The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    Hobby Lobby-A huge gift to the left. Who's your Daddy?

    By jollyroger on Sun, 07/13/2014 - 3:56am |

    It has become a commonplace observation amongst historians of the interface between politics and jurisprudence that the enunciation of Roe v Wade, as much as it brought immediate relief from unwanted pregnancy to hundreds of thousands of women, had the perverse effect of truncating the slow but inexorable progress of democratic reform of patriarchal anti-choice law.

     

    As an added irony, because Roe was founded on a rather strained judicial reach for the creation of an expanded privacy interest strong enough to stand against the democratically (where they existed) passed anti-choice laws then dotting the various state criminal codes, it partook of what came to be called "judicial activism" and galvanized the right wing that today has utterly co-opted the Republican party.

     

    In an almost mirror image of the jurisprudential process that gave us Roe, Alito's  vast expansion of the First Amendment type privileges granted by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act so as to entitle members of civil society to exempt themselves from otherwise generally applicable laws will, as the consequences play out, bring down upon the right wing an absolute torrent of electoral catastrophe.

     

    Nothing will be of greater use in focusing the attention of women (and the men who love them...) upon the patriarchal buy-in that is the modern Republican Party, than the coming avalanche of queries to which a parade of candidates will now be vulnerable:  "Do you approve of the Hobby Lobby decision?"

     

    With any luck, the Dems will not only hold the Senate, they'll take back the House.

     

    Contraception, for cryin' out loud!

     

    It is as if the Republican Party rose and asked, with one voice (and not in the nice way...)

     

    "Who's your Daddy?" 

    Comments

    Ginsberg is the darling of the left, and rightly so. But that doesn't mean her analysis is always correct. When we're discussing alternate histories there's no way to prove how things would have been different had different choices been made. I disagree with the idea that had Roe v Wade not existed that eventually states like Oklahoma and Kansas would have passed legislation granting abortion rights.

    More likely conservative states would never have legalized abortion at all or perhaps only in the  narrowest sense, for rape or incest. Its likely that the backlash pushed by conservative factions would have seen states that had abortion rights outlawing abortions instead of making them much more difficult to obtain. I suspect that Roe, while allowing the chipping away of abortion rights, still had the effect of offering limited protections in the very conservative states.

    If the Supreme court had not become a bastion of ultra conservative thought and a liberal court had stood firm against the chipping away of abortion rights by the states the battle would have been won by now. That's my version of an alternative history. That's why I'm still a firm supporter of Roe.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 07/13/2014 - 2:56pm

    Well, of course, we go forward with the history we have, not the one we might want (pace, Don Rumsfeld.)

     

    That said. I think it is beyond peradventure that Roe served as a potent galvanizer of the forces of reaction.

     

    I am predicting (hoping?) that Hobby Lobby will do the same for our side, and tripled.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 07/13/2014 - 3:37pm

    I didn't read the Ginsburg comments as an argument that some better response was available at the time and people simply failed to implement it. Rather she is saying there were problems with the decision that would have to be dealt with eventually.

    It is like what she said about her briefs:

    "“When I wrote briefs I wanted to give the court something it could convert into an opinion.”

    Become the language you want to hear.....


    by moat on Sun, 07/13/2014 - 8:07pm

    As usual, the ignorant left educated by stupid media doesn't have the facts. Hobby lobby is covering your birth control ladies! In fact 16 of the 20 forms of it.just not the 4 options commonly used for abortion.  Trust me, conservatives should want you not to re-produce. But how much of your depravity should they have to pay for????


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 07/13/2014 - 11:24pm

    Here we see the typical conservative. Unable to make a rational argument he descends to insults.

