What is the actual issue in reversing Roe v Wade? Is it murder? Help me out here.

[BamaRefugee]

In trying to do some research, the key phrase I come up with in articles about is "According to the opinion, abortion is “fundamentally different” because it destroys fetal life."
So, do they mean it's murder? Manslaughter? What would the actual crime be called?
The reason I ask is that there appears to be no statute of limitations on murder, and varying amounts of years for manslaughter, so can they go after women years after the "crime"? If they can, it's gonna be chaos, especially as people hopefully turn in all the fundamentalist females who had abortions. (I'm not saying that vindictively, I'm saying fair is fair.)
I really don't know any of the answers here, I've lived the last 50 years of my life not even ever having to wonder about it.
My heart goes out to all who will be affected by this.

[onecaliberal]

1. The crime is what they say it is. It's based on NOTHING. They pull everything from their ass and if

You asked them you’d get 1000 different stories that even Steve king would blush at.

[Walleye]

2. Then they can answer this. How can you murder someone who never existed in the first place?

[cilla4progress]

4. Well, then,

shouldn't the rapist be ordered to pay child support starting when the pregnancy is detected?

[Walleye]

23. According to the constitution person is a citizen once they are born in the United States. Born

[cilla4progress]

24. Excellent

point!

[MichMan]

5. Many jurisdictions charge someone causing the death of a baby inside a pregnant woman with murder.

It isn't at all unusual to charge someone with murder or intentional homicide for shooting or stabbing a pregnant woman causing the death of the baby even if she lives.

[Brenda]

14. Really? How old is the fetus?

If she's stabbed at 6 weeks pregnancy and doesn't even know she's pregnant until the hospital exam, how is that logical at all?

For the trillionth time. Pregnant girl or woman = free human being. Unborn fetus = not a person with consciousness or rights as a human being since it is dependent upon female who has a fully developed brain and consciousness to make decisions about what it is doing to her physical body.

[MichMan]

17. It may be limited to what is considered viable. Dont know.

I personally don't have a problem charging someone stabbing a pregnant woman, thus causing her baby to die a month before birth, with murder.

According to post 6, it is 24 weeks in New York

[Brenda]

30. Thanks

for clarifying.

[inthewind21]

25. There have been

several cases or murder charges for the death of an unborn child. Google it. Start with the Scott Peterson trial. This is not a NEW thing. In fact, some have been widely publicized.

[Brenda]

29. I guess my point was WHEN

I know there have been cases of murder for fetuses, but I'm asking when can that be prosecuted?

At conception? At 3 weeks?

Who gets to decide that?

[MichMan]

32. New York state has defined it at 24 weeks, so they for one.

Other states may vary based on the laws passed by their elected legislators

[leftyladyfrommo]

21. Causing the death of a wanted child is a whole different

ball game.

[MichMan]

31. My reply was in response to Post #2 whose assertion made no distinction

[leftyladyfrommo]

33. I think some people don't make that distinction. But

maybe they just haven't thought this all through, yet.

The ripples just keep spreading out. It's like an oil spill.

[Thomas Hurt]

3. It isn't about the fetus.

Birth control, abortion, welfare, are a means by which, as the christofascist see it, people avoid the just and natural divine punishment for committing sins. When technology and government policy or laws interfere and God does nothing, the christofascists have decided they should be God and remove what interferes with STDs, pregnancy and starving.

[unblock]

7. Ex post facto

The gestational slave states are enacting new laws now or have trigger laws that went into effect as soon as roe was overturned.

Reinterpreting old murder laws to apply to fetuses would be ex post facto, given that abortion was understood to be, um, "settled law".

Could the fascists ignore that and go after people who got abortions prior to dobbs, under the argument that abortion was always murder? I suppose, but I think that would be too extreme and politically disastrous for republicans.

They'll have their hands full enough invading privacy trying to find and punish women in real time without digging up old abortions.

