I'm quoting here from a recent article in The Lamp, the link to which is on the side of our blog.
It's well worth reading.
And it's not the only such article. The one by conservative columnist Jonathan Turley is as well.
To listen to the politicos, this is going to be a huge, huge issue that will drive people flocking to the polls in November. Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez, born a Catholic, Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic, and Nancy Pelosi, another practicing Catholic, have so aligned themselves with the left wings of their parties they are in open rebellion against a tenant of their faith, that all life is valuable.
On the flipside, recently Tribune had an article in which it discussed if Wyoming's trigger law, which has yet to actually be fired, will be modified to eliminate some of the exceptions that are now in it.
Whatever a person thinks on this one way or another, much of this has a certain "the Usual Suspects" aspect to it. Interviews always turn to the extremes.
Chances are high, again, no matter what a person thinks of it, that much more of the country just went home on Friday night, enjoyed the weekend, and then returned to work on Monday without getting too worked up about it. Their lives, won't really change.
Indeed, hardly noted in this at all, in real terms not that much will probably actually change, whether it should or not. Turley noted in his column:
Putting aside the legal changes, there are major technological changes since 1973 that will impact the post-Roe world. Roughly 60 percent of abortions today are carried out at home, not in clinics, using pills with mifepristone and misoprostol to abort a pregnancy. In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration permanently removed the in-person requirement for these prescriptions and allowed women to access the drugs via telehealth appointments and online pharmacies. It will be difficult for states to interfere with such prescriptions, particularly if the federal government protects such access.
I've wondered about that. Fifty years ago, when the court that ineptly penned Roe wrote its opinion, it wrote it with the odd hubris so common of the 1970s that science had reached its pinnacle. We'd discovered the truth of everything, and we could now close up shop with finality. Not so much, it turned out.
Anyhow, states whose legislatures elect to put restrictions or bans on abortion in what we call the democratic process will cause surgical abortions to be outlawed. But can they act on pharmaceuticals that do terminate infants? That's not so clear, at least to me, as the Federal government controls the field on drugs, for the most part. So the killing may very well go on, but in the sort of remote way that killing via drones does. People don't have to watch it happening.
So for those opposed to abortion, who have been well motivated and dedicated all these years, the cause no doubt goes on.
Does it for those wildly in favor of the streets running red? Probably not.
The Lamp noted about the actual nature of the protests in Washington, D. C. the following:
Quite the opposite was true for those who did remain outside the court. They were not shocked, but they were angry. About an hour after the decision was announced, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez strode into the crowd, wearing an impeccably brushed pink suit, and led the gathered people in a series of chants. “Into the streets! Into the streets! Into the streets!” she said, before her security escort led her away. That exhortation, which was repeated many times over throughout the day (and deep into the night) largely fell flat. Some people did turn out to protest, but they were the same people who come to nearly every demonstration in Washington, D.C. After Ocasio-Cortez left, I began keeping a list: there was Don Folden, who uses protests to advertise his tourism business; Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, washed-up controversialists from the Trump era; Grayson Quay, who uses these events to “debate” pro-choice activists. Many more activists from groups such as ShutDownDC and Extinction Rebellion padded out the crowd, handing out signs and stickers. An ice cream truck’s loudspeaker cut through all the noise, blaring “Greensleeves,” which at times drowned out the chanting.
From The Lamp, Why The Streets Were Quiet After Dobbs.
The usual suspects nature of these protests were really missed. I've noticed this locally myself, regarding protests.
If you have a left wing protest, you get the same collection of reliably left wing protesters to show up. They come to all of them.
We don't have many right wing protests here, but I do note that if you want right wing commentary, you can depend on the same handful of people to make a comment.
This really begs the question if these people really think out their positions at all. It can't possibly be the case that the same people who turned out last month for some left wing cause are all 100% radically opposed to Dobbs. And I know it's the case that many who are very strongly opposed to abortion are actually in the left or middle on many other issues.
