So, in keeping with a line of cases most recently exemplified by Washington v. Glucksberg (a right-to-die case), Alito demanded of the respondents (Jackson Women’s Health) that they establish not merely that bans on abortion were an imposition on liberty, but that there existed constitutional and statutory resistance to such bans at the time of the drafting of the US Constitution, or, failing that, at the time of the passage of the 14th Amendment upon which pregnant persons rely to defend against state and local limitations on the right to choose for oneself whether to carry a pregnancy to term or to seek an abortion.
Alito found that there was no constitutional or statutory resistance to abortion bans established by 1789 or even by 1868. And he has some examples to back that up. Let’s not fool ourselves that there’s no such thing as a coherent argument against a federal constitutional right to abortion in the USA. I think it’s a bad argument, but it’s at least coherent. Alito isn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene or Paul Gosar or Rand Paul.
But the historically-based reasoning of Glucksberg as employed in Alito’s decision leaves out crucial context, and that is that while abortion rights were not protected before the civil war, and while the law journals of prominent law schools didn’t have published articles asserting or even requesting a defense of abortion rights until after World War II, the people tasked with protecting rights – the appellate judges and ultimately the supreme court justices of the United States – included 0 women until 1934, when one woman was appointed to 1 circuit court of appeal. It wasn’t until after World War II that there was a single federal trial judge in the district courts.
To put it bluntly: the right to abortion has been protected for longer than women have been permitted to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States. To this day we have never had a woman Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The reasoning of Roe has frequently been criticized as muddy, but when I read Roe, one thing that I believe those 8 men were trying to examine is, “Would abortion rights have been considered fundamental if women were considered people, considered valid authorities able to determine as well as men what was necessary for the ‘ordered liberty’ the court categorizes as essential to the democratic functioning of the United States?”
Alito would have us skip that question. Alito ignores that women were not considered persons, capable of contract and of holding property. Women were not considered capable of democratic self-determination throughout the period Alito examines. To expect the record of a country’s history during which women were not allowed the right to choose anything for themselves to reflect deep respect for a woman’s right to choose pregnancy or abortion is the grossest perversion of honest investigation.
Alito attempts (in at least one place that I remember from my first reading of this draft Dobbs decision) to distinguish the question of abortion as a question of so-called “substantive due process” and thus as a question of whether or not abortion is “intrinsic to ordered liberty”, meaning that it was a liberty with a “deeply rooted” history of legal protection within the early history of the United States and its forerunner colonies. He goes as far as to say that being pregnant is not a “sex based classification” for the purposes of the court. The import here is that he is trying – most desperately – to avoid any equal protection argument.
But the truth is that the very concept of “ordered liberty” fraught with equal protection problems for an originalist such as Alito. How can one say that the worship practices of Santeria are protected under such an analysis. For if you examine the record of protections (or lack thereof) for traditional African spiritual practices, you will find that Santeria is no more a religious classification than being pregnant is a sex-based one. Why, then, should a First Amendment analysis apply? And why should Santeria practitioners expect their practices to be protected equally with those of Catholicism’s practitioners? The history tells us that Santeria was not a “religion” in the meaning of the framers, and further that protection of Santeria cannot now be granted on the basis of the 14th amendment since there is no history of protecting its practices before the US civil war. One might attempt an equal protection argument, but Alito’s reasoning is clear: equal protection only applies when discussing two classifications within the same larger category. With Santeria determined not to be a religion to the minds of the elite landed men during the early history of White North America, there is no religion to which Santeria can be fairly compared.
In short: equal protection and “ordered liberty” cannot be fully divorced, and the plain language of the 14th Amendment prohibits much that was quite normal (and normalized) at the time. Different levels of analysis (rational basis tests, strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and even “rational basis with teeth”) seem to arise in US Jurisprudence more to excuse the court from the responsibility of applying the obvious meaning of this most modern-relevant Reconstruction amendment than they do in order to justify applying the power of the courts.
Glucksberg and its predecessors were never cases with which I was happy, but Alito’s decision in Dobbs makes clear exactly where they lead: to an artificial parsing of liberty, of due process, of privileges and immunities, as separate from the context of equal protection -a guarantee contained within the very same sentence. Dobbs is an immediate threat only to rights supported by precedent drawing upon the Due Process clause, but the longer term threat comes from this notion that due process can be fully explored, explained, and protected without reference to the entirely separate concept of equal protection. And in this Originalist separation we find that liberty is exactly what the drafters of the constitution thought it was: a privilege of white men.
