I am not hopeful.
But.
Yeah. Here’s hoping that the wake up call shakes the Dems to their very bones. Especially the bones in their spines.
Common Law and the Criminalization of Abortion
Abortion was not always a crime. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, abortion of early pregnancy was legal under common law.[22]Abortions were illegal only after “quickening,” the point at which a pregnant woman could feel the movements of the fetus (approximately the fourth month of pregnancy). The common law’s attitude toward pregnancy and abortion was based on an understanding of pregnancy and human development as a process rather than an absolute moment. Indeed, the term abortion referred only to the miscarriages of later pregnancies, after quickening. What we would now identify as an early induced abortion was not called an “abortion” at all. If an early pregnancy ended, it had “slipp[ed] away,” or the menses had been “restored.”[23] At conception and the earliest stage of pregnancy before quickening, no one believed that a human life existed; not even the Catholic Church took this view.[24] Rather, the popular ethic regarding abortion and common law were grounded in the female experience of their own bodies.
Colonial and early-nineteenth-century women, historians have learned, perceived conception as the “blocking” or “obstructing” of menstruation, which required attention. The cessation of the menses indicated a worrisome imbalance in the body and the need to bring the body back into balance by restoring the flow. This idea of menstruation corresponded with medical and popular understanding of sickness and health. The body was a delicate system of equilibrium that could easily be thrown out of balance—by a change in weather or diet, for example—and that then needed to be restored through active interven-
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tion. A disruption in the healthy body, in the worldview of patients and physicians, required a visible, often violent, physical response to treatment in order to restore equilibrium. This theory underlay eighteenth-and nineteenth-century regular medical practice, which emphasized heroic measures—bleeding, blistering, purging, and puking—in response to sickness. The response to the blocking of the menses was part of this shared understanding of the body: women took drugs in order to make their menses regular and regarded the ensuing vomiting and evacuation as evidence of the drugs’ effective action.[25]
Restoring the menses was a domestic practice. The power of certain herbs to restore menstruation was widely known. One colonial woman who feared pregnancy had “twice taken Savin; once boyled in milk and the other time strayned through a Cloath.” Savin, derived from juniper bushes, was the most popular abortifacient and easily acquired since junipers grew wild throughout the country. Other herbs used as abortifacients included pennyroyal, tansy, ergot, and seneca snakeroot. Slave women used cottonroot. Many of these useful plants could be found in the woods or cultivated in gardens, and women could refer to home medical guides for recipes for “bringing on the menses.”[26]
Both of these concepts, blocked menses and quickening, must be taken seriously by late-twentieth-century observers. Blocked menses cannot be dismissed as an excuse made by women who knew they were pregnant. Quickening was a moment recognized by women and by law as a defining moment in human development. Once quickening occurred, women recognized a moral obligation to carry the fetus to term. This age-old idea underpinned the practice of abortion in America. The legal acceptance of induced miscarriages before quickening tacitly assumed that women had a basic right to bodily integrity.
By the mid-eighteenth century, the most common means of inducing abortion—by taking drugs—was commercialized. The availability of abortifacients was so well-known that a common euphemism described their use. When Sarah Grosvenor, a Connecticut farm girl, confided to her sister in 1742 that she was “taking the trade,” her sister understood.[27] That Grosvenor successfully conveyed her meaning to her sister in three metaphoric words tells us a great deal about the world of mid-eighteenth-century New England. Many New Englanders, including these sisters, knew of the possibility of inducing an abortion by purchasing and ingesting drugs. The need for a euphemism tells of the difficulty of speaking openly about sex and reproductive control and of the need for secrecy. Yet it reveals an awareness that women could and
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did regulate their own fertility through abortion. Furthermore, abortifacients had become a profitable product sold by doctors, apothecaries, and other healers.
The first statutes governing abortion in the United States, James Mohr has found, were poison control measures designed to protect pregnant women like Grosvenor by controlling the sale of abortifacient drugs, which often killed the women who took them. The proliferation of entrepreneurs who openly sold and advertised abortifacients may have inspired this early legislation, passed in the 1820s and 1830s. The 1827 Illinois law, which prohibited the provision of abortifacients, was listed under “poisoning.”[28]
It is crucial to recognize what these early-nineteenth-century laws did not cover: they did not punish women for inducing abortions, and they did not eliminate the concept of quickening.[29] Even as poison control measures, they said nothing about growing the plants needed in one’s own garden or mixing together one’s own home remedy in order to induce an abortion. The legal silence on domestic practices suggests that the new laws were aimed at the commercialization of this practice and, implicitly, retained to women the right to make their own decisions about their pregnancies before quickening.
By the 1840s, the abortion business boomed. Despite the laws forbidding the sale of abortifacients, they were advertised in the popular press and could be purchased from physicians or pharmacists or through the mail. If drugs failed, women could go to a practitioner who specialized in performing instrumental abortions. Advertisements and newspaper exposés made it appear that what had been an occasional domestic practice had become a daily occurrence performed for profit in northern cities. Madame Restell, for example, openly advertised and provided abortion services for thirty-five years. Restell began her abortion business in New York City in the late 1830s; by the mid-1840s, she had offices in Boston and Philadelphia and traveling agents who sold her “Female Monthly Pills.” Restell became the most infamous abortionist in the country, but she was not the only abortionist.[30] The clientele of these busy clinics were primarily married, white, native-born Protestant women of the upper and middle classes.[31]
The fuck? That was an issue as late as 1923?
