When RVW is overturned by the Supreme Being Court, will going to Canada

[kcwayne]

or Mexico to have an abortion be illegal?

[enid602]

1. legal

Maybe not legal, but certainly doable. Might be kind of difficult for women without the means, thought.

[MADem]

2. They'll probably go with the 'states rights' angle

where states can decide that it is against the law in that particular state. People will have to travel out of state where the procedure is prohibited, to a state that allows it.

Who knows, though, how these fundies will vote once they get behind the curtain?

[wellstone_democrat]

3. they say "states rights" or legislate it

but if you pay attention to the well funded and organized, they will fight it everywhere forever. They believe it is murder and they will not stop at their own state borders. They also used to be much more vocal about birth control pills being "abortifacients" but now hedge on the issue. Why? Because if they can get RvW out they can more easily go after the side issues.

Oh, and if you think it will be legal to go to Canada or wherever? No. But, if you have enough money, no one will ask about your daughter's trip to Europe...they didn't in the 1950s!

[MADem]

6. If you go to Nevada to a house of prostitution, or to Amsterdam to smoke

dope, it is legal. If it is legal where you are at, you are in no jeopardy. Underaged kids may have more issues, but those of majority, no. You do not carry your state laws with you when you travel.

I think the right LIKES having R v W as a rallying point, so they can continue to feel like underdogs fighting a vicious fight. Winning deprives them of a fundraising stream.

In truth, abortions have gone UP with Bush, so maybe if they were sincere they'd start voting for Democrats.

[wellstone_democrat]

9. what I am saying is

the point is what they are planning---and have been for 20 years. My sister is very active in National Right to Life and the script has been muted but they will not rest until abortion is outlawed in the United States. I believe that if it became a state law issue it would indeed be as you say locally legal. But, despite what they "hint" at lately re: 'states rights' their plan is was and will be to pour all that money into changing law one state at a time. I talked about the pharmacist "conscience" campaign several years before it became news a year or so ago because it was one thing that NRL had suggested for years.

The politicos might like RvW but the true-believers want it ended now and that includes IUD devices, birth control pills and anything that "interrupts" life from the moment of conception onward. BTW, I live in a very "red" religious corner of Texas, no one here *believes* abortions are up. Seriously, they don't.

boggles the mind.

[MADem]

12. Oh, everyone KNOWS their screwed up agenda

But I doubt it will float. The minute the "body privacy" issue comes to the fore, examples will be hoisted of MEN not having the right to privacy for their own bodies--you, with the lousy DNA, come here and let me cut your balls off!

It is important to continue to push the issue, a la Clinton (safe, legal, rare) and keep beating those bums down, though. They're like ants at a damn picnic...

[friesianrider]

10. Sadly, many women have to do that already...

Or damn near close to it. Sometimes the nearest abortion provider is hundreds of miles away.

But I'm with you - it'll likely become a states rights thing.

[Erika]

4. It's another sign of the caste system

The poor will no more be able to afford for an out of state abortion than they could to evacuate New Orleans. The rich need this class to enable their profits to the max.

[Neil Lisst]

5. I don't think they'll reverse Roe v. Wade, but then ...

... but then, I didn't think they'd eviscerate the 1st and 4th amendments the way they have.

Until we see how she and Roberts vote, we don't know.

[Seen the light]

7. Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer

We're safe for now, even with the two new picks.

[Neil Lisst]

14. Kennedy may not be safe ...

I read a story recently regarding a key vote about 10-12 years ago, in which Kennedy was prepared to hammer RvW.

Plus, death haunts us at least 2.5 more years. What if we lose one?

Bush will put Jay Sukalow on there to get right with the right.

[Hekate]

8. Abortion is not available in the majority of US counties already

The fact that it is still a legal procedure means little to rural and small-town women and girls who must make a long, sometimes costly, trip to a big city to have an abortion. In places where everybody knows everybody else's business, it's hard to come up with an adequate excuse for being gone for a day or longer. "Shopping spree at the Ritz" isn't plausible.

The anti-choice crowd realized doctors are the "weak link" and they went after them with harassment, threats, stalking their families, even murder. It's a rare and brave doctor who will keep a clinic open under those circumstances. They also harassed and publicly shamed women entering clinics.

The fact that the so-called right to lifers have made an abortion impossible to obtain for a huge number of women is not enough for them. They want to turn back the clock 50 or a hundred years and make it utterly illegal under all circumstances, no exceptions for the life and health of the mother, no exceptions for defects incompatible with life.

They don't give a damn about women and girls. They don't give a damn what happens to an unwanted baby.

And yes, going over the border for an abortion would be illegal here, as before. The clinics may be clean in Canada, but not necessarily in Mexico. And besides, that ends up being the method of women who can afford to travel. The less-well-off will ultimately resort to dangerous means closer to home.

Hekate

[MADem]

11. I don't understand how going over the border would be illegal

People fly to Jamaica all the time to get cosmetic procedures that are not FDA approved. They fly to Amsterdam to get high. These activities are illegal in the US. Your state and local law does not follow you, the law applies to the location where you are at. The only way it would be illegal would be if the procedure were illegal over the border. The sanitation issues are a separate concern, of course.

