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[SCOTUS]: Super Fun Happy Times Edition
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I'd appreciate it if you engaged with what I said, not what you think I said.
I personally credit this to Scalia being a pretty good legal writer. If the liberal wing pointed out a minor loophole/objection and Scalia was writing the majority opinion, you could be damn sure he would close it off good. So why anger the bear? Instead keep quiet and let the weaknesses maybe go unnoticed.
Nobody else in the conservative wing had his skill at responding to liberal objections where it mattered.
That is the true loss for the conservative wing.
We are engaging with what you said, in specific your point about proving causality. Once again, Justice Kagan:
The law gets passed, the clinics close. The law gets stayed, the clinics reopen. That's a pretty strong causal argument. And Keller's argument of "but the law wasn't in effect yet" does little to disprove that, because of things like lead times and such.
OK. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Please clarify exactly what you meant with the Keller quotes then.
That quote was posted (As an aside, could you please stop quoting that? I read it on Slate before you even posted the link and you're not Inigo Montoya) and I realized it was wrong. Keller is arguing that 3 (or 7 - but since Planned Parenthood isn't part of the suit I don't believe they're in the 12 to begin with) of the clinics closed early, suggesting they closed for other reasons.
Therefore Slate is wrong (again) since Keller never argued that all 12 were coincidental. He in fact concedes that 9 of them were causal. The other 3 were closed earlier. Later in his comments he also mentions that some of those 3 clinics didn't reopen immediately after the stay.
Is it possible they did close early because of the law and then take time to reopen for logistical reasons? Of course.
Is it possible they closed for another reason and reopened when ready to do so? Of course.
And when we apply William of Occam's shaving apparatus to the question, the matter leans more to the former than the latter.
For the 3 that closed early, they likely had other potential problems that when you added in the new law they figured there was no point trying to sort out the issue when they would be forced to close soon anyway.
Once the stay was granted, it's likely even those clinics tried to find ways to reopen since at that point it was basically guaranteed to go to SCotUS, where they hoped to secure a pro-choice victory, so they reopened.
I pretty much just meant that Keller said them. I was attempting to provide a broader perspective than that from the Slate article, by bringing in what the respondents said.
Agreed. I have no doubt that at least one of those 7 clinics closed because of the regulations - either directly or indirectly. As for the precise number, I don't have sufficient data to determine where in 1-7 it lies.
As I mentioned a few pages back, there is a critical lack of supporting numbers in this case. Several of the Justices called out the petitioners on it, and a good chunk of time was spent trying to guesstimate the level of impact the law will have.
I think this is a good example where Clarence Thomas is right about the value of oral arguments. They make for great headlines but don't do much for the actual analysis of the case. You simply can't go into the detailed financial and organizational necessary to make an informed decision in 40ish minutes of discussion split among three lawyers and eight justices.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Actually, it illustrates the opposite in my opinion. Keller walked into arguments with swagger, thinking he would easily argue his point.
He walked out broken, forced to admit the one thing he didn't want to - that the legislation was purely political.
On the other hand, it's not like anyone seriously thought this wasn't political before the oral arguments.
Yes, but the fig leaf the law rests on to protect it is that it's about patient safety, even if we all know that is a load of gooseshit.
What happened is that the liberal wing of the court spent the better part of an hour tearing that fig leaf up.
My personal opinion is that we get enough of that already, but reasonable people can disagree on that.
We've been trying to demonstrate that the facts you were talking about were being presented by those defending the TRAP laws and are being disingenuously presented. (Not by you, but by Keller and company.)
The closures of the vast majority of abortion clinics in Texas, period, have not been because of legitimate shortcomings in health and safety. They have been, as Keller admitted, political.
I don't know why we can't look at the history of Texas imposing restrictions upon restrictions over the years as evidence that they've been trying to simply push the line of "undue burden" as far as they possibly can.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This gooseshit has to get called out. The reason TRAP laws get traction is because they are portrayed as public health issues. That lie needs to get nailed to the wall.
Which makes the whole thing ultimately pretty ridiculous theater, as both sides make these arguments about admitting privileges and the minutia of medical procedures when everyone here knows what this is really about, and what it will come to for 7 of the people in that room, is the gut feeling they have about abortion. Other SC cases get politicized but you can see some line-crossing because of matters of law, but this is something that's been so hyped up over the past 40 years that nobody in that room (on either side of the bench) really gives a damn about how many guerneys can fit down a hallway.
i'm sure some of the actual politicians who make these laws understand they have nothing to do with women's health, but the people who support these politicians probably do believe these things to a large extent
I'd say they believe in womens health as far as forcing them to keep babies they don't want. But forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will is the opposite of doing what's best for her.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
i'm not saying they aren't completely wrong
just that i think they do believe they're doing the right thing
people don't often do things with the intent of being evil
So it's then "logical" to turn the smokescreen back on those who are pro-abortion.
Not morally defensible, but logical in the "What's good for the goose" mindset.
Conservatives love that quote.
They use it in the context of income redistribution.
But that's the thing - the difference isn't as wide as people think. That's what the dressing down the Texas SG got showed - every time he put up some argument to justify the laws, they got torn down. In the end, he had to concede that the laws were politically based.
Ehh, I think that might be an overly optimistic reading of the arguments.
He admitted that the reason there was the political will to pass these restrictions was that the Kermit Gosnell case made the headlines. There was not sufficient political will to apply those restrictions to other outpatient clinics.
But the justices also pointed out that the Gosnell argument was gooseshit as well. (Gosnell's house of horrors wasn't a result of Inadequate regulation, but Inadequate enforcement and monitoring.)
Lets hope this one doesn't state the obvious and have the press crucify him for it even though Brayley was entirely correct.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The reference to Gosnell was in response to why the law ONLY applied to abortion clinics. Keller asserted that the people of Texas wanted stricter rules to absolutely make sure nothing like that happened. It doesn't go to the rational basis of the law, merely to why it was inconsistently applied to only abortion clinics.
Time for an example! After every mass shooting, people call for a bunch of gun regulations - even ones that don't apply to the current headline. The political will is behind those changes, regardless of effectiveness, to the exclusion of other similar regulations.
And it's not like the gun lobby intentionally skews or misdirects any gun legislation so that it ends up not regulating what it was intended to regulate in the first place. That never happens with any laws, ever.
Like, it's never been the case that we keep adding more bullshit laws about what to do about people with psychological disorders even though there are rampant shootings performed by ostensibly-sane people.
1) The political will was only sufficient to regulate abortion clinics.
2) We believe that abortion clinics under report complications, so the risk is actually comparable to other outpatient procedures.
#1 is both simultaneously true and dishonest.
#2 *might* be true, but almost certainly not to the extent that it covers the distance to liposuction - the dangerous procedure most frequently brought up by the Justices.