Women are about to lose their right to an abortion because four justices were installed by two presidents who got to the White House without winning more votes than the other person.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not questioning the legal basis for overturning Roe. I’m not a lawyer, and not much of a legal expert. But I am a small-d democrat. That makes it hard for me to ignore that women are about to lose their right to an abortion because four justices were installed by two presidents who got to the White House without winning more votes than the other person—and two of those four justices sit on the bench as a result of outrageous partisan maneuvering in the Senate. Nobody who voted in the 2000 or 2016 presidential elections gets a say in this momentous change.
One underappreciated irony here is that Roe was a Republican decision. The justice who in 1970 gave Republicans the Supreme Court majority they’ve enjoyed ever since, Harry Blackmun, is also the justice who wrote the 1973 Roe decision. He was joined by four Republican-appointed justices (William Brennan, Lewis Powell, Potter Stewart, and Chief Justice Warren Burger) and two Democratic-appointed justices (William O. Douglass and Thurgood Marshall). One Democratic-appointed justice (Byron White) and one Republican-appointed justice (William Rehnquist) dissented. The partisan line on abortion between Democrats and Republicans wasn’t as clear as it is today, but even so it’s striking that Roe was the work mostly of Republican appointees. They didn’t follow the election returns.
But actually they sort of did, perhaps in a broader sense that Mr. Dooley was trying to communicate. They understood that they lived in a society that was demanding equal rights for women and greater sexual freedom. Even Roe’s defenders seldom argue it’s a well-crafted legal decision, but it met the moment. The current Supreme Court majority feels no comparable regard for public opinion, because it’s dominated by ideologues.
Marshlm10 on May 5th, 2022 at 02:23 UTC »
And if there were term limits on the Supreme Court, if there were term limits and age limits in all 3 branches, etc etc etc. good luck changing any of those
mattjf22 on May 4th, 2022 at 21:35 UTC »
The way things are now we're headed towards republican minority rule.
As another poster pointed out Dems represent 40 million more in this 50-50 Senate.
Trump was elected while earning 3 million fewer votes than Hillary.
Gerrymandering will soon allow republicans to have a majority in the house while earning a smaller share of votes.
Jaded_Prompt_15 on May 4th, 2022 at 21:16 UTC »
It's a 50/50 split in the Senate, but 50 Dem senators represent 40,000,000 more Americans than the 50 republican senators do.
We need to update how our government works, because it's clearly broken.