The multi-party system isn’t as much of a bulwark as it seems.
The problem is that there are only two parties that could form the government, and the “Conservative Party” is really the Tea Party North. They pretend that they’re positioned where the Progressive Conservatives were, but are really far to the right of that.
The Bloc and NDP are spoilers, making a minority CPC government unlikely, but if we hit an election cycle with high unrest, and fatigue with the Liberals, then a Conservative majority is possible with first past the post splitting the left, and only then will the masks come off, and abortion, same-sex marriage, etc, will suddenly be back on the table.
Whatever they pass will face a rocky road through the courts, but until it’s struck down, it’ll be the law. When it falls, pass another one.
The long term plan is to politicize the Canadian courts, but it’ll take a while before the Runnymede Society has the influence of the Federalist Society, of which it’s a carbon copy.
Don’t think it can’t happen in Canada too just because only a fringe wants it.
https://trashpanda-x.github.io/dougwiki/#CPC%20and%20Abortion
The liberal base reacting to her in her district today
Yeah, the alleged draft opinion almost agrees with that text about this far:
During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, abortion of early pregnancy was legal under common law.[22] Abortions were illegal only after “quickening,” the point at which a pregnant woman could feel the movements of the fetus
Apart from the major distinction that they claim that abortion even before quickening was actually unlawful in some unspecified sense.
They rely there on commentary indicating that someone giving medicine to a woman to induce an abortion (without mentioning whether this is a ‘quick child’ or not) would be guilty of murder if the woman died.
And a few other judges doing the usual Daily Mail apoplexy in their summing up about how horrible a crime abortion is.
Again without any indication as to whether the cases involved a quick child or not.
Which they do admit in the draft opinion.
I’d say their argument is weak, except so far as saying that the common law clearly did consider abortion a crime after a vaguely determinable point in the pregnancy and therefore there is definite room in US law for some body to determine that abortion is illegal at some point in the pregnancy.
It doesn’t seem to me to help at all with arguments about which body or bodies that should be (states vs. federal) or where the boundaries of legality should lie or how one resolves conflicts between the states’ law and women’s rights to life or bodily autonomy, etc.
But then they’re not looking to have that discussion.
The opinion basically says “Abortion involves the right to life of an unborn child, which is a far more important thing than, say, the right to marry someone of another race or the right not to be forcibly sterilised therefore it’s entirely up to the states to decide”.
Which is a neat bit of fuckery.
Sure, the right not to have your ability to ever bear children taken away is clearly less important than the destruction of
But luckily:
Phew… /s
Thus far, she’s right, so…
Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum
The ideas that this is good for the Dems this fall, or that the GOP never really wanted it because it’s a campaign horse, seem to me like wishful thinking. This is an epochal victory for the American right that empowers them to do more things like it.
The Dems do in fact control government and could kill the filibuster and pass a federal abortion act. But the most likely Dem response to this is going to be "If we did that it’d probably fail and even if we somehow got it over the line the GOP would just reverse it later!! vote for us this fall! " They don’t want to be seen to fight and the idea of cultivating and energizing a base by fighting for them irrespective of broader considerations is alien to them.
Ahh, but you see, he didn’t say anything about six sitting justices!
Yeah, that’s basically what he’s referring to. However, deploying it here is cynical and disingenuous, not empathetic. If he actually gave a fig about black women, he would use the opportunity to call for more funding of women’s heath clinics underserved communities.
Also, it bears no relevance to why abortion was seen as a fundamental right for 50 years. It’s just a cudgel to shame supporters of choice by inference of association.
I know it’s only May, y’all, but maybe we can all chip in to buy her a mug in time for the holidays.
I didn’t mean to imply that it couldn’t happen here. Canada is certainly vulnerable too, as is every democracy everywhere. Just look at the Ottawa trucker hostage situation in February. What I was saying is that the checks and balances that Canada has look a lot stronger right now.
However, every functioning democracy has to rest on a bedrock of norms and conventions, as well as a free and independent press - these things aren’t all codified in constitutions and all it takes is someone willing to throw norms and conventions out the window to undermine everything. A great example in the US was the GOP Senate blocking the confirmation of Merrick Garland.
The minute norms and convention are taken for granted, fascists and authoritarians step in. The CPC certainly seems ready to throw out many norms, but implementing their agenda in the face of a parliamentary, multi-party system will be a challenge. When Harper tried to go the dog-whistle route, he was soundly defeated. I have no doubt that Pollievre will face the same fate, but I’m also not willing to leave it to chance, nor should any Canadian that values democracy.
Need to ask a similar question of all the libertarians who vote republican because of taxes or they just want “less government”. All the Ayn Rand/Elon Musk worshipers need to answer some questions.
That may be why it’s merely a draft. Which means they have a decision ready just waiting for a case. Which of course means they won’t be judging that case on its own merits, but rather are simply waiting for any opportunity they can find.
Six, on the other hand…
I think their answer is pretty clear. “Once the government stops giving all my money to the poors I’ll be so rich I won’t have to worry about *gestures robber-baron-ly* all of this”