    Supreme Court decisions do not decide single cases alone. They enunciate principles of law applicable to many other cases. While Hobby Lobby only objected to 4 of 20 forms of contraceptives there are several dozen similar cases winding their way through the courts. Many of these are attempting to refuse to pay for all 20 forms of contraception. All these cases have been sent back to their respective lower courts with instructions to re-evaluate. This granting of religious rights to a corporation may not only apply to contraception but also to corporate religious exemptions in many other areas.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 07/14/2014 - 3:00am

    O-K, as much as I PRAY that Anon. is a sincere example of Repugnant push back, so helpful in flushing the Pugs down history's sewer will be this tone from*his ilk,  I rather suspect that  his comment is meant as satire, so closely does it resemble Limbaugh's biology comprehension challenged remarks suggesting that the dailiy ingestion of a birth control pill was occasioned by daily copulation (not that daily copulation is in any way excessive, and we all inow that when you are in love, it's hard to keep it down to three times a day, but I digress...)

     

    *gotta be, or be in possession of a dick, no doubt.

     

     


    by jollyroger on Mon, 07/14/2014 - 3:55am

    "But how much of your depravity should they have to pay for????"

    I'm assuming that by depravity you mean having sex?  And who is paying for it?  "They" don't seem to mind paying for Viagra. That same "they" sure hates paying for children's food once they are born. And "they" don't even go along with the concept that all people (once pushed out of a vagina that is) should be able to get health care. 

    I am hoping Rex is right and you are just writing for satirical grins


    by CVille Dem on Mon, 07/14/2014 - 9:55am

    Let's take Anon at face value, and deconstruct his reference to "depravity" (I just love the 19th century, don't you?

     

    He actually is in is (putative) satire not far from a meme currently circulating on the right, viz.  Hobby Lobby means women can say  goodbye to 'consequence free sex'".

     

    Nothing so clearly will educate those women still not understanding how the patriarchy views their concerns and welfare as there ensues a full etiolation of the reasoning merely gestured at by Alioto--that there is something unique about contraception that warrants different treatment from any other sort of medical intervention.

     

    The right is doomed to having to walk this path, as we can surely envision a slew of "sincerely held religious disinclinations" to provide any number of medical services, or to accommodate any number of non-discriminatory mandates.  In reasoning how the objected to generally accepted mandate or stated religious scruple, or both, is distinguishable from the (dreaded) no co-pay contraception, subsequent courts (and those who argue for these wider exemptions, or who attempt to explain why Hobby Lobby skates but Jehovah's Witnesses don't, or why blood transfusions get covered but fibroid prevention does not, will enter an intellectual morass from which they will never be heard from again.


    by jollyroger on Mon, 07/14/2014 - 11:59am

    They are doomed alright.  Because Hobby Lobby and those 5 black robes can "Kiss my Grits." Women have the human right to choose from all medical options of birth control no matter who is their employer. I don't care what works it's way through the courts, women are not going to put up with it.  They woke up a sleeping giant.  I have waited all my adult life to see women vote as a block.  I just may see that in the next few election cycles. I don't see the GOP making any large gains.  They will be working hard to just to hang on to what they got.  The Senate and White House it lost to them. 


    by trkingmomoe on Tue, 07/15/2014 - 3:54pm

    Go ahead, Repugnants, piss women off.  They not only have the numbers, they also have the money, and they are giving it to the Dems. (Pity Rogie, he watches Joe Scumbag so you don't have to...)


    by jollyroger on Wed, 07/16/2014 - 11:26am

    ya know, if conservatives were smart ... which they aren't ... they could have used abortion as way of reducing the population, which, in turn, causes those who are alive to pay more in taxes.

     

    of course, an immediate democrat response would be to open the borders for more immigration, which the conservatives would fight because, as far as they're concerned, we have more than our fair share.


    by Beetlejuice on Wed, 07/16/2014 - 1:40pm

    In other words, the heart-ache the tea-baggers have caused the GOP is nothing compared to the hell the religious right is going to bring down when they start feeling their oats.

     

    Seems the GOP has opted to the the political punching bag for all the political misfits that purposefully misinterpreted the Constitution and what to take the nation back to an era that never was as they imagined.


    by Beetlejuice on Wed, 07/16/2014 - 1:33pm

    "Feet, don't fail me now..." Scott  Brown (R), aspiring New Hampshire senator, is an early victim, choosing to run away from a reporter rather than answer the question.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 07/19/2014 - 6:03pm

    Details here. Warning, police involvement discussed.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 07/20/2014 - 12:14am