Excerpts from the dissent by justices: Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. (Some emphasis has been added.)
After today, young women will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. The majority accomplishes that result without so much as considering how women have relied on the right to choose or what it means to take that right away. The majority’s refusal even to consider the life-altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment of its decision.
“If this … is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” said the statement the senator released after the story broke. “Obviously, we won’t know each Justice’s decision and reasoning until the Supreme Court officially announces its opinion in this case.”. . .
She explained that the judge — in their two-hour face-to-face session followed by a one-hour telephone conversation — had assured her of his belief “that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance and fairness.” The Supreme Court would overturn a precedent only in “rare and extraordinary times” — including, and here she borrowed Kavanaugh’s language, when a decision is “grievously wrong.”
Admittedly, Kavanaugh said plenty in his public hearings about the limits of precedent, and plenty more in his past that set off alarms for pro-choice activists. For Collins, these bells never tolled. The nominee’s “views on honoring precedent,” she proclaimed, “would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.”
The year after Kavanaugh ascended to the high court, he dissented in a case setting aside a law that required abortion providers in Louisiana to obtain admitting privileges at a local hospital. This was ominous. The chief justice gave the liberals his vote — and a majority — because the law in question was almost identical to another struck down in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.
Roberts had objected to that outcome, but precedent was precedent. Not so for Kavanaugh. How did Collins respond? “He said under oath many times, as well as to me personally many times, that he considers Roe to be ‘precedent upon precedent,’ because it had been reaffirmed in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood case.” She added, “To say that this case … tells you that he’s going to repeal Roe v. Wade, I think, is absurd.”
She believed him, because trusting in each other is how government always used to get things done. Susan Collins might soon have a different worry: After this, who’s going to trust her?
As abortion ruling nears, U.S. Supreme Court erects barricades to the public
By Lawrence Hurley – June 17, 2022
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Encircled by an ominous security fence and off-limits to the public since March 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised in the coming weeks to issue a major ruling that could dramatically curtail abortion rights from behind closed doors with not a single justice in sight.
No members of the public have been allowed in the courthouse since COVID-19 pandemic precautions were implemented in March 2020. The scene at the court has become more tense following protests and threats against some of the nine justices prompted by the May leak of a draft opinion indicating they are set to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
The 8-foot (2.4 meters) tall fencing was erected in the days after the leak as the court ramped up security measures.
While the rest of official Washington, including other government buildings including the White House and Capitol, has reopened its doors to the public at least partially as the pandemic ebbs, the top U.S. judicial body remains in a form of lockdown with what appears to be siege mentality even as it wields huge influence over public policy.
For Guido Reichstadter, an abortion-rights protester camped out in front of the courthouse since the beginning of June, the fencing is a sign of how out of touch the justices – or at least the six conservative ones – are with public sentiment.
“They are trying to insulate themselves from the effects of their actions. Why else would you put a fence up?” Reichstadter asked.
Reichstadter was arrested on June 6 for locking himself to the fence by the neck and spent a night in jail.
“To me it sends a message that they are weak, they are afraid, they are isolated,” Reichstadter said of the fence.
Up next? Federal fences around uteruses . . . Court-ordered chains and locks on clinic doors . . . Repro health workers in jail . . . .
.AP News: Synagogue challenges Florida abortion law over religion
BY CURT ANDERSON — June 14, 2022
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A new Florida law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks with some exceptions violates religious freedom rights of Jews in addition to the state constitution’s privacy protections, a synagogue claims in a lawsuit.
The lawsuit filed by the Congregation L’Dor Va–Dor of Boynton Beach contends the law that takes effect July 1 violates Jewish teachings, which state abortion “is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well–being of the woman” and for other reasons.
The congregation’s logo
“As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom,” says the lawsuit, filed Friday in Leon County Circuit Court.
The lawsuit adds that people who “do not share the religious views reflected in the act will suffer” and that it “threatens the Jewish people by imposing the laws of other religions upon Jews.”
The lawsuit is the second challenge to the 15–week abortion ban enacted earlier this year by the Legislature and signed into law by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health providers also sued earlier this month to block the law from taking effect.
Rabbi Barry Silver
In a previous statement, DeSantis’ office said it “is confident that this law will ultimately withstand all legal challenges.”
The two lawsuits are likely to be consolidated into a single case. A hearing on a proposed injunction to block the Florida abortion law is likely in the next two weeks.