[Freddie]

8. They completely ignore, or belittle, the physical risk of childbearing

That, to me, is why choice MUST remain. To force a woman to risk her life against her will is a violation of HER “personhood.” The rights of the actual human must supersede the “rights” of the potential human.
Childbearing is difficult, dangerous, potentially fatal. It should be entered into joyously and willingly. To force childbearing against her will is nothing less than state-mandated slavery. Slow-motion rape.
Of course the RWNJs totally discount the woman. Like she doesn’t exist, except to be a vessel. And with this SC decision, I feel that every woman in the country has been beaten, with the reminder that yes, men ARE superior and don’t you ever dare to think otherwise.
Fuck that.

[LuckyCharms]

9. The actual issue?

In my opinion is:

1) Create severe chaos and national unrest.

2) Increase the population of white people in the US, vs. the population of people of color.

3) Exert a godlike control over the bodies of women. This includes the banning of birth control.

4) Worsen the already horrendous rate of pregnancy related deaths among black women.

5) Eventually gut every single right available currently for LGBTQ+ individuals.

They couldn't care less about a fetus, or whatever the term is for a group of cells that precludes them from being classified as a fetus.

[Hugin]

16. Zygote.

NOUN

biology

a diploid cell resulting from the fusion of two haploid gametes; a fertilized ovum.

A fertilized ovum. Non specialized.

[Model35mech]

20. Well, according to Cell Theory, all cells come from previously living cells.

Within that theory the notion of when Life began skips back more than six hundred of millions of years. Which is to say from a scientific biological perspective life doesn't begin at conception. Life continues. After the union 2 living gametes there there is a transformation from haploid genome of the gametes to a union of genomes yielding a diploid living entity.

But really that hardly matters

What SCOTUS really did was apply the 5 vote rule... when there are 5 votes for a decision, that decision rules.

And that decisive rule was the product of 5 very conservative catholics who in an anti-majoritorial ruling put catholic (frankly extreme Opus Dei conservative fidelity) ahead of the Constitution. SCOTUS has nowcome to be more powerful than the Pope in being able to act in the US as infallible adjudicators of christofascist doctrine as it applies to matters of the American Founders intentions in the constitution and the application of conservative views of morality to US Law.

A consequence of what they have done is to completely undermine rulings about doctrinal and moral issues emerging from evolving modernity that was unknown at the writing of the Constitution.

[Runningdawg]

19. They will be sterilizing by force soon and there will be labor camps for LGBTQ and foster kids.

This has ALWAYS been their plan. I grew up listening to my church plan ALL OF THIS and MORE.

[inthewind21]

27. #2

I believe is THE issue.

[LexVegas]

10. 1. Controlling women 2. Controlling women 3. Exerting control over women. nt

[meadowlander]

22. Yes, yes, and yes.

1. A 16 or 17 year old girl knocked up by her high school boyfriend and forced to have the kid will be more likely to marry him.
2. Women cannot "go behind the backs" of men who impregnated them and terminate the pregnancy without their consent.
3. A married woman with "as many kids as God sends" is less likely to leave her husband because she can't, as a solo parent, support six or seven kids.
4. A woman with "as many kids as God sends" is less likely to pursue higher education, get a job, and compete with men in the workplace.

It's about forcing young girls who make a mistake or who are raped to deal with the consequences and economic fallout for the rest of their lives and to keep them trapped with men who abuse them and see them as a means to an end.

[Hortensis]

11. The opinion reportedly runs about 100 pages, but apparently this

court's ultraconservative majority can find no inherent right to privacy or personal autonomy in the Constitution and believes the Roe court's interpretations claiming they did exist were "egregiously wrong," "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority."

[PuraVidaDreamin]

12. It does not matter.

It's a privacy issue. END of STATEMENT

[PTWB]

13. That isn't how that works.

The Government is prohibited from making an act illegal and then convicting people who performed that act before it was made illegal.

