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South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

washingtonpost.com

31–40 of 217 posts

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#31

How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause? SC would have no recourse for web hosts that have no nexus within it's borders? Are they going to start to force local ISP's to block out of state hosts?

The goal isn’t whether or not it’s allowed via whatever clause. The goal is to force people to ask themselves “do you want to be made an example of to prove it”.

To be honest, I think the goal is more to get this in front of the current supreme court to try and chip away at more federal control over laws like this.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#32

> For the NRLC, which wrote the model legislation, limiting communication is a key part of the strategy to aggressively enforce laws restricting abortion. “The whole criminal enterprise needs to be dealt with to effectively prevent criminal activity,” Jim Bopp, the group’s general counsel, wrote in a July 4 memo, comparing the group’s efforts to fighting organized crime. This basically tells you everything you need t…

I always worry when we start painting large groups of people with a single brush and labeling them the enemy.

There are plenty of people who oppose abortion that are appalled at something like this or the Texas bounty hunting law. If we continue to try and paint each other group as a monolithic enemy other division will continue to rise and polarization will increase and the effects will be devestating.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#33

How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause? SC would have no recourse for web hosts that have no nexus within it's borders? Are they going to start to force local ISP's to block out of state hosts?

The interstate commerce clause was hollowed out and left undefended[0]. Go on Reddit/Twitter a you can find a bunch of people crying about abortion who were previously making fun of "StAteS RiGhtS". We tried to warn them but nobody wanted to listen. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

> The interstate commerce clause was hollowed out and left undefended

Your citation to Wickard v. Fillburn for support of this is...bizarre. That case took what some view as an unreasonably expansive view of the federal power under the ICC, but that does the opposite of supporting the contention that it was “hollowed out” in a way that expands state power into the reserved federal space.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#34

How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause? SC would have no recourse for web hosts that have no nexus within it's borders? Are they going to start to force local ISP's to block out of state hosts?

Interstate Commerce could be used to thwart this, but wouldn't First Amendment be a more compelling justification?

The first amendment doesn't have anything to say about the Internet, so it doesn't apply.

Think I'm joking? This is the stated judicial philosophy of the majority of Supreme Court justices. There is no traditional deeply rooted in American tradition that says anything about the Internet, either.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#35

How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause? SC would have no recourse for web hosts that have no nexus within it's borders? Are they going to start to force local ISP's to block out of state hosts?

>How is this allowed in light of the interstate commerce clause? Laws are allowed until the Court rules on them. The states can pass all manner of fucked up laws (and they will), and they will stand while we figure this out -- or, until the Supreme Court rules in their favor. Edit: changing Supreme Court to Courts, since the appellate court exists. But the point is the same.

My understanding is that this can go to a federal court pretty quickly who can then rule on this and block it, and it can be appellead up to the Supreme court, but for the time being it will be stopped, then I am assuming the Supreme Court will defer to whatever the appellate court decided because it is so open and shut.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#36

> For the NRLC, which wrote the model legislation, limiting communication is a key part of the strategy to aggressively enforce laws restricting abortion. “The whole criminal enterprise needs to be dealt with to effectively prevent criminal activity,” Jim Bopp, the group’s general counsel, wrote in a July 4 memo, comparing the group’s efforts to fighting organized crime. This basically tells you everything you need t…

Recently there was a house vote on a guaranteed right to contraceptives.

One party unanimously voted in favor of it.

The other party voted 96% against it.

I'll leave which party is which as an exercise to the reader.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#37

Quoted post unavailable.

you can keep your puritan personal take on this, and live by it all you want. All the rest of us ask is that you don't try and impose your restrictive personal beliefs on us, directly or via appartus of the state. That shouldnt be controversial.

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#38

> For the NRLC, which wrote the model legislation, limiting communication is a key part of the strategy to aggressively enforce laws restricting abortion. “The whole criminal enterprise needs to be dealt with to effectively prevent criminal activity,” Jim Bopp, the group’s general counsel, wrote in a July 4 memo, comparing the group’s efforts to fighting organized crime. This basically tells you everything you need t…

I always worry when we start painting large groups of people with a single brush and labeling them the enemy. There are plenty of people who oppose abortion that are appalled at something like this or the Texas bounty hunting law. If we continue to try and paint each other group as a monolithic enemy other division will continue to rise and polarization will increase and the effects will be devestating.

I agree with this broadly but I actually disagree with this point for this specific poster. “These people” is a phrase referring distinctly to the national right to life organization, whose goal is in fact to make abortion illegal nationwide. In this case, that organization is about as monolithic an enemy of pro choice people as possible.

(Edited to add: there is a separate frustration of the poster of people claiming that diverting reproductive justice to state determination is reasonable. The poster is saying they are frustrated with that statement because it ignore the above fact. I also don’t think this is painting anyone with a broad brush… it is painting specific people’s specific argument as being myopic.)

Re: South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we using a 200+ year old document that represented the preferences of maybe 20% of the country to regulate the internet? That seems so completely absurd, almost like people are turning it into a holy book or fetishizing it.

> Why are we using a 200+ year old document Because it’s worked. The alternative, opening up the entire system of government for debate, simultaneously, continuously, predictably tears itself apart in a generation. (That or you wind up with an unwritten Constitution only the elites can decipher.) The Constitution isn’t sacred. But it’s far from worthless as a basis of our society.

To listen to conservatives, we spent most of the 20th century creating violation after violation of the constitution. If they're correct, then to me that means that the constitution hasn't worked in about a century.
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