The law mirrors a similar measure passed in Mississippi that is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which may use it to overturn the Roe v. Wade abortion decision based on a leaked draft opinion. A final ruling on Roe is expected by the end of June.
In Florida, Rabbi Barry Silver of Congregation L’Dor Va–Dor — the name means “Generation to Generation”— said it practices “cosmic Judaism,” which he defines on the synagogue’s website as “the Judaism of tomorrow today” that respects science, tradition and spirituality.
Silver is an attorney, social activist and former Democratic state legislator who styles himself as a “Rabbi–rouser” on his own website. In an interview Tuesday, Silver said when separation of religion and government crumbles, religious minorities such as Jews often suffer.
“Every time that wall starts to crack, bad things start to happen,” he said, noting that DeSantis signed the law at an evangelical Christian church.
The new Florida abortion law, contains exceptions if the abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life, prevent serious injury or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow for exemptions in cases where pregnancies were caused by rape, incest or human trafficking.
Under current law, Florida allows abortions up to 24 weeks.
No faith is monolithic on the abortion issue. Yet many followers of faiths that do not prohibit abortion are aghast that a view held by a minority of Americans could supersede their individual rights and religious beliefs such as the position of Judaism as outlined in the lawsuit.
“This ruling would be outlawing abortion in cases when our religion would permit us,” said Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, scholar in residence at the National Council of Jewish Women, “and it is basing its concepts of when life begins on someone else’s philosophy or theology.”
On the synagogue’s website, Silver elaborated on the group’s religious approach:
“Cosmic Judaism began with his late father Samuel Silver, a Reform rabbi. “He believed in God, but not the God of the Bible, and preached and wrote in various books that he authored that every concept of Judaism, including God, should be rational and logical, and that God should be thought of as a hypothesis, not a fact,” he said.
“Thus, the hypothesis is modified and altered as new facts emerge, which is why the concept of God has been evolving in Judaism since the beginning, except for those who are stuck in the past and have altered Judaism by trying to stop its growth and fix its development in a rigid and dangerous Orthodoxy.”
“L’Dor Va-Dor means ‘generation to generation,’ and so our congregation derives its ideological roots from my father who preached a rational faith, which continues with me,” Silver said. “That progression of thought can be seen in my son Ari, who is 18 and has a similar but unique perspective.”
Silver said he also drew inspiration from scientists Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan for this approach.
The synagogue left Reform Judaism in 2016 and has been unaffiliated for four years.
“The Cosmic Jewish approach, which interprets Judaism through science and reason, was overwhelmingly voted on and approved twice by our congregants,” Silver said. “I do not know of any other congregation where the ideology was not just imposed upon the members or based on the rabbi, but where the members actually voted on two separate occasions to support the ideology, which is a unique approach to Judaism.”
Washington Post: Ukraine is running out of ammunition as prospects dim on the battlefield
Hopes that Ukraine will be able to reverse Russian gains are fading in the face of superior firepower
By Siobhán O’Grady, Liz Sly and Ievgeniia Sivorka
June 10, 2022 – ET SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — The euphoria that accompanied Ukraine’s unforeseen early victories against bumbling Russian troops is fading as Moscow adapts its tactics, recovers its stride and asserts its overwhelming firepower against heavily outgunned Ukrainian forces.
Newly promised Western weapons systems are arriving, but too slowly and in insufficient quantities to prevent incremental but inexorable Russian gains in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, which is now the focus of the fight.
The Ukrainians are still fighting back, but they are running out of ammunition and suffering casualties at a far higher rate than in the initial stages of the war. Around 200 Ukrainian soldiers are now being killed every day, up from 100 late last month, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC on Friday — meaning that as many as 1,000 Ukrainians are being taken out of the fight every day, including those who are injured.
The Russians are still making mistakes and are also losing men and equipment, albeit at a lesser rate than in the first months of the conflict. In one sign that they are suffering equipment shortages, they have been seen on videos posted on social media hauling hundreds of mothballed, Soviet-era T-62 tanks out of storage to be sent to Ukraine.
But the overall trajectory of the war has unmistakably shifted away from one of unexpectedly dismal Russian failures and tilted in favor of Russia as the demonstrably stronger force.
Ukrainian and U.S. hopes that the new supplies of Western weaponry would enable Ukraine to regain the initiative and eventually retake the estimated 20 percent of Ukrainian territory captured by Russia since its Feb. 24 invasion are starting to look premature, said Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian government on defense and intelligence issues. Continue reading Ukraine, War Notes: The End of Euphoria, A Shift in The Odds→
Democrat Hakeem Jeffries calls out Clarence Thomas
David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement — May 12, 2022
Democratic House Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) delivered an impassioned speech Wednesday, telling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas he should “have a conversation” with his spouse.