I leave the final thoughts to the incomparable Pamela Means:
Its bloody grim but Ithink well, what I’ve just written here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/05/03/the-supreme-court-is-broken/comment-page-1/#comment-2132708
In short this is a Juduicial coup and needs to be treated as such with those behind it quite literally seen as and treated as internal domestic enemies and traitors against the People of the USA.
Yes, I’m serious. Yes I think McConnell and Trump have done a “Palpatine” – captured and destroyed a state by stealth using deception to gain illegitimate power to use a fictional analogy.
This all seems heavily slanted toward state’s rights – to the degree that states should be able to function as fully independent countries, even. Your state wants to behead queers and keep women in permanent bondage? Reinstate slavery for black folks? Every moral decision should be solely in the hands of states states states. No such thing as universal human rights, that’s UN talk. No blue beret one world gubmints will tell us what to do.
The plus side of them taking that approach means blue states are welcome to become better places than they currently are. Maybe run refugee programs and underground railroads and the like? Apply economic pressure to coerce nazi states to ease up on their victims? But it’s still pretty wild that some stone age freaks in black robes wanna turn the Midwest into Saudi Arabia faster than global warming can.
“This all seems heavily slanted toward state’s rights”
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“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
there are no constitutional amendments re: traffic laws, are there? some state should go full mad max with those, just to show how independent they are.
“some state should go full mad max”
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Typically, voters will tend to try and preserve normalcy. I suppose that is why letting states settle hot moral issues upsets some people.
GAS #4
Yeah, it’s weird in the USA. We think of ‘states’ as kind of like counties, but originally, they were countRies in their own right and still are enshrined that way in much USA law.
When I was a teenager, I actually became a legal drinker three times! I grew up in Arizona where the drinking age was 19, but I spent a summer in Dallas, Texas where the legal age was 18 (if you were in a wet county, Dallas was half and half). Then I went back to Arizona and had to wait a few weeks to become legal again. About a year later I took a job in California, where the drinking age was 21, so I spent another year looking for store clerks who wouldn’t card me for my six-pack. (This may seem like a weird diversion, but I do have a point.) Then, the US Department of Transportation told all the states, “You can set any drinking age you want, but if you want our transportation money, you will set it it at 21. Badda bing badda boom, NOW all states have a uniform drinking age of 21.
So, sometimes the federal USA government can dictate to the states, but sometimes they must bribe their way to what they want.
@txpiper:
No. Voters’ desire for normalcy is not it at all. What even is the point of this comment?
Why would Alito consider that a problem?
Wow, txpiper is a blast from the past.
@Crip Dyke: You might not remember, but txpiper is a Young Earth Creationist (or was in 2013; I don’t know if he’s updated his beliefs since then). He was banned from Pharyngula for this racebaiting comment and subsequent doubling down.
Thanks, Owlmirror. I was trying to find that.
@moarscienceplz #4
Minor quibble. A legislative vote was required. From Wiki:
“What even is the point of this comment?”
.
Just pointing out that whether it is traffic laws or some other issue, there aren’t really a lot of examples of states going “full mad max”.
==
“I don’t know if he’s updated his beliefs since then”
.
I have not. But in regards to origins and related, I have narrowed my focus to pretty much one issue.
No, txpiper, you weren’t “just pointing [that out]”. I’m not one to stand much on tone, but I do rather like to insist on honesty in my little corner of the internet.
Whatever you were “pointing out” you were ALSO saying that the thing you were pointing out is
But this is not true at all. There is a long history in the US of states “settl[ing] hot moral issues” by abusing minorities and their allies. It was representatives of the state of Mississippi, using the authority granted to them by Mississippi statutes and constitutional provisions, that killed two jews and a black man for daring to travel to the state for the purpose of helping people register to vote.
People in NY want to know that they can freely travel to Mississippi without getting killed or otherwise abused by the government, and likewise for people in Mississippi in relation to traveling to New York.
