states to even attempt extraterritoriality.
Of course, as I note above I expect that would be the analysis of a rational court; I would not be prepared to bet money that the current version of SCOTUS would agree. with me.
Alright alright, this comment was rhetorical!
"It's a paradox: we want people to be scared of Republicans, but we don't want Republicans to successfully enact any of the stuff that might actually scare people. What to do?"
It is time for the dwindling tribe of sane Republicans to have a Pogo moment.
"It's a massive overreach"
Have you met the Supreme Court? Remember, abortion is unlike any other thing in the world.
Well, they’re unworkable, which will eventually be used to justify a nationwide ban; this will also be an attempt to mitigate the brain drain and economic exodus from conservative states. They’ve gained a lot of ground by being held to higher standards in the past.
…the Constitution explicitly says that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State."
Tell me that you’re straight without telling me you’re straight, Kevin. I seem to recall a multi decade period in which marriage licenses issued in one state were completely disregarded in other states. To the point where courts decided the non-birth mother in a lesbian relationship had zero parental rights over their kids, or the family who disowned a dead gay guy had full inheritance rights over their lifelong partner.
There are lots of cases in which full faith and credit wasn’t given to Americans crossing state lines. But none of those affected white male Christian heterosexuals I guess… so welcome to the cruel America the rest of us know far too well.
Actually, a great many refusals to accord "full faith and credit" involved straight couples (and still do). Nearly every state imposes it's own standards and laws on family law situations such as which marriages to recognize, whether to recognize decisions about alimony and child support from other jurisdictions, and whether to grant divorces to citizens who have moved into the state from states which either didn't/don't permit divorce or which impose "super-marriage" restrictions on obtaining divorces (and vice-versa).
Minor quibble. I ageee with the thrust of your comment.
In an America where we have a sane Supreme Court, yes, these ideas are ridiculous.
I think it’s very dangerous to assume we have anything resembling a sane Supreme Court.
I think it is very important to remember: for the Republican base that LOVES this Supreme Court? The Christian holy war has just just begun.
And 5-6 of the Supremes seem to agree.
"The Christian holy war has just begun"
The Holy Five don't just agree, they're at the front of the pack with banners flying as they lustily belt out "Onward Christian Soldiers."
The kind of extraterritorial jurisdiction Kevin's pooh-poohing-- because he's worried about it and with good reason, because these states will claim it-- seems on past precedent and practice to be unthinkable and unworkable. But we need to remember this crew is staking out their Lord's moral jurisdiction and that respects no human bounds. Just watch them work their theocratic wonders next term.
Ah, the States! "Laboratories of Despotism."
I'm looking forward to the day when all autos and public conveyances leaving the state of Texas (and other maximalist forced-birth states) are stopped, all the women and girls taken off, and subjected to pregnancy tests.
Anyone testing positive has to go back to their Texas home. It'll make the "extra inspections" at the border imposed by Hotwheels Abbott look good.
Sounds like an opportunity for a domestic "Coyote" enterprise, smuggling pregnant women out of Texas into Mexico for an abortion.
Going to be a banner decade for all kinds of nefarious illegal business given this type of opportunities in the 25+ Forced-Birth states.
Kevin,
There's a few ways around that list.
1. In Texas, it could be illegal to return from Colorado or California with a blood THC content above a threshold and Texas could mandate testing upon arrival.
2. In California, you can't buy the magazine and you might be unable to own such a magazine (*Supreme Court cases probably pending or pending shortly), even if you purchased it legally elsewhere.
4. You can't return to California and resell battery-caged chicken eggs, and there might be ways to add them to agriculture inspection at the border as well.
5. Knowing/not knowing about The 1619 Project or its content isn't problematic...until a state puts such a requirement into its competency testing for students.
Assisted suicide isn't a problem with state lines per se, but money and support could be made illegal. That applies to all of the list generally. And (re-)entry into a state makes some items problematic as well. Finally, who knows what the Supreme Court considers as the limits to the Privileges and Immunities Clause (which protects right to travel to other states), given that there are at least 3 and a max of 6 votes for "own the libs" on any given Constitutional issue.
What's going on in the Republican Party is a dynamic history has displayed before, in the context of other extremist movements like that of Russia under Stalin, or Nazi Germany, or Communist China during the Cultural Revolution.
As extremism intensifies and purity tests become ever more critical, how does a party member prevent accusations of being a squish? How does one prove loyalty? The most straightforward way is via ever more ostentatious displays of unhinged extremism. Which in the context of the GOP circa 2022 translates into taking ever more criminally insane positions, and sponsoring ever more medieval legislation.
A sane hard right party would say "We've achieved a long-held goal. Abortion has been returned to the states!" (And would then declare victory and go home). But this party, driven by the dynamic described above, won't and cannot be content with that. And so yes, they will go after people across state lines. They're on ideological autopilot at this point.
Nice windmills! Where was that photo taken?
"In Texas, it could be illegal to return from Colorado or California with a blood THC content above a threshold and Texas could mandate testing upon arrival."
In Singapore,you can be blood-tested for THC upon returning from another country, and charged with drug-smuggling or possession, if, for examp;e, you were at a party where marijuana was smoked.