…well, the elephant doesn’t look like it’ll be leaving the room anytime soon

This raises a fundamental question: can a country be properly understood as a democracy – an entity in which government derives its power from the people – if it subjugates half of its population, putting them into a category of sub-person with fewer rights, freedoms and liberties?

The global trend suggests that the answer to that is no. A clear pattern has emerged in the past few decades: as countries democratize, they tend to liberalize women’s rights, and they expand abortion and other reproductive rights. Luckily for the women of the world, this is where a great many nations are moving.

But the reverse is also true: as a smaller number of countries move toward authoritarian governance, they constrict the rights of women, LGBT people and many minority groups. We have seen this in every country that has scaled back abortion rights, reproductive rights, and women’s rights more broadly in the past several years: Russia, Hungary, Poland, Nicaragua and the United States.
[…]
The supreme court decision stems from that same rotted root: the idea that a patriarchal minority should have nearly unlimited authority over the majority. The conservatives on the court rightly understand that individual rights and women’s freedoms are incompatible with a system of broad male control over women and children, and a broader male monopoly on the public, political and economic spheres.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/25/us-supreme-court-illegitimate-institution

…there don’t appear to be any easy answers…& to be honest it doesn’t really seem like the ladies ought to have to come up with them when by rights they ought to be getting to ask some pointed questions

Understood in the context of the movement that created the supreme court in its current incarnation, however, there is nothing surprising about it. In fact, it marks the beginning rather than the endpoint of the agenda this movement has in mind.
[…]
Christian nationalists often claim their movement got its start as a grassroots reaction to Roe v Wade in 1973. But the movement actually gelled several years later with a crucial assist from a group calling itself the “New Right”.
[…]
New Right leaders formed common cause with a handful of conservative Catholics, including George Weigel and Richard John Neuhaus, who shared their concerns, and drew in powerful conservative preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones Sr. They were determined to ignite a hyper-conservative counter-revolution. All they needed now was an issue that could be used to unify its disparate elements and draw in the rank and file.

Among their core concerns was the fear that the supreme court might end tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools. Jerry Falwell and many of his fellow southern, white, conservative pastors were closely involved with segregated schools and universities – Jones went so far as to call segregation “God’s established order” and referred to desegregationists as “Satanic propagandists” who were “leading colored Christians astray”. As far as these pastors were concerned, they had the right not just to separate people on the basis of race but to also receive federal money for the purpose.
[…]
In many respects abortion was an unlikely choice, because when the Roe v Wade decision was issued, most Protestant Republicans supported it. The Southern Baptist Convention passed resolutions in 1971 and 1974 expressing support for the liberalization of abortion law, and an editorial in their wire service hailed the passage of Roe v Wade, declaring that “religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.” As governor of California, Ronald Reagan passed the most liberal abortion law in the country in 1967. Conservative icon Barry Goldwater supported abortion law liberalization too, at least early in his career, and his wife Peggy was a cofounder of Planned Parenthood in Arizona.
[…]
In recent decades, the religious right has invested many hundreds of millions of dollars developing a complex and coordinated infrastructure, whose features include rightwing policy groups, networking organizations, data initiatives and media. A critical component of this infrastructure is its sophisticated legal sphere.

Movement leaders understood very well that if you can capture the courts, you can change society. Leading organizations include the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is involved in many of the recent cases intended to degrade the principle of church-state separation; First Liberty; Becket, formerly known as the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; and the Federalist Society, a networking and support organization for rightwing jurists and their allies whose leader, Leonard Leo, has directed hundreds of millions of dollars to a network of affiliated organizations. This infrastructure has created a pipeline to funnel ideologues to important judicial positions at the national and federal level. Nearly 90% of Trump’s appellate court nominees were or are Federalist Society members, according to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and all six conservative justices on the supreme court are current or former members.
[…]
This supreme court has already made clear how swiftly our Christian nationalist judiciary will change the law to suit this vision of a society ruled by a reactionary elite, a society with a preferred religion and a prescribed code of sexual behavior, all backed by the coercive power of the state. The idea that they will stop with overturning Roe v Wade is a delusion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/25/roe-v-wade-abortion-christian-right-america

More than half of US states are almost certain or likely to ban abortion now that the supreme court has overturned Roe v Wade. Several states already have abortion bans on the books that would no longer be blocked by Roe v Wade, while others have “trigger laws”, which are now put in motion with the federal government no longer protecting reproductive rights.

[…] Experts also warn that states may pass laws to restrict women from traveling out of state to seek abortion services.

A handful of states do have legal protections for abortion, either in their constitution or as statutes. While existing abortion laws may not immediately kick with Roe v Wade overturned, Republicans in some of those states are expected to make a push to ban abortion.