The rationale for having minimum national standards for the rights of US citizens and permanent residents isn’t “well, we’ve never gone mad max, so I guess we’re going to have to have some federal rights to go with the state-granted rights that never seem to be violated.”
The rationale is that we have actual history with leaving this shit up to the states and the states abused that trust. If you’re not aware of that history, I can help you.
But whatever you do, don’t say that you were “just” doing one thing when you were clearly doing something else.
It’s extremely rare that I ban someone that I have previously let comment, but engage in dishonesty here and you might make me willing to ban someone again.
“It was representatives of the state of Mississippi, using the authority granted to them by Mississippi statutes and constitutional provisions, that killed two jews and a black man for daring to travel to the state for the purpose of helping people register to vote.”
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The murderers were federally prosecuted and convicted, but I don’t believe that the klansmen involved acted in accordance with Mississippi law.
States rights?
Huh. That sounds familar.
Also mnoral issue? No. basic human rightsand freedom issue. Like slavery.
Forced Birth is female slavery. Controlling women’s bodies enslaves them.
“Txpiper”” do you support slavery?
Yes, you (& your ilk) effectively do.
Do you get what that is and means?
I doubt it. I’m not going to claim to do so myself even.
@14. txpiper : I don’t believe that the klansmen involved acted in accordance with Mississippi law.
The letter of that law in its technical wording or the “spirit” of that law and the racist, apartheid nightmare of a culture behind it that like modern Republicans ignores the actual law when it suits them?
What do you believe txpiper?
Do you believe people should control their own bodies and what happens to and inside them?
Yes or no or maybe?
“What do you believe txpiper?”
.
I believe that our amendable constitution says that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Yes, txpiper, yes.
Now do you see why people might not trust the STATES when historically it has required FEDERAL action to protect such basic rights?
And in any case, you haven’t responded to what I said about your evasion.
You said that something was the reason why we don’t trust states to legislate “hot moral issues”. Then you denied that you were saying such a thing, and insisted that you were “just” pointing out that states don’t usually go MadMax.
If you would like to continue commenting here, I need an acknowledgement that
1) I noticed the dishonesty in saying you were “just” saying one thing when you were saying much more than that
and
2) dishonesty here can get you banned
I welcome honest conversation partners that disagree with me. I do not welcome dishonest ones that say something and then turn around and deny that they said it.
Crip Dyke,
.
Thank you for your warnings.
You said that:
“It was representatives of the state of Mississippi, using the authority granted to them by Mississippi statutes and constitutional provisions, that killed two jews and a black man”.
That implies that Mississippi law authorized those murders, and I don’t think that is a fair appraisal.
I didn’t deny anything. I was responding to Great American Satan’s comment. I expressed my supposition that some people assume that state legislatures will pass extreme laws. In my opinion, that anxiety is unwarranted. I think, as with traffic laws, a general norm will probably be adopted if the issue of abortion goes back to the states.
==
Owlmirror, if you are still in touch with David Marjanović, tell him I said hello.
No. It states what we know to be true: that law enforcement officers used the powers granted to them by the state of Mississippi to pull over James Chaney. Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Without the grant of power from the state, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner would not have needed to stop their car and would never have delivered themselves into the control of their murderers.
I also note (as you did, implicitly) that after the murder, the State of Mississippi permitted the murders to go unpunished.
States have empowered people who abuse others, then protected the people they empower from the consequences of engaging in that abuse.
That’s factual history. There’s good fucking reason not to trust the states to set the standard for respect of rights.
And as for this:
Let’s not forget that the current Florida legislature passed forward a bill criminalizing giving a thirsty person a sip of water if you were standing next to them waiting in line to vote. You may fully believe that anxiety is unwarranted, but when legislatures are so extreme that they want to criminalize giving water to the thirsty, I’m going to continue to believe that you’re way to naive for your own good.
Also, too, this link might be relevant.
“Let’s not forget that the current Florida legislature passed forward a bill criminalizing giving a thirsty person a sip of water if you were standing next to them waiting in line to vote.”
.
Can you provide a reference link for this legislation?
From Politico:
Scuse me. Georgia passed such a law. Florida passed it out of committee, but then amended it before it could become law after a massive popular outcry.
I see that txpiper did not acknowledge either of the two points Crip Dyke asked them to acknowledge here:
Just sayin’.
