Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. My interpretation of American law isn't entirely accurate - but it's a good starting point for the whole discussion and has led to some very interesting positions being put on the wall - and I'm all for open debate.
1. I did say that. I think it's going to happen and I think it will be fairly tempestuous in an already tempestuous and febrile population - but the long game was the only legal game to be played given the constaints.
2. I appreciate your position on the 'it should be put to the people' and whilst that's democratic, it's also problematic, because the rules on abortion disproportionately affect pregnant women. That's part of the issue in my mind. If the democratic process in each state were to be voted on by women alone, then I think your reasoning would be correct but that's not how this plays out.
In that situation there has to be protection offered by the Nation state to pregnant women, to make their own choice according to their own conscience. That's my position. That's been argued as a privacy issue (under due process via the 14th) and, as i've outlined, I don't think that's a good argument. I think your position on abortion, whether you're pro-choice or pro-life is a religious decision and should therefore be argued differently in law. Roe v Wade is faulty law, but it (in my mind at least) generated the correct result.
You disagree, and I have no problem with your taking this position, I think you're wrong and you think I'm wrong, but the law has to be argued fairly and Roe wasn't. I don't think your democratic right to a pro-life position as a man, supersedes the right to a freely made spiritual or conscience based decision made by a woman - that's the case I would now be making. But... as I've said in this article, it's complicated.
If abortions were available and enshrined under the first amendment, the onus would be on the religious right to balance that by using science and rational argument to lower the time-frame in which abortion could be legally permitted. This may be back to the point of conception. Those arguments would need to be made in law and not just represent the beliefs and political will of one group over another. Roe was an overreach, but I think the US will get back to the same position in the fullness of time.
Always nice to see your name pop up. I know I'm never in for an easy time as a liberal when there's a Kellogg in the comments.
