In his New York Times Charles Blow warns that we’re “edging closer to civil war”:
The Supreme Court on Friday issued a decision allowing abortion providers in Texas to continue challenging a new law that bans most abortions in the state after about six weeks of pregnancy. But while the conservative majority didn’t close the door on abortion in Texas completely, the degree to which it is cracked open allows in only a sliver of light.
For now, the law in question, S.B. 8, remains on the books. Anyone who assists in providing an illegal abortion — from the provider down to the person who gives a woman a ride to the clinic — can still be sued. Roe v. Wade has essentially been overturned in the state, and soon that astonishing reality may not only become permanent there but may also spread to other states.
A key component of women’s rights and body autonomy is being snatched away as we watch.
He continues on by citing Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s recent remarks, John C. Calhoun, and then turns to discussion of “civil war”:
The civil war I see is not the kind that would leave hundreds of thousands of young men dead in combat. That is not to say that we aren’t seeing spates of violence but rather that this new war will be fought in courts, statehouses and ballot boxes, rather than in the fields.
And this war won’t be only about the subjugation of Black people but also about the subjugation of all who challenge the white racist patriarchy.
It will seek to push back against all the “othersâ€: Black people, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, L.G.B.T.Q. people and, yes, women, particularly liberal ones.
In some ways, the abortion battle now being waged in the courts is a test case. Can the states make an argument that a civil right can be reversed on the state level? Can they make the case that all that the Constitution has not explicitly spelled out should be reserved for the states?
While I agree that we are on a slippery slope to civil war, I don’t see it as Mr. Blow does. He sees the Supreme Court’s creation of rights from whole cloth with only the slimmest of legal pretexts as something benign which should be irreversible; I see it as the first step on a slippery slope. The common law was not on the side of a federal role in abortion; the Constitution was mute on the subject which to my eye placed the issue solidly within the province of the 10th Amendment. Furthermore, I am highly skeptical that the 1% of Americans for whom Gallup’s researches have found that abortion is the most important issue will prove decisive in pushing us over the edge, whether in Mr. Blow’s sense or mine.
Just for the record I think that Texas’s law is extreme and should be struck down but Mississippi’s is not and should be allowed to remain. It’s quite comparable to the laws in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and most other OECD countries. One of the few countries in the world in which abortion on demand is legal without limitations is China and when that’s the company you’re keeping you might want to rethink your position.
I also think that the first step on the slippery slope to delegitimizing U. S. elections was the suit that Gore/Lieberman brought in 2000 and I said so at the time. The first step is a long one.
But to return to Mr. Blow’s thesis I think that the relying on Supreme Court fabrications of rights on only the slimmest of legal pretexts is a slender reed on which to construct rights and, please, don’t bring up Brown v. Board. The legal argument there went in the opposite direction—it was the law they were reversing which was on shaky grounds.
In conclusion I want to ask a question. Is Mr. Blow actually citing John C. Calhoun favorably and does he realize the implications of that? If it’s just a rhetorical device (my suspicion) he might want to rethink it.
I’m so divided on this issue.
I’m pro-life in my family, pro-choice in everyone else’s.
African American women take advantage of abortion opportunities at a rate 5 times the rest of the country, and the Democratic Party, Family Practice, and the Ghost of Margaret Sanger applaud it having been made a constitutional right on the level of the abolition movement’s granting of freedom and the much delayed granting of human status to Natives.
Go for it. Our parents made decisions that would determine how many children they would have.
That’s the world we live in today.
Today, we make decisions about the world our children will live in, or,,, not live in, If you are a democrat.
No comparison between the one suit in 2000, the results of which were accepted and 2020 when you had dozens of suits, all of them lost, an insurrection and belief by most Republicans that the election was actively stolen. They arent even on the same slope.
Steve
Do you understand how a slippery slope works, steve? The first step is small. Later steps are bigger.
The start of the problem is that first step.
If using the ballot box, legislatures, and lawfare is the equivalent of civil war what have the past 70 or so years been, whistling “When Johnny Comes Home”?
Whether its abortion, COVID vaccine mandates, or a score of other divisive issues – the comparison to the civil war is appropriate. The question then, and the question now, is whether our federalist system can withstand the often extreme contradictions between federal policy and state sovereignty. I disagree with Mr. Blow that a modern era civil war will be fought in “courts, state houses and the ballot box.†Those venues may delay, but will not avoid, the inevitable societal clashes and unrest. Within those conflicts will emerge the ‘new’ civil war and the ongoing debate over states’ rights and the federal government’s quest for centralized policy.
The argument you make is akin to saying that because Manson drove 1 mph over the speed limit when he was 16 it put him on the slippery slope to mass murder. The slippery slope argument is overused and mostly to relieve those who commit some major transgression from responsibility of their actions. There have been hundreds fo challenges to other elections for other offices. None of those have lead to an insurrection and dozens of suits, all lost, and changing of election laws and personnel to make sure the losing party wins the next time.
This was a unique event so different from any other voting event in recent history it should not be compared with much less blamed on another event.
Steve
No, because it didn’t invite reprisal or even necessarily lead to mass murder.
We need to salvage the language here. A “civil war” is a war; people in large numbers try to kill each other in order to impose their will by violence. Disputes over abortion, immigration, et al. are just that, disputes.
In the first Civil War (or War between the States, or Northern Invasion, whatever), the States still had sovereignty, and their combined militias were larger than the federal standing army. A civil war was feasible, and it happened.
If shove comes to violence today, it will be more like the war in Afghanistan or Somalia (our longest war, 29 years and counting). There would be roadside bombings, assassinations, kidnappings… It would go one forever; there are 400 million guns in American civilian hands and trillions of rounds of ammunition. The US government would descend into despotism to survive.
Russia and China would sigh in relief, and go about their normal business.
That’s much what I’ve said. Stop thinking Battle of Bull Run, start thinking about Mogadishu.