Yes, @txpiper, and one of the powers that HAVE been delegated to the United States by the Constitution, is the power to enforce US constitutional rights on US soil. Including the right of all persons to be secure in their persons.
I expressed my supposition that some people assume that state legislatures will pass extreme laws.
That’s not something we “assume,” pal, that’s something we’ve been OBSERVING. Have you been paying attention AT ALL?
@Raging Bee:
One does wonder, doesn’t one?
@cubist:
txpiper did say:
That’s sufficient to my purposes, so I’m not going to worry about that one anymore. But I will be paying attention, especially in light of Owlmirror’s helpful link. (Thanks btw, Owlmirror!)
@17. txpiper : That doesn’t answer all the question I asked you which included :
1) Txpiper”” do you support slavery?
2) Do you get what that is and means?
3) Do you believe people should control their own bodies and what happens to and inside them?
Yes or no or maybe?
PS. @17 . txpiper : Quoting a line from the USA’s Constituition is hardly a complete or satisfactory. It is also rather contradictory given that the majority of the American people support women’s bodily autonomy uie abortion but some states do not just a smost iof teh Amercian People chose HRC as PORTUS in2016 but senough small but excessively influential states do not thus overuidinmg the wihes of teh people in installing Trumpas POTUS against their wishes to use an example.
It seems there is a contradiction where States rights exceed the People’s rights and the line you quoted makes that clear. Where the wishes of the states contradicts the wishes of the people who should get their way in your view?
It might be worth noting that this flawed system was set up delibrately to allow the slave states the specific right to have slaves and own and exploit people as property. states Also that the USA has changed a lot since 1789 mostly for the better especially inregard tothe issues of slavery, women’s rights, queer rights and ethnic diversity. (Native American First Peoples aside)
Apologies – typo fix here :
It is also rather contradictory given that the majority of the American people support women’s bodily autonomy i.e. abortion but some states do not. Just as most of the American People chose HRC as POTUS in 2016 but enough small but excessively influential states did not thus overiding the wishes of the American People and imposing Trump as POTUS against their wishes to use an example.
Should a handful of people in a few regressive states over rule the wishes of the majority of the American People in your view?
Your cited line from an outdated and contradictory 18th Century document says States or People but when they clash and you have to pick one – which is it?
StevoR,
#26
1) Yes, but only as as a punishment for convicted criminals, in accordance with the thirteenth amendment. However, I prefer the solution prescribed in Genesis 9:6 for premeditated murder.
2) Yes, which is why I prefer free enterprise and resist socialism.
3) Yes. Common morality expects people to control their own bodies. As it pertains to abortion, my views are complex, ignorable and irrelevant.
==
#28
“Should a handful of people in a few regressive states over rule the wishes of the majority of the American People in your view?”
.
Our country was designed to function as a collection of independent republics. The nature of democratic self-rule pretty much guarantees that my personal views will rarely be adopted as policy.
.
“…document says States or People but when they clash and you have to pick one – which is it?”
.
I don’t see a conflict. Some issues can and should be managed by elected representatives, and others by referendum. Where I live, bond issues are frequently on the ballot.
Our country was designed to function as a collection of independent republics.
No, it’s not. We tried that, it failed miserably, so the Founders designed a national government that united the states more tightly than they had been before: a Union instead of a Confederation.
@29. txpiper :
Wow. So slavery is okay for felons -or IOW slavery is ok.
Yeah, I googled Genesis 9:6 :
Source : https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%209%3A6&version=NIV
A bible verse. Wher ethe inference literally does NOT follow from the assertion making ita non-sequiteur and appeal to a non-exitent diety and holy book I don;t believe in nor I think most here believ in so ..basically no good reason..
Equivalent to arguibng here that Huitzilopochtli said we need human hearts carved out of human sacrifices toget our sun to rise so let’s carve up thsoe captured POW right now on the alter ‘coz logic.. & the Popul Vuh ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popol_Vuh ) proves it.
To mix mesoamerican cultures – Aztecs vs Mayans – & with apologies to them.
Socialism doesn’t mean slavery and I can tell you don’t get what either slavery or socialism means at all.
Where do I even start here? Go googel, go imanigine and try empathising withthose whoare enslaved and go figure.
