Talk:Roe v. Wade

federal vs. state

This statement: "However, the USA is a federal state, so that individual states have rights against the country as a whole" opens up a huge can of worms. The Civil War was fought over this issue, as well as many smaller battles such as enforcement of environmental regulations. The current court is leaning more towards states rights over federal, but probably a majority of people in the country feel this is wrong. So we might find some way to work a discussion of this matter into the article, later. Pat Palmer (talk) 08:52, 27 June 2022 (CDT)

I wonder whether it's actually true, or at least relevant, that "probably a majority of people in the country feel this is wrong". I suspect people's attitudes vary according to the issue being discussed. And federalism means that the majority opposing minority rights may be irrelevant. Sort of infinite regress. For what it's worth, I think consensus is very important. The tendency of the establishment to ignore large swathes of public opinion probably played a major role in the election of President Trump. I suspect the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they required 3/4 of the states to agree an amendment. In RvW the Court interpreted a century-old provision to rule against nearly all the states in effectively amending the Constitution. Whatever one might think of the morality of the decision, I suspect it was politically harmful, contributing to the extreme polarization we see nowadays.

Most of that is irrelevant to the article, of course. Peter Jackson (talk) 04:46, 28 June 2022 (CDT)

So many awful decisions came from the Supreme Court, including the Dred Scott decision that helped provoke the frenzy leading up to the Civil War. But also some really important good changes, such as Brown vs. Board of Education, which prohibited segregation of schools by race. That is something, unfortunately, that never could have occurred via legislation due to the politics of the country. It's the whole history of the U.S.--it lumbers along, doing kind of badly, and everyone constantly predicting "this is the beginning of the end", but still, when we have major disagreement, we don't usually go out and shoot our own citizens, or randomly imprison them, as happens all too often under dictatorships and communist regimes. But as you say, the debate about this probably belongs in the article about the Supreme Court, rather than in this article. BTW, the equal rights amendment for women never passed--but it came within one state of passing. THAT is how difficult it is to pass an amendment. This in a country where more than half the voters are female, but not, of course, the representatives who get to vote on amendments; those remain predominantly male. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:27, 28 June 2022 (CDT)

And just to be snarky, our government doesn't need to randomly kill its citizens for dissent. It seems we do a pretty good job of that without the government even being involved. The murder capital of the world, as well as the mass shooting capital. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:34, 28 June 2022 (CDT)

"never" is a long time. Who knows what might have happened eventually? Alistair Cooke came out with a curious theory, that it was air conditioning that was the main cause of the success of the civil rights movement! It resulted in mass migration of less racist northerners to the hot South.

As for "capital of the world", I think you should say "civilized" (?) world, or something like that. You can probably still find higher rates in some Latin American countries, for example. (The novel 2666 is apparently partly based on a real mass wave of femicide (if there's such a word) in a Mexican town.) Peter Jackson (talk) 05:04, 29 June 2022 (CDT)

Weeks into pregnancy allowed for "elective" abortion

Being old and female, I lived through all those decades where Roe v. Wade was in effect, as well as a few years before it was in effect. Even for illegal abortions before it was in effect, most doctors would only perform an elective abortion up to 12 weeks, and that was, unless I misremember, the recommendation of the AMA back when abortion first became legal. Later than 12 weeks, there needed to be a compelling medical reason. This 12-week deadline was very much in the awareness of young women who were not ready to bear children. Thus, I don't think it exactly correct to say that "in practice" the case cause the deadline to be 28 weeks. The absolute deadline was 28 weeks, but the everyday deadline for most women was 12 weeks as determined by the medical profession. Pat Palmer (talk) 08:20, 13 December 2022 (CST)