[yonder]

15. Cross posting this excellent DU answer from upthread:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216854471

[usonian]

18. I think it goes back to the 60's and the backlash against "liberals"

Typified by long hair, free sex, hence the birth control and abortion business, but really (you guessed it) CIVIL RIGHTS.

EVERYTHING on the right gets back to racism. Make no mistake. Everything else is a cover for it.

And being defined by "If they're for it, I'm against it", they are a party of NOTHING.

That accounts for switching over time on issues. RR and DT were liberals.

Qristians got on board for the secular power, because their power of gentle persuasion was failing massively.

So there you are, the Three R's of the Republcans.

• Racism
• Racism, and
• Racism

Sometimes camouflaged.
Like the ones in black robes OVER THEIR WHITE ONES.

[onenote]

26. By "actual issue" are you asking about the legal rationale underlying Dobbs -something I don't see

addressed in any of the posts?

If that's what you're asking, the answer in a nutshell is as follows: first, the majority concluded that the right to an abortion is not a "fundamental constitutional right," rejecting the legal analysis applied in Roe and Casey, which relied principally on cases finding substantive rights in the due process clause. Second, having rejected the precedents finding that a woman's right to an abortion is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution, the Court applied the "rational basis" test that it uses generally to determine whether a legislative act is a legitimate exercise of the state's regulatory power. The Court concluded that in such a case, the Court is required to give deference to and not substitute its own judgment for that of the state provided that there is a "rational basis" for the government's action. The Court found such rational basis in the Mississippi's asserted interest in the protection of maternal health and safety; the elimination of particularly gruesome or barbaric medical procedures; the preservation of the integrity of the medical profession; the mitigation of fetal pain; and the prevention of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability." As indicated the Court simply accepted these asserted interests as legitimate and consistent with a complete ban on abortion except "in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality."

It doesn't mean abortion is "murder" or "manslaughter" or any other specific crime unless a state decides to make it so.

And just so there is no mistake about my views, I think the majority's analysis of the constitution and its rational interest analysis in Dobbs were fundamentally flawed.

[BamaRefugee]

34. Thank you.

[Ms. Toad]

28. You're asking two different questions.

As to criminal prosecution and statutes of limitation -

Crimes have to be defined in advance of their commission, with enough certainty so someone who wants to abide by the laws knows what they have to do in order to avoid committing a crime.

If there are Zombie laws which previoiusly made abortion a crime, which returned to life as of last Friday, and which are not subject to statutes of limitations it is possible there could be retroactive prosecutions. Retroactivity about constitutionality typically comes in two parts: First declaring the un/constitutionality of something and second deciding if that declaration is retroactive or not. The justices seem to be signaling that in this case it will be (the language about Roe being wrongfully decided - i.e. it was never unconstituitional to ban abortion). Obergefell, for example, has been interpreted as retroactive (i.e. it was always unconstitutional to prohibit same gender marriage - so you could amend your tax returns as far back as amendments were permitted; for SS purposes marriages recognized by Obefgefell were treated as beginning on their actual start date - mine is likely 1981 under the old Ohio common-law marriage statutes. If that is the case here, it is possible that there would be prosecutions under a zombie law. But a state can't create a law now to punish behavior which took place years ago.

As to the "actual issue," that is complicated. Legally Roe has always been a balancing act between two competing interests: Privacy rights for women and families about medical care and childbearing versus the interest of the state in protecting a fetus which can - at some point during pregnancy - live independent of the woman inside of whom it is growing.

Roe drew a line at third trimester - the point at which the fetus could (then) survive if born. It weighted the woman's privacy right as most important before that line, but weighted the state's interest in protecting the life of a fetus which could survive without the woman's womb more heavily after viability. Still a balancing act - but near universal choice before viability but after viability a state could choose to weight the interest of a healthy fetus resulting from a voluntary act of sex (for example) more heavily than the right of the woman who delayed making the choice to have an abortion for several months.