Yet here you here arguing them kinda? Anyhow. As for the first part, okay they are complex. Care to elaborate and explain what they ar eand wht the complexities you see are?
Because person gets to decide for themself what happens to their own body seems pretty straightforward to me.
Fn typos. Guessing y’all get gist anyhow?
@29. txpiper : “1) Yes, (to slavery – ed.) but only as as a punishment for convicted criminals, in accordance with the thirteenth amendment. However, I prefer the solution prescribed in Genesis 9:6 for premeditated murder.”
What if the convictions are wrongful and the people you’ve just condemned to slavery are actually innocent?
As we know has horribly often happened in regard to the death penalty?
@29.
If they aren’t? Then what?
I gave you an example in #27. One of many possible examples.
Where the wishes of individual states and the wishes of the majority of the individuals who are citizens of the USA conflict, which do you go with? Majority of indvidual human beings or US States?
I don;t think you actually answered that and am asking you to do so please.
I don’t see a conflict.
That’s because you’re clearly not looking. “States’ rights” have, throughout US history, been invoked in direct and explicit opposition to nearly all attempts to advance individual rights. Case in point: voter suppression, which is being done ENTIRELY by states.
One of the causes of the Civil War was the notion that slavery was one of those states rights.
Hopefully the women of the US don’t have to declare themselves a sovereign nation and secede in order to be accorded their human rights.
@Raging Bee : txpiper : isn’t just “..not looking” he is actively ignoring examples of where states and people’s rights conflict that have already been explained to him. Making him disingenuous / dishonest I’d say. Maybe he’s just forgetful or overlooking them but .. I doubt it.
Incidentally, it seems this is our txpiper here too :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/05/07/something-is-wrong/
For those who might not read Pharyngula as well here.
StevoR,
“Incidentally, it seems this is our txpiper here too”
.
Yes, and I’m surprised that Myers reacted to my email on his blog. But contrary to his accusation, I have not “been plaguing my email for over a decade”. I never knew, or tried to find out, his email address until May 2 when he published it for his book giveaway.
.
I am not surprised that he referred to this paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919403/
which of course, just announces that “Bat echolocation calls provide remarkable examples of ‘good design’ through evolution by natural selection” and does not mention mutations at all. I stand by my claim that the mutations/selection paradigm is not tested science. It is not something that was discovered. It is just something that has to be believed for the sake of the theory. In this real life, random DNA replication errors and a muscular natural selection fairy cannot produce things like this:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/this-insect-has-the-only-mechanical-gears-ever-found-in-nature-6480908/
Professor Myers will not go anywhere near trying to explain how mutations could accumulate (in populations) until functional, hyper-complex, regulated biological features are formed. And neither will anyone else. The only place this occurs is in peoples’ imaginations.
.
sci·en·tif·ic meth·od | ˈˌsīənˈtifik ˈmeTHəd |
noun
a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses
.
Fairy tales don’t count. Tell PZ I said hey.
==
I will respond to your other inquiries when I have time.
Speaking as a grateful non-American, doesn’t the tenth amendment say “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” ? That latter seems like a much better idea to me! Let the people decide, each for themselves individually, if they want an abortion or not, and it’s nobody else’s business but the one who is actually pregnant.
I think that part of the problem is that the pro- and anti-abortion sides are largely talking past one another. I think most anti-abortion folk don’t care what a woman does with her own body; it’s what she’s doing to the fetus’s body that concerns them. So the allegations that this is misogyny and an attempt to control women, which no doubt contain some truth, are nevertheless largely arguments that convince no one except the already converted. And people who find questions such as this difficult aren’t evil people; they are people who find these to be difficult questions that defy simplistic, slogan-based answers.
I’m a nurse whose sole personal experience with abortion is that I observed one when I was in nursing school. Obviously a zygote isn’t a person, but it would blinking reality to say that personhood doesn’t kick in at some point before birth, and the question is when. Whenever that point is, we are no longer talking just about a woman’s rights; if it’s a person, it has rights too. I think that’s probably sometime in the second trimester, so I would have abortion pretty much on demand until then.
