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The biggest misconceptions and lies about the repeal of Roe v Wade

The repeal of the so-called Roe v Wade federal ruling in the United States by the Supreme Court was quite surprising and came a bit out of the blue, and quite unsurprisingly caused a complete meltdown on the far left and the Democratic Party of the United States. (Many conservatives like to joke about this like "they haven't been this upset since we abolished slavery", which I find genuinely funny. (For context: It was indeed the Democratic Party that back in the day opposed the 13th and 15th Amendments and the abolition of slavery.))

Also unsurprisingly there are myriads of misconceptions and outright lies told about this decision. Some of these misconceptions are actually held by the conservatives.

By far the most blatant misconception is the notion that this decision bans abortion in the United States. It does no such thing. The only thing it does is that now the Federal government can no longer mandate abortion laws onto the states, and thus each individual state can now freely legislate on this matter. (If a state wants to maintain or even loosen the regulations on abortion, they can freely do so.)

Another very similar misconception and claim is that this decision "removes rights" from people. The exact same answer applies: No, it doesn't. The only thing that it does is that now the Federal government can no longer mandate legislation onto the states on this issue. (The Federal government imposing legislation onto the states is not a "right". Removing this ability on a particular issue is not a "removal of rights".)

On a more profound level, abortion is not a right. It does not appear in pretty much any widely agreed definition of fundamental human rights. It does not appear in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it does not appear in the Constitution of the United States, nor any constitution of any other country that I'm aware of. (There might be some country which constitution explicitly guarantees this "right", but if there is I'm not aware of it.) In fact, this SCOTUS ruling was precisely that this federal legislation had no basis in the Constitution.

(The original Roe v Wade decision was based on very dubious grounds. The constitutionality of the ruling was argued to be part of the "right to privacy" which the SCOTUS of the time argued to be guaranteed by the constitution. For starters, "right to privacy" does in no way give the right for patients and doctors to conspire to kill some third person. What's worse, there actually is no explicit "right to privacy" in the Constitution. The concept of there being such is deduced quite indirectly from the 4th Amendment. But even if it were very directly and unambiguously stated, that still doesn't somehow give doctors and patients the right to kill someone in the name of "privacy". The logic is just asinine.)

A misconception that's more on the amusing side is the notion that many leftists, including high-ranking Democrat politicians, have expressed is that they can "defy" this ruling. It's unclear to me how exactly you "defy" a ruling that says that the federal government no longer has any say on this matter and that each state can now legislate on it how they want. How exactly do they picture "defying" this? How do you "defy" the federal government not doing something? By one state forcing other states to maintain their current legislation? How exactly do they figure that happening?

And on a final note, one thing that people on both sides of the aisle, ie. including many Republicans, do not seem to realize that this SCOTUS decision will make the current abortion situation even worse in many states than it currently is. That's because, as mentioned, now each state is free to legislate how they want. Which means that many states will now make abortion even more easily accessible than it already was. After all, Roe v Wade not only ensured the availability of abortion, but it also put some restrictions and limits on it: It was not "you can have an abortion at any time, for any reason whatsoever". It was a set of rules and regulations of when and for what reason.

Now all those regulations are gone, so states can make the rules on abortion as loose as they want. And the more "progressive" states will do exactly that. Abortion will become even more accessible and common than it already was. Post-natal abortion will almost certainly become a thing.

Expect California to be the first state to legalize that, and quite soon.

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