The far-right activist and lobbyist Ginni Thomas reportedly had a months-long text conversation with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, vehemently urging him to have the 2020 presidential election overturned.
Last Friday Justice Thomas complained in a speech to a group of judges and attorneys from the 11th Circuit, “We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want.” He was referring to the majority of Americans who want the Court to uphold the 49-year-old decision in Roe v. Wade, supporting a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.
“If Justice Thomas really wants to deal with bullying in America, or this problem of people supposedly unwilling to accept outcomes that they don’t like, I’ve got some advice for Justice Thomas: start in your own home, have a conversation with Ginni Thomas,” Congressman Jeffries said.
“She refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Why? Because she didn’t like the outcome,” Jeffries reminded the House. “So instead, she tried to steal the election, overthrow the United States government, and install a tyrant. That’s bullying. That’s being unwilling to accept an outcome because you don’t like the results, because the former twice impeached so-called President of the United States of America lost legitimately to Joe Biden.”
“How did she respond? Instead, she said, the Bidens should face a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, on trumped-up charges of sedition. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
When news broke in March of the text exchanges between Thomas and Meadows, Slate’s legal expert Mark Joseph Stern, said: “Ginni Thomas urged Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 election by any means necessary—while her husband was ruling on cases attempting to overturn the election.”
Congressman Jeffries, considered by many to be Democrats’ next Speaker of the House after Nancy Pelosi, was far from done with the Supreme Court Justice.
“And lastly, let me ask this question of brother Thomas:
Why are you such a hater?
Hate on civil rights.
Hate on women’s rights.
Hate on reproductive rights.
Hate on voting rights.
Hate on marital rights.
Hate on equal protection under the law.
Hate on liberty and justice for all.
Hate on free and fair elections.
Why are you such a hater?”
“And you think you can get away with it – escape public scrutiny. Because you think that shamelessness is your superpower? Here’s a newsflash from the House Judiciary Committee,” he said while being interrupted. “Truth pressed to the ground will rise again. And truth will be your kryptonite.”
I can relate to this article. I published one like it in a Boston alternative weekly in early January of 1973. Angry letters poured in for weeks, until January 22, when Roe v. Wade was issued; then my qualms & quibbles were instantly forgotten.
I wasn’t sorry. Since then, some of my views have evolved, while my general antipathy to most abortions remains. (More on my personal pilgrimage here.) But I’m still as staunchly against criminalization as I was 49 years ago.
Now I’m too old to draw much fire, so it was gratifying to see this piece by a young radical Catholic (if indeed she’ still identifies as Catholic), planting her flag in the columns of the National Catholic Reporter, the “loyal opposition” progressive American weekly.
Some pro-Roe adherents may not care about Chastain’s reasons, but only that she arrives at their preferred destination.
A blast from the Kavanaugh past; we didn’t get fooled, like Collins & other Fools on the Hill.
That’s a mistake. In the new struggle that’s upon us, the agonized ambiguity of many, Catholics and non- will be a crucial arena of either progress or further setbacks. If not agreement, finding a basis for respectful coalition will be — and in truth, long have been — imperative. This article is one such new opportunity.
I’m thinking first here of my fellow liberal Quakers: to save our rights, we’ll have to learn & think and act outside our blue bubbles. But this sentiment applies more broadly too.
National Catholic Reporter: COMMENTARY
I’m an anti-abortion disability advocate. Overturning Roe isn’t the answer.
Medical instruments for a surgical abortion are seen in this photo. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
I was in high school when I first learned which of my extended family members had encouraged my mom to abort my very-much-alive disabled brother. At the time, I had just begun attending youth group, which was the first place I ever saw images of abortion. I attended my first Walk for Life. Those same youth leaders helped that same brother finally receive his sacraments of initiation, after he’d been denied them for almost a decade.
As I entered undergraduate studies at a small Catholic liberal arts school and pursued a degree in theology with an emphasis in disability, I confronted the historical reality that had galvanized me as a teenager: Abortion is implicitly eugenic. The disproportionate targeting of disabled fetuses for termination hinges on deeply violent assumptions around worthiness, rooted in capitalistic beliefs around productivity and conventional social futurity.