And one thing that bothers a lot of moderates on both sides of the issue, which I almost never hear addressed, is this: Why do we need a million abortions a year when birth control is cheap, readily available, easy to use, and mostly works? We should be living in a world in which there are no new AIDS transmissions since it is widely known how to have sex without transmitting the virus, and the same thing applies here. People know how to have sex without making a baby. It’s entirely predictable what may happen if you have sex without precautions. So, if you don’t want a child, maybe the time to decide that is before you decide to have unprotected sex.
@txpiper: dude, mechanical gears are not “irreducibly complex.”
I stand by my claim that the mutations/selection paradigm is not tested science…
The claim is false, and has been disproven for a very long time now. You can stand by it for the rest of your life, the rest of us will just move on without you. (Also, your asinine and embarrassingly uninformed comments on this thread do your credibility no favors.)
@bluerizlagirl: Yes, the Tenth Amendment does say that; but the right to be secure in our persons is a right described in the US Constitution, and the enforcement of US constitutional rights on US soil is explicitly delegated to the US Government.
@Raging Bee, #39
Professor Myers will not go anywhere near trying to explain how mutations could accumulate (in populations) until functional, hyper-complex, regulated biological features are formed. And neither will you.
I am putting my foot down:
I do not normally police on-topic vs. off-topic, but this is a special case: txpiper, you have been banned from Pharyngula. PZ is not here in this thread and has rarely commented on Pervert Justice anyway. You have directed this thread towards topics that have nothing to do with this thread.
Anyone who wishes to discuss evolution or PZ can pop over to Pharyngula and do exactly that.
Can’t do that because you’re banned? Fine you have a large internet to find your own space.
Here we’re talking about Originalism, Dobbs, and Oblivious, Asshole Patriarchs. Respond to any on-topic comment however you like, but if it’s in a way that’s off topic, that’s it. I don’t want anyone responding to an off topic comment to take us more off topic. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but this blog post about an incredibly important subject is not going to be stolen from me and turned into some hunter’s blind from which to take shots at people who aren’t here, and the freedom I normally allow has led to just that from txpiper.
Anyone who doesn’t like my rules or my topics can get their own blogs.
A Woman of No Importance @39
You almost answered it there…
In the U.S. (probably other places as well…) the same people who want to force pregnant people to carry to term, are also the same people who are trying to restrict access to birth control, and the eliminate sex ed.
hell, in the leaked brief, they pretty much state that they are going to go after access to contraceptives next.
And, as almost everyone else has noted, if they actually care about life, why will they let that child, once born, starve to death, or die from easily preventable/treatable medical conditions? Why refuse exceptions allowing abortions for ectopic pregnancies or other situations that endanger the mother’s life?
Lochaber, No. 44, I could not agree with you more. We need to have high quality sex ed in schools, and any attempts to suppress birth control need to be vigorously resisted. We need to have prenatal care available to all women regardless of income, and neonatal care for newborns. We need a strong social safety net that doesn’t make having a child a financial catastrophe for women. There is data showing that a strong social safety net actually reduces the number of abortions, so you’d think that would be something the pro-lifers would be on board with (but of course a lot of them aren’t, because they don’t actually care as much about children as they would have us believe). You and I are absolutely on the same page on all of that.
McConnell and Schumer are both talking about the possibility of federal legislation. But if the SC decides that this issue should be managed at the state level, I would think that the court would also not approve national codification.
The fact that those who profess to oppose abortion on moral grounds are also against contraception is clear evidence that they are making a religious argument. Birth control is somehow interfering in gawds plans.
Many of the same people also think that the US is a Xtian theocracy.
They are wrong.
I suggest that we create a law that goes to the source of the problem, which is irresponsibility of the sperm making population. 100% of accidental pregnancies are caused by uncontrolled sperm. Let’s make it a crime to impregnate someone without written consent.
You don’t understand the decision if this is you’re takeaway.
SCOTUS is not deciding that the federal government has no power to legislate on abortion.
SCOTUS is deciding that the individual has no right to abortion. Once they make that determination, there’s no impediment to federal legislation, and by virtue of the supremacy clause of the constitution, it would hold in the face of contrary state legislation.
Now it may be that some future SCOTUS would consider the issue of whether the powers granted to the federal government include a sufficient grant to legislate on the issue of abortion, but this isn’t it. You literally have no idea what you’re talking about if you think that this (draft) decision on Dobbs says anything at all about the limits of power that is specifically federal in character.