Definitions pretty much rule the world.This is a good analysis of why birth control is not "safe."
— FreshMouthHat (@Popehat) May 11, 2022
Griswold may not fall, but it may die a death of a thousand cuts, the way Roe was attacked for decades, by saying legislatures can ban methods by classifying them as abortion.https://t.co/hJhO3fLMgO
There's already sound legal analysis that laws declaring "life begins at conception" would ban IVF, since multiple eggs are harvested (via hormone treatments), inseminated artificially, then returned to the womb (usually several at once, in hopes just one become viable and embryonic). Not to mention the procedure produces "miscarriages" of the type not uncommon in early pregnancy where the woman never realizes she was pregnant (no, you can't be "a little bit pregnant," but it can be so nascent you don't realize it was discarded. As a doctor I knew explained it, nature sometimes takes care of non-viable fetuses. And yes, the medical term can be "spontaneous abortion." That might get you a police look-in, the way things are going. Definitions, you see.)
So if courts decide to "define" certain procedures/contraceptive measures as "abortion," well....
We already use the word, in other words. Will continued use of it prompt police inquiries? Count on it. Will this be stupid and harassing and affect people invisible to the rest of us? Again: count on it. The only consequences you can count on are the unintended ones.
Outlandish? The Roman Catholic position, as I understand it, is that only the "rhythm method" is approved. Even condoms are unacceptable. The history of the anti-abortion movement is the extreme position of Catholicism moving to the mainstream of American society via evangelicals and fundamentalists, who are traditionally (and usually) virulently "anti-papist." I wouldn't say any contraceptive method short of "pulling out" or just trying to time it to the woman's fertility cycle was safe.
Not having now read the draft Dobbs opinion, and reading the continuing news on it. Or keeping the egregious Hobby Lobby decision in mind (which involved birth control, if you will recall).
Digby wrote recently in favor of pressuring the National Archives to recognize the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment as a solution to this crisis. But considering how the Roberts court gutted the VRA, a law written specifically to enact the 15th Amendment, what chance does the ERA have? It has no enforcement mechanism (unlike the 13th Amendment, which disallows any laws regarding slavery) of its own, like the 15th. The Court could just gut any law based on an ERA. That it would, in its current conformation, is virtually a certainty.
And any law challenged for violating the ERA could easily be defined as not being a violation.
I'm coming to the conclusion that what we need is a constitutional amendment controlling the jurisdiction of the courts. Not that I think that wise, but the complete lack of wisdom or judicial restraint betrayed by the Court now makes radical solutions not only thinkable, but necessary.
Especially as long as the courts have the last say on definitions.
The hierarchy position is that, most Catholics ignore them and use real birth control despite what the bishops who push that line push and a lot of them don't push it at all. Some openly disagreed with it in the past, I'd bet some still do.
ReplyDeleteThe political use of birth control and privacy will be as disingenuous as Trump's or the Bush position on abortion would. I would bet any of them finding themselves with an unwanted pregnancy or the prospect of one they caused would encourage or try to force an abortion and they would pay for it and for it to be hushed up. As I recall there was such an accusation made against a priest among the accusations and revelations of ordained hypocrisy on such issues.