And true, the rightwing nuts do not give a damn about anyone but themselves. But I suspect they won't win this one, though they will use it as a rallying point and a cash cow for their crappy TV mega-churches. They are happiest when they feel persecuted, for some reason.

Of course, if you push them on their support for outlawing the procedure, what they really want is to prevent WHITE babies from being aborted...not enough little blond haired, blue eyed bastards to go around to the likes of the Roberts family or the Kay Bailey Hutchisons of this world.

[kcwayne]

13. If RVW were overturned, and legislation passed by a Republican majority

that made having an abortion equivalent to murder, I could see a legal scenario where if the state could prove you were pregnant and then were not without a certified reason provided by doctor, they could charge you with murder.

I think all they would have to do is pass a Constitutional amendment that declared that fetuses were protected by the laws of the US. They cannot pass the amendment with the Supreme Being Court holding a ruling for RVW.

[MADem]

15. Hell, they couldn't pass ERA, they would never get a Constitutional

Amendment for that crap--you think they could get sufficient states to ratify it in the time limit required? Never--just the ballot delaying tactics would doom it before it got off the ground, to say nothing of the groundswell of outrage from the blue states. These guys can agitate where ever they want, but they can not vote in the blue states unless they live there.

That is a worst of the worst case scenario...would not happen. Not without a major sea change in American attitude, and I simply do not see it as a real possibility.

[kcwayne]

18. Few Germans in 1933 could envision what their world would look like

3 years later. Once the Nazi party "peacefully" overthrew the democratically elected government and installed fascism, the Germans lost the right and ability to have a voice in their Government.

The majority of Germans did not vote for Hitler. But by 1936, the government could tell you what kind of job you could have, and where you could work. You could not quit your job if your were unsatisfied with the pay or conditions without approval by a party official.

If you were mentally retarded or ill, you could be euthanized. Your children could be taken from you and placed under care of the government. The Hitler Youth program had 100,000 members in 1933. In 1936 there were 4 million. Few Germans in 1930 could envision the takeover of their lives by the government. In 1925, most Germans would think that the 1936 version of Germany would be impossible.

Bush just used his executive powers to rescind the Bacon-Davis act without approval of a representative government. He wants to change Posse Comitatus to allow the US Military to take control of distressed ares on US soil. It is the "Bush" doctrine to use the military to enforce a quarantine in the event of a disease pandemic. Once the military has the ability to control the population for a "good" cause, how long will it take for the public to accept it for any cause?

Bush is morally capable of declaring marshall law and changing our country forever. If Bush doesn't do it, and Republicans hold a majority through the next election cycle, the next President will take up where Bush left off, because Bush is not the architect of these horrific policies. The last two elections have clearly demonstrated that the US has fallen to a silent coup that has the power and will to alter the rights of all us.

A core belief of these people is that abortion is murder. It is irrelevant to argue that abortion is not murder. They are in power, and they believe they are acting to stop a Holocaust. Millions of people agree with them, including millions in the "Blue states". So even if they are a minority, if they have the ability to use the military to stop any forceful reaction, and can use majority status to pass laws of their liking, and have a compliant and supportive Supreme Court to insure those laws, they will prevail.

Welcome to one party government.

[MADem]

19. Peacefully? He burned down the friken reichstag in 1933!!!

And people blew it off, because from the outside, no one wanted to interfere in the internal affairs of a government. Inside Germany, the mindless types liked the oratory, the big dream of belonging to the greatest nation in the world. But plenty of people who saw the writing on the wall LEFT as fast as they could pack.

Bush certainly is capable of declaring martial law, but he won't do it without a fight from every quarter, from the uniformed members of the armed forces to everyone from the moderate GOP to the screaming left. And he is no orator--he can't even string a simple sentence together. He cannot rouse the masses--even with stage managing, he screws up.

The country is not behind this guy like Germany was behind Hitler. Hitler was operating from a place where he was viewed as the guy who would bring 'honor and integrity' back to Germany after they got screwed in the aftermath of WW1--try as Bush might, a BJ in the WH does not rise to that level, and he overplayed 911, in addition to being AWOL when the shit hit the fan in NYC, PA, and DC.

In Germany, there was a massive nationalist fervor over there that Hitler was able to sustain over a long period of time, by telling people how great they were, and providing them with 'bread and circuses' along with a healthy dose of fear. I just don't see that here, flag-waving, sticker-displaying "morans" notwithstanding--he screwed up 911, and between that, Katrina, Rita, the dead coming home from Iraq, and prices going through the roof, we are neither getting bread nor circuses. And on a good day, Monkey can't muster adoring crowds like Hitler did.

I see plenty of embarrassment, humiliation, shame, and OUTRAGE at the way we are behaving from folks within this country. When the intellectual conservative (a bit oxymoronic, that) wing of the GOP is expressing horror and refusing to go along with the program, the house of cards is teetering.

[cassiepriam]

16. I do not see how they can stop women from going?

[cassiepriam]

17. They are not gonna overturn RVW. It is just bubba bait.