In Kansas, for example, the constitution protects a woman’s right to access abortion, but a referendum in August will determine whether that protection will be eliminated. A poll earlier this year found that more than 60% of Kansans oppose making abortion completely illegal. But the referendum is part of the primary elections, and primary voters tend to be more conservative.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Republican senators have discussed federal legislation to ban abortion after six weeks, called “heartbeat” bills by proponents. Many women don’t know they are pregnant until after six weeks, and a 2018 study found that younger women, women of color and women without college degrees are more likely to find out after the seven-week mark.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/24/abortion-laws-by-state-map-clinics

…some shit is just flat out a bad idea from the ground up in ways that shouldn’t need explaining

Senior Conservatives accused Boris Johnson of increasingly “delusional” behaviour on Saturday night after he said he was already planning for his third term as prime minister, just two days after the Tories suffered a catastrophic double byelection defeat at the hands of the Liberal Democrats and Labour.
[…]
In a series of interventions that angered MPs, the prime minister suggested that he would not change his behaviour in office, regarded issues around his leadership as settled and saw his premiership extending into the distant future.

Asked by reporters in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, about whether he would like to serve a full second term as prime minister, Johnson said: “At the moment I am thinking actively about the third term and you know, what could happen then,” adding, “But I will review that when I get to it.”

He continued: “We’ve embarked on a massive project to change the government, of the constitution of the country, the way we run our legal system, the way we manage our borders, our economy. All sorts of things we’re doing differently. We also, at the same time, are embarked on a colossal project to unite and level up … It’s going to take time. And I want to keep driving it forward.”
[…]
Earlier, Johnson provoked derision and frustration among Tory MPs by suggesting he would not change his personality, despite a series of scandals and rows that have left them considering ways in which to remove him as leader. He said voters were tired of hearing about what he is “alleged to have done wrong”.

“If you’re saying you want me to undergo some sort of psychological transformation, I think that our listeners would know that is not going to happen,” Johnson told BBC Radio 4’s Today.

“What you can do, and what the government should do, and what I want to do, is to get on with changing and reforming and improving our systems and our economy.”

He later told Sky News that people wanted to hear less about the “things I stuffed up”. He said he believed questions over this leadership had been settled.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/25/boris-johnsons-aspiration-to-serve-for-a-third-term-delusional

…settled sure does seem to be taking on new meanings left & right these days…& it feels like the same could be said about progress…or compromise…because this?

While the new law does not include tougher restrictions long championed by Democrats, such as a ban on assault-style weapons and background checks for all gun transactions, it is the most impactful firearms violence measure produced by Congress since enactment of a long-expired assault weapons ban in 1993.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/25/joe-biden-signs-gun-control-law

…the thing this guy was supposedly such a big part of

Texas senator John Cornyn is facing backlash from his own Republican party for being a lead negotiator on the bipartisan gun reform bill, the most significant legislation on gun control in America in decades.

At the state’s annual Republican convention recently held in Houston, Cornyn was booed and heckled – a visible sign he is losing support from those within his own party. He dismissed the taunting crowd as a “mob”.
[…]
By contrast, Cornyn’s counterpart and junior Texas senator Ted Cruz has doubled down on his support for unfettered access to firearms.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/23/republican-senator-john-cornyn-backlash-gun-control-school-shooting

…what is it they say about “friends like these”?

Liberal lion John Roberts covered this. pic.twitter.com/wvGk0nEqK8

— Obadiah Plainman (@fuzzy_papaya) June 25, 2022

…so

Small actions every day may well mitigate the harm that many experts predict will occur for women nationally, but it will take an army of supporters to get this done.
[…]
Spread the word about AidAccess.org, a group based in Austria that can mail the same abortion-inducing medication that we, until recently, provided in our clinic. The site even offers advance provision of abortion pills for anyone who may want to have the medicine on hand before an unwanted pregnancy occurs — for themselves or for someone they know. Just know that in a post-Roe world there could be legal risks to patients who live in states where abortion is banned and who order pills off the internet.

Which brings me to my next suggestion: Direct people who are seeking legal advice to the group If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, which provides a confidential legal help line and a legal-defense fund to assist people who get tied up in the criminal justice system because of the outcomes of their pregnancies.
[…]
Abortion rights supporters also should protect family, friends and allies from surveillance with Digital Defense Fund’s online security guidance for phones and computers — especially if you’re doing anything that could be considered pushing legal boundaries.
[…]
With so many systems in place to tap into already, the issue isn’t so much finding a way to help — it’s about maximizing impact. One person calling a local lawmaker 200 times might be considered harassment. But 200 people calling that legislator once is impossible to ignore. Likewise, a single $100 donation does immediate good, but a recurring $10 monthly donation — especially if a friend or 20 will join you — can provide ongoing funding that an organization can rely on. One national march of a million people makes headlines for a time. But small, ongoing actions — sit-ins, vigils, an abortion rights supporter always stationed in front of the state house or courthouse — are tactics that grow more powerful the longer they last.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/opinion/abortion-roe-activism-how-to-help.html

…who knows what the future brings

It is tempting, in the immediate wake of the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, to say that there’s nothing to be done about the reactionary majority on the court. But that’s just not true. The Constitution provides a number of paths by which Congress can restrain and discipline a rogue court.

