... to the idea that the Conservatives in the court won't challenge legislation passed on these issues. The ACA has been a good example. With Roberts as a swing vote, it's been limping along, but with a 6-3 majority, it wouldn't stand a chance.

And if you think a legislative right to abortion wouldn't be challenged in the Supreme Court... I really dunno what to say to you.

More than that, the current conservative majority has shown itself to be starkly pro-business to the point of allowing them religious exemptions from laws, eviscerating the Voting Rights Act (another legislative accomplishment), and poised to gut the concept of the administrative state by severely crippling those parts of the Executive that take Congress's laws and make the rules and enforcement mechanism to make it ground reality.

You try imagining solving Climate Change without the EPA beging allowed to take a Congressional mandate to curb emissions, then write rules for various businesses and states to follow to achieve that goal. Gorsuch and his idealogical allies in the Court believe this is unacceptable. That Congress needs to actually legislate on every one of these details.

Aa for it being odd that it's the court that legalized abortion and gay marriage .. the United States is far from alone there. Europe is different, but other multi-ethnic Democracies like India also have the courts being the source of this kind of expansion of rights.

I do agree Roe was decided weirdly, in that locating the right to abortion in some concept of privacy, as opposed to equal protection, is weird, like Ginsburg said. Same with Kennedy's opinion on Gay marriage. But whoever they arrived on those decisions, I see nothing wrong fundamentally with Courts being a source of the expansion of rights for minorities and discriminated classes of citizens. That's the release valve for democracies where partisan gridlock prevents movement on these issues.

Except not really democratically, due to gerrymandering.

<Quote>While that would be disastrous to millions of women in red states and I really wouldn't want that to happen, there's still something to be said for it because it would finally take the toxic abortion debate out of American federal politics.
I can't agree. The cost is too high. Is it a toxic debate? Yes. But having hundreds of thousands of women forced to chose between carrying to term a fetus they do not want, or to use illegal and potentially dangerous means to abort the baby themselves? Just...no.

To me, that genuinely feels like saying, "let the states decide on slavery, at least it removes this toxic debate from the federal stage, and prevents a civil war".

I'm not saying that's your position. But that toxicity is a small price to pay to give women autonomy over their own bodies. I live a few blocks from the last Planned Parenthood in my state that can legally carry out abortions. Women come here from hundreds of miles away just to get a pill to do what they should be able to do at a local clinic. Many of these women are poor, unable to afford the day off they need to take. It would be a gross miscarriage if justice to force them to have to do even more. It really is a no go for me, sorry.

<Quote>It's really not normal or healthy to what extent that one topic has dominated American national politics for decades. </Quote>
Sure but I don't see how surrendering is somehow better. There have been other issues where one topic has similarly dominated national politics for a generation. They've all been worth it, no?

<Quote>Of course, Republicans should be careful what they wish for, because there are a number of potential negative consequences for them as well if Roe gets overturned - businesses or highly educated inhabitants abandoning red states for blue ones in large numbers, the Republican evangelical base having a lot less incentive to reliably vote Republican, the country becoming even more separated and even more at risk of eventually breaking apart. That last one is also a risk if this Senate discrepancy becomes too blatant or lasts too long.

I don't quite buy that once Roe is resolved, the base will have less incentive to vote Republican. Trump showed that there's a way to activate that base on other issues. Roe may have been the scent that drew them in. But the past few decades have resulted in other issues that are important to this demographic becoming major parts of the GOP platform. Whether it's bathroom bills, those absurd religious freedom laws that give businesses exemptions, or guns or barely disguised racism, there's plenty of issues for the GOP to mine to keep their base activated and excited to vote.