SocraticGadfly: After the Roe reversal, what's next?

June 27, 2022

After the Roe reversal, what's next?

I don't know if Ross Douthat is PERSONALLY challenging the pro-life forces to show they're not a bunch of anti-woman cranks in the wake of Roe being overturned, but he clearly notes, personal stances aside, that it will be a challenge, but there is an opportunity. That said, feminist pro-lifers like the one he mentions are surely as small of a minority in the movement as was the late secularist civil libertarian pro-lifer Nat Hentoff, and none of the six majority-voting justices comes off as anything but the stingy conservatives Douthat mentions.

New Mexico will become an abortion destination of choice for many Texans, but, I don't need the Trib to tell me that it really can't handle that.

Local decriminalization of Texas' soon-to-start "trigger law" could help ease the burden, but that ignores the "sue them" SB8 is also still on the books. And, while Texas doesn't have recall (nor initiative), nonetheless, Kenny Boy Paxton is probably eyeing the legal tools he already has, as well as looking for next year's Lege to give him more against city councils and DAs.

RU-486, etc., as Mimi Swartz notes in wondering what the Texas GOP will target next, is already illegal but hard to enforce.

Meanwhile, as noted before in polls, abortion isn't the hot-button issue for Dems on national issues right now; inflation is. Plus Democraps don't do "politics of outrage" as well as the GOP.

The new gun control bill is better than nothing, but not THAT much. No age increase to buy assault weapons, let alone no bans, and it punts to courts defining exactly who falls in the "boyfriend loophole." Another piece makes clear that, contra claims of negotiating in good faith, GOP senators red-lined these and other things before even starting talks.

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