It can impeach and remove justices. It can increase or decrease the size of the court itself (at its inception, the Supreme Court had only six members). It can strip the court of its jurisdiction over certain issues or it can weaken its power of judicial review by requiring a supermajority of justices to sign off on any decision that overturns a law. Congress can also rebuke the court with legislation that simply cancels the decision in question.

In the face of a reckless, reactionary and power-hungry court, Congress has options. The problem is politics. Despite the arrogance of the current Supreme Court — despite its almost total lack of democratic legitimacy — there is little to no appetite within the Democratic Party for a fight over the nature of the court and its place in our constitutional system. For many Democrats, President Roosevelt’s attempt to expand the size of the court is less a triumph than a cautionary tale — a testament to the limits of presidential leadership and presidential power.
[…]
It will take time to build the kind of power and consensus needed to make significant changes to the court. But even the work of amassing that power and putting that consensus together can stand as a credible threat to a Supreme Court that has acted, under conservative control, as if it stands above the constitutional system, unaccountable to anyone other than itself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/opinion/supreme-court-constitution.html

…but it seems like interesting times is what we’re stuck with for the forseeable

Over the last three decades, I have witnessed a dismal saga of opportunism, fanaticism, mendacity, concupiscence, hypocrisy and cowardice. This is a story about men gaining power by trading away something that meant little to them compared with their own stature: the rights of women.
[…]
The warnings were clear even then. Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio threatened to investigate Judge Thomas’s record on abortion, saying, “I will not support yet another Reagan-Bush Supreme Court nominee who remains silent on a woman’s right to choose and then ascends to the court to weaken that right.”
[…]
Three months later, Anita Hill told her story to Congress about her boss, Thomas, tormenting her with unwanted attention and dirty talk about the pornographic films he liked to watch. Joe Biden was the chairman of those Senate hearings.

He let Hill be viciously ripped apart by Republicans and then abruptly ended the hearings, canceling the appearance of her two corroborating witnesses. Many senators on the committee — composed entirely of white men — privately thought it was an office romance gone wrong. Poor guy, they said among themselves, no point in letting his life be ruined by someone they thought, with absolutely no evidence, was a vengeful ex. Hill was smeared as a perjuring erotomaniac, and Biden, wasting a Democratic Senate majority, allowed a liar, a pervert and a sexual harasser to be elevated to a lifetime seat on the court.

Women’s rights had to take a back seat to Biden’s desire to foster bipartisanship with his conservative colleagues. And with Thomas, those conservatives got the justice of their dreams, the first in a line of right-wing radicals.

When Donald Trump came along, trailing a history of lurid sexual transgressions, the family-values Republicans and religious right didn’t care. They knew he was the one who could bring them to Valhalla on the Supreme Court.
[…]
Women’s rights had to take a back seat to Trump’s ego and ambition and McConnell’s desire for a conservative court that would pull back the reach of the government, denying protections to Americans who need or value them. They pushed through three conservative justices — one had to defend himself against sexual assault charges and one was in a weird “Handmaid’s Tale”-style sect — and that was checkmate for Roe.
[…]
While his wife ran around helping Trump with his coup, Thomas was the senior firebrand in a coup of extremists on the court. They yanked power away from John Roberts and are defying the majority will in this country in ways that are terrifying.
[…]
The court is out of control. We feel powerless to do anything about it. Clarence Thomas, of all people, has helped lead us to where we are, with unaccountable extremists dictating how we live. And that is revolting.
The Radical Reign of Clarence Thomas [NYT]

…but let’s face it…when it comes to bad faith…a prevailing opinion of a mostly male nature that is prepared to summon the kind of gall required to suggest that when considering matters pertaining to the termination of a pregnancy

“a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification and is thus not subject to the “heightened scrutiny” that applies to such classifications.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/24/us/politics/supreme-court-dobbs-jackson-analysis-roe-wade.html

…yeah…I don’t know if there’s a word for that…but the words that spring to mind…well, let’s just say that if “if you can’t say anything nice” is still a thing…then I guess I’m going to be uncharacteristically quiet on that one

The abortion decision was 6-3 and the guns decision was 6-3, with the three justices appointed by Trump casting the decisive votes.
[…]
Publicly, Trump crowed about the Supreme Court rulings Friday in a triumphant statement released through his super PAC, blasting his usual suspects, including Democrats and the news media.
[…]
“This brings everything back to the states where it has always belonged,” Trump said to Fox News. He told Fox that “God made the decision.”
[…]
“Having been given this second chance for life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land,” former vice president Mike Pence said in an interview with Breitbart.
[…]
Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff and a former director of legislative affairs in the White House, said many advisers were willing to work for Trump because they believed he could make such big changes when it came to the Supreme Court. “We had a president — we weren’t at all sure at that point — who would maybe nominate the right kind of people,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a recent interview.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/trump-publicly-praises-roes-repeal-privately-frets-about-impact/

…still…it may be unpleasant reading…but if you haven’t already read the dissent…I’d argue you probably should…so here it is with all the citations stripped out of it so there’s nothing to distract from the gist of the thing

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/24/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-breyer-sotomayor-kegan