Some of the really nasty predictable prejudices came out right away, including some who instantly attacked the Catholic Church. Catholics are a minority in the United States, and if several Catholic justices voted in favor of the Dobbs opinion at least one fallen away one voted against it, and another wouldn't have gone as far. And the opinion, while no doubt supported by adherent Catholics, isn't a Catholic one. It would be perfectly possible to hold, as a Constitutional matter, that there is a natural right to life, and therefore abortions should not be left up to the states, but banned as a Constitutional matter. The justices didn't hold that, but that would be much closer to the Catholic opinion.
Nonetheless, one of the nation's original prejudices, anti Catholicism, came right out in some quarters. This has the same usual suspects aspect to it, as the same group would blame the Catholic Church for the grocery store being out of mint filling Oreo cookies in a debate.
The "it's only the first step" argument that those on a losing side of an argument constantly advance also came out in droves. As Turley noted:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Vice President Harris and other Democrats continue to claim that the court was taking the country back to the last century. The image of criminalized homosexuality, marriage bans and contraception limits is unnerving — but also untrue.
In the Dobbs decision, the court’s majority expressly, repeatedly rejects the application of this holding to these other rights. Indeed, it is relatively rare to see the court go to this extent to proactively close off the use of a new case in future cases. The court said that “intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage” are not impacted by its holding because “abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged.” It noted that abortion is unique in dealing with “what those decisions called ‘fetal life’ and what the law now before us describes as an ‘unborn human being.’”
Even Thomas, whose comments in his dissent about procedural due process have been emphasized, didn't go as far as people suggest and moderated his own comments.
Funny, nobody seems to be noting that.
This is a common tactic, however. And not just on this. Take for example the gun bill that recently passed Congress. If you listen to some, it's a "gun control bill" (it actually hardly does anything whatsoever), that's just the "first step". No, it isn't. But that's the best argument people can come up with to oppose something that otherwise has no rational opposition to it, other than just flat out saying they are opposed to any legislation on the topic.
The Lamp further noted something really significant here, that being:
More protests of course are expected throughout this weekend and for the rest of the summer. They will get a lot of media attention, and who knows, maybe something memorable will happen at one. But it is unlikely that their organizers will muster the same energy that the movement opposing police brutality summoned two summers ago. While most people in the United States believe that abortion should be legal, very few view it as a positive good, let alone something that merits taking to the streets. The bizarre language of the pro-abortion movement limits its appeal: expelling “invaders” from the bodies of “birthing people.”
Most Americans see abortion as a shameful convenience. For decades that fact worked against the pro-life movement, which, even with the most compelling arguments about the value of human life, still has not converted the country to its beliefs. The Dobbs decision, which for the most part allows abortion to remain a convenience (you can still get pills even in states with restrictive laws) puts the pro-choice movement in a similar bind. Only the die-hards care enough about the issue to do something. Everyone else will grumble but in the end settle for the status quo. As anyone who’s spent his entire adult life surrounded by pro-life activists knows, it’s not a pleasant position.
Turley noted the same thing, stating:
While some Democrats are voicing absolute views of abortion, and some Republicans are calling for total bans, most Americans hold a more nuanced view.
Whether they should or not, this is the case.
And so we'll head into the summer with a lot of political talking heads discussing this, but not much really going on most places that will cause that much angst. States that had precluded abortion in 1973 will for the most part go back to doing so. Those that allowed it in 1973 will still allow it. The debate that was arrested in 1973 when the Supreme Court came up with the absurd Roe v. Wade opinion will resume and there will be advancements and retreats on both sides. Some of that argument will be really heated.
Make no mistake. I'm opposed to abortion. But I also am old enough to recall the lingering portion of the debate in the late 1970s when the shock of Roe's usurpation of the democratic process, and that is what it was, was still fairly fresh and the debate still going on, and frankly in more honest terms than it is now.
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