I think that may be whooooosh of the year

I'm just checking the Whoooshometer and yes, I can confirm that that is a world record whoosh.

Mind you, he's wrong. As a point of legal geekery, UK lawyers for decades have used Roe v Wade as an example of courts wrongly crossing the boundary between law and politics. Basically what happened was that the Court got annoyed with the politicians in the US who were refusing to face up to the issue of abortion and refusing to campaign on a stance legalising it. They were all too scared of the Catholic/Evangelical lobbies. So nothing was being done and they were looking enviously at Europe, where parliaments had engaged, argued, debated, campaigned and passed laws which were acceptable to their own societies. Because that just wasn't happening in the States the Court decide to engage in a very sketchy reinterpretation of the constitution to remedy the cowardice of politicians.

The trouble is, it doesn't work. Have you ever wondered why abortion just isn't an issue in European politics? It's because back in the 60s we grappled with it and we got societal buy in to the solution. That never happened in the US and a large chunk of the populace just never bought into an abortion law that they never got a chance to vote for. It was just imposed on them by judges.

So this Supreme Court is widely regarded in the UK as having been RIGHT to reverse Roe v Wade, and to say "this isn't a legal issue, it's a societal and political issue, and we're kicking it back to society and politicians". So now abortion rights are becoming a thing in US politics again and people will argue and debate and campaign and vote (usually on a state by state basis) and they will hammer out the political solutions which work for them and which they can live with as a society. That's what happened here, and it's worked.

Posted By: Old Git on November 6th 2024 at 22:19:46

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