Democrats did this by refusing to codify decades ago.
Decades ago, the parties were much different than today. There were pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats. Only one time in recent (2000+) memory did the Dems ever have the 60 votes necessary for codifying Roe. They used that two-ish week window to pass the ACA.
And that’s not even touching on the differing public approval of abortion.
The ACA which should be noted was desperately needed at the time unlike Roe which was known to be at risk but not nearly as immediate.
I’m not happy Roe is dead. The fact is though that without a constitutional amendment Roe was always on borrowed time with the constant attacks on it, and I don’t believe that there is any time after the issuance of the bill of rights that an amendment protecting abortion would work, and in the form of the bill of rights it would’ve had to be a robust privacy amendment that just happened to protect abortion.
As if these zealots wouldn’t have ruled it unconstitutional or slowly weakend it with a series of cases anyway. See recent decisions gutting Voting Rights Act, weakening the Clean Water Act, Campaign Reform Act of 2002, Dodd-Frank and other federal laws.
So what I’m hearing is if Democrats had codified it, Republicans would have come along and got it struck down. But to fix the problem we need to elect more Democrats to get it codified?
No one else sees the circular reasoning behind this?
As a Canadian, I’d like to ask you a couple of things.
What exactly does it mean to codify something? Two, why can’t the Federal Gov put out a set of standards and say, “If you want Federal money for your healthcare systems, you have to meet these standards. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, but in that case you get get nothing from us.”
That’s essentially how it works in Canada between our Federal gov and the Provinces, granted Canadian Provinces are less powerful than American states, but the power of the purse should still be the same, yes?
Look, republicans suck ass, it’s true. But if Dems had codified Roe into law either time they had the supermajority (two chances in the last 20 years), then the corrupt SC wouldn’t have been able to do jack shit. If dems had any integrity, they would shoulder a significant amount of the blame for this issue, because they had their chance and deemed it “not a priority.”
Sure, Dems absolutely should have codified it. However, a federal law protecting abortion rights as health care against the religious freedom of a regional Catholic hospital’s beliefs not to save a mother’s life with an abortion would be the test case and I’m pretty sure I know how 5 of the Justices would vote. This SCOTUS know they have unchecked power and are no longer afraid to wield it.
I agree both major parties had a hand in this directly or indirectly. But only one has any chance of changing this for the better.
Which one, the one that directly revoked women’s rights or the one that did nothing to prevent it from happening?