Put plainly? Disabled people may not learn, work, marry or procreate “normally,” and that nonnormative lifestyle will inconvenience too many people. A disabled person may experience profound pain and social exclusion.
Regardless of whether or not these things are always and everywhere true (they are not), it is equally troublesome that people who hold these beliefs around disability often don’t believe these circumstances are within their power or responsibility to change outside of abortion (they are).
Abortion was always going to be personal for me — the abortion topic always is — even when approached from different angles. One in four women will have an abortion, which includes treatments of ectopic pregnancies, tubal pregnancies and other forms of “spontaneous” abortion or miscarriage. And whether or not they personally experienced one, everyone knows someone impacted by abortion. It is this intimacy that has kindled the fire of many in the pro-life movement, including myself.
Pro-life supporters are pictured holding signs outside the High Court in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Jan. 30, 3019. (CNS/Reuters/Brian Lawless)
But then, in graduate school at a large secular research university, I began to study feminist, queer and crip histories and theories of the body. I began participating in more progressive religious spaces that emphasized Catholic social teaching and needs for social reconciliation.
Being in relationship with secular, pro-abortion feminists who were learning alongside me about the systematic underresourcing of marginalized groups — while the world’s racial and medical disparities were being aired live during the COVID-19 pandemic — moved me into the place of intense nuance where I am now and that I believe undergirds a truly consistent life ethic: I am anti-abortion, but I do not think criminalizing abortions will stop them, because having access to abortions isn’t what causes them.
Things that cause abortions: lack of comprehensive sex education, inaccessible health care, violence against women, religious shame and exclusion, familial rejection or coercion, and workplace inequalities including but not limited to barriers for advancement, disparities in pay and lack of paid parental leave or child care.
Making abortion illegal before addressing these injustices is going to kill women, because women will continue to have abortions, secretively and unsafely.
For the first time that I can recall in my years of being anti-abortion, tales of the pre-Roeworld from women who lived it are being shared on a massive scale. (Many are circulating this New York Times article from January and sharing their own stories in the captions.) Social media is a flurry of back-alley horrors.
And in a post-COVID-19 society when young people are already experiencing a catastrophic mental health crisis, making abortion illegal is going to kill women in more ways than one.
Refusal to accept the reality of these dangers is resisting a nuance that is dire. You can accept the dangers of overturning Roe v. Wade are real and still be anti-abortion. I certainly am. None of these dangers changes that abortion is a deeply ableist system used to root out genetic differences based on bigoted sociocultural values. None of these facts change that I’ve seen disability-motivated abortion rhetoric devalue people at the cornerstone of my life. It is personal, but it is also necessarily systemic.
The usual ethical discussion focuses on the morality of the abortion act itself, the immediate consequences, the circumstances and the set precedents. But if we have this conversation, we’re starting in the wrong place. The nuance I’m arguing for is not about the morality of abortion, it is about the effectiveness of this particular tactic of assuaging it: making abortion illegal. This particular tactic is not going to work.
We can recognize that abortion being legal represents a certain form of public complicity in permitting a grievous sin to happen. But are we actually permitting it any less without changing the causes of abortion? To achieve the desired society in which abortion is no longer permitted, we have to create a reality where abortion is no longer caused. We are complicit in those systems, too.
We need mandatory and comprehensive sexual education and accessible health care. We need to address income inequality and mandate paid parental leave. We need to demolish the prison industrial complex and stop criminalizing the poor and marginalized. We need robust community-based postnatal care and to crack down on violence against women. We need to revolutionize the way churches approach sexuality, that we might embrace and support sexually active women in crisis, regardless of their marital status.
I am still anti-abortion. And yet, it is amazing how quickly the solidarity comes with my pro-abortion loved ones the moment I articulate these nuanced beliefs: I am anti-abortion, and I do not want it to be illegal. This solidarity will be crucial to providing a safe haven for at-risk women, if Roe v. Wade is indeed overturned. We must all keep our eyes on the true culprits; we must shout about the real causes of abortion, together.
Bob Casey is one of the last ‘pro-life’ Democrats. The Supreme Court decision is going to test his views.
WASHINGTON — When the Sandy Hook school shooting rocked the country, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey changed his longtime stance on the Second Amendment, becoming a fierce advocate for stricter gun laws.
When a Supreme Court decision neared that would make same-sex marriage legal nationwide, Casey embraced the shift, abandoning his previous objections.
And when President Joe Biden took office early last year, Casey softened his stand on the Senate filibuster, suggesting he’d be open to changing the rule if it helped Democrats turn big, progressive ambitions into reality.
