Sour Home Alabama

I could have used the terms foul or rancid, so you got off easy with sour.

Let me first say that, even if the worst happened and Roe was overturned on state power grounds, that the wealthy, especially wealthy white girls, will get all of the privileges they now enjoy. They will have unobstructed access to abortion services and their doctors will not have to worry. Why would I say such a thing (which many who think there is no discrimination will call hateful)? Because poor white meth traffickers and poor ethnic crack traffickers are in jail while rich white people get rehab.

Second, for the best information and speakers, go to https://www.reproductiverights.org/  I dealt with this organization when I was shopping an Amicus on Gonzalez v Carhart that stated that the PBA was unconstitutional because it did not cite congressional enforcement power in the 14th Amendment to justify the law.

Apparently, the Commerce Clause was all the justification Chief Roberts needed. The opinion would have been neater had my argument been made, but it is a rare day when the Chief does not uphold congressional statute. Counting the Justices made the loss inevitable because of how Kennedy reacted to what he considered infanticide. Even then, when state laws came before him, he struck them down anyway due to Federal v State power issues.

Privacy is not about secrecy, it is about the sphere of private influence for protected classes being superior to the power of state legislatures. Every case from Griswold to Perry is based on that principle. This all depends on Brown v. Board of Education and Hernandez v. Texas, which were not really about race. It was about revoking the state power ruling in Plessy.

Congress has the absolute authority to find that life begins at conception, gastrulation or a fetal heartbeat. That is a federal plenary power as well as a prohibition on state power to say differently. There will never be abortion and non-abortion states. The rule will be uniform. If Congress acts, it will be on a national basis.

Justice Thomas affirmed PBA based on the derived power of the Congress on equal protection rights that the Federal Courts enjoy, particularly the Supreme Court. If the other four justices who upheld PBA agreed with his theory of the case, abortion would be banned at where ever the justices drew the line.This goes a bit beyond viability, which was derived from the ability to be born, but not by much. The Alabama law could be upheld on that basis, but Chief Roberts would likely not go along with such state level judicial activism, although he would certainly uphold congressional action to limit abortion by shifting the start of legal personhood.

Of course, Congress will never act in this way because to do so would mandate investigation of all miscarriages. Anything less would require selective enforcement, which is unconstitutional under the 5th Amendment's rights to due process.

The Alabama law is all about state power, and not just abortion. To recognize the power of states in this matter is to do so in all matters having to do with state law on equal protection and due process. It would bring back Plessy and overturn everything from Brown and Hernandez on. For reactionary conservatives and the hard core members of the Federalist Society (especially Scalia), this is a feature, not a flaw.

This is how it will be briefed regarding by those opposing any request for Certiorari (unless the lawyers are really dumb) on the Alabama case.

The lawyers at the Center for Reproductive Rights are not dumb. Nor are any of the Federal judges or justices considering this case. The law has zero chance of ever taking effect. This is simply the anti-abortion movement trying to look busy to keep their funding stream active and the Democrats need to respond as such come 2020.

Note further that the unborn do have the same constitutional rights as everyone else, that they may not be executed by federal (5th Amendment) or state government (14th) without due process of law. It is why pregnant women cannot be executed nor abortion mandated.

It is also why the Unborn Victims of Violence Act is constitutional (the law also recognizes a federal abortion right, which also makes the Alabama law unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause in Article IV).

There can be no state positive (i.e., legislated) right to life by an unborn child against his mother because such a law would violate the rights of women as a protected class. All negative rights to life already apply to the unborn. Again, this is all about State Government power.

Again, This is not about the unborn. This is about returning to the state power regime of Plessy v. Ferguson. For reactionaries, this is a feature, not a flaw. If SCOTUS affirms Alabama's right to pass this law, everything from Brown and Hernandez to Perry will fall.The takeaway is a that if you are a black parent, Latino, female, married or gay, Alabama wants to make you behave.