Some liberal pundits are predicting a tidal wave of backlash against the leaked SCOTUS decision to reverse Roe & Casey, the decisions that have made abortion a right since 1973, forty-nine years ago. (The full text of the draft decision is here.)
I’ve written that, while a Roesupporter, I’m not at all sure any such tidal wave is certain, or even likely.
Let me add here that this uncertainty seems to apply just as much to U. S. Quakers.
Why? In sum, because
A. Americans (Quakers too) are exhausted by years of crises, from an attempted (& ongoing) coup begun at the capitol, a continuing pandemic (case numbers are rising again, fast), a new, not-exactly Cold War/World War 3, inflation, and more.
B. Americans, even American women, are and long have been divided on the issue. Furthermore the pro-Roe supporters have long been out-campaigned by the anti-abortion side. Again, Quakers too.
The American right is winning the battle over abortion rights. In fact, they have been winning for a long time. Since the late 1970s, conservatives have worked to build a well-funded, militant anti-abortion movement that that includes white nationalists, religious extremists, and pro-life feminists. Now, the end of the legal right to abortion appears terrifyingly imminent.
I’d be happy for Dissent and I to be wrong and the prophets of political tsunami proven right; but the evidence for it isn’t there now, and I’m not in the “wish-casting” business.
I’m quoting myself above, from a blog post on December 29 of last year. In it my short answer got stretched out a bit.
Time for an update, now that Politico has surfaced a leaked draft SCOTUS decision that would decisively and fully reverse Roe, and the later Casey decision that upheld it.
The Unknown leaker.
But before plunging into the update, let me pause for a moment to pay tribute to the (as yet) unknown leaker:
All the reporters and pundits I’ve heard and read marvel at that person’s action, which is said to be essentially unprecedented in SCOTUS history.
My outsider’s guess is that she/he (I’ll call them Sheehy, a more dulcet pronoun) is most likely a law clerk, one of the chosen few who serve the various justices for a year each, at the presumed start of illustrious and handsomely-remunerated legal careers.
The decision draft is dated February 10. That suggests that Sheehy agonized over this action for ten weeks.
I wonder if Sheehy is familiar with Daniel Ellsberg, one of my generation’s heroes, who risked jail to copy and leak the super-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971. The Papers blew up the lies underlying the U. S. War in Vietnam, and helped lead to the disgrace and resignation of Richard Nixon. Sheehy’s action could be her cohort’s counterpart to Ellsberg’s witness. I have no doubt that Sam Alito and the other four signers will comb their columned chambers from ceiling to basement to flush out Sheehy’s identity. And in today’s surveillance culture, they have a good chance of finding out.
Will Sheehy too then face jail? Or will the SCOTUS-ites bundle the whistleblower out of town, lips locked shut with an iron NDA, to be forever unknown?
Personally I hope Sheehy gets good timing advice (and a top lawyer), and comes out at a midday press conference soon, to refocus the media spotlight back on what was disclosed. If Sheehy is a clerk, one career path will soon be decisively closed, but fame would be undying, and new career options will open.
Whatever happens, and whoever they are, Sheehy has my thanks and gratitude.
But back to the leaked decision. (The full text is at this link.) Here’s the section from my December post about backlash, which still seems relevant, and cited
“. . . two very smart women pundits whose work I take seriously, [who] made opposite predictions about this.
First, Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post columnist.
Jennifer Rubin
For years she was reliably right wing. Trump changed all that. Rubin’s not exactly a born-again liberal now, but is vociferously pro-Roe v. Wade. And she thinks its overthrow would be a huge political boon to Democrats, writing:
[I]f Democrats needed reason to fire up the troops before the 2022 midterm elections, this might do it. The obviously partisan court will thrust the nation into a period of turmoil, chaos and outrage over new restrictions on women’s life choices, which Republicans will seek to cement in state laws.
Every Republican on the ballot for state legislator, governor, the House or the Senate will have to defend new intrusions on women’s autonomy, including in cases of rape and incest. Given the wide and deep support for abortion rights, Republicans may come to regret appointing religious ideologues to the court.”
When a Supreme Court decision neared that would make same-sex marriage legal nationwide, Casey embraced the shift, abandoning his previous objections.
Some liberal pundits are predicting a tidal wave of backlash against the leaked SCOTUS decision to reverse Roe & Casey, the decisions that have made abortion a right since 1973, forty-nine years ago. (The full text of 
