That would be because the US constitution does actually have some things to say about the right to bear arms. Conservative justices surely have their biases, but generally they stick with the actual constitution as it's written, or laws as they are written. It doesn't say anything about what they'd do with state laws on a topic like abortion.

Seems to me it mostly is - limiting overreach both from the federal government and from the liberal justices on their own court.

The lack of relevant passages in the constitution? The conservative justices aren't Trump or McConnell - they actually take their jobs seriously and are familiar with the concepts of intellectual honesty and consistency.

No, I think their issue is that it very creatively interpreted the constitution in order to legalize something controversial. And sure, they are far more upset about Roe v Wade than about Obergefell v Hodges or other cases where the thing legalized by the decision was (or at least is by now) much less controversial than abortion. But the basic legal objection is still the same. And they need legal objections, not moral ones, to reach decisions or overturn old decisions.

Not if it doesn't otherwise violate the constitution, no.

Even so, when the Republicans recapture the Senate majority and then cancel out, undo or just repeat whatever the Democrats did so as to gain back the balance of power in the SC, you'll lose whatever you just gained and probably more.

Which is why I'm sceptical about the long term prospects of the United States, unless it can somehow turn a corner in that regard. But it's still better than having such big decisions made by nine or however many justices.

Uh, see, from where I'm standing you're the one who's making up this scare story about how a conservative majority would arbitrarily start striking down validly passed abortion laws... so you're definitely the one who should be bringing evidence for that.

And your idea that packing the court will somehow resolve all of America's issues and the Republicans will magically fail to regain power and retaliate isn't utopian? Having a sympathetic SC by legitimate means which conservatives couldn't argue with (especially considering how many of the liberal justices were nominated by Republican presidents) has been helpful, yes - but this kind of schemes would make it an entirely different ball-game.

Well, it's about to stop being the only way through, I guess.


Agreed.

Democratic majorities in red states. I'm not worried, nor am I aware of American observers being worried, about reproductive rights in blue states. In battleground states it might become quite messy.

On the national level, yes, there is a majority in favour, but this is the kind of thing that's normally reserved to the individual states, as you can see from the abortion-related cases that have been decided by the SC since Roe.

So you really want to claim that an abortion at thirty weeks is just the same as an abortion at six weeks, do you? It's not black and white, no country in the world has legislation that gives a blanket permission to abortion whenever for whatever reason, and rightly so (though sadly there are some that do outlaw it at any time and for any reason). It's a question of finding a reasonable compromise, which may be different in each country that has legalized the practice. Roe v Wade, being a court decision based on far-fetched interpretations of fundamental rights, makes it more difficult to reach a reasonable compromise, or at least, forces such compromises to be made through the courts, like Casey v Planned Parenthood, which is very cumbersome.

I'm not assuming anything of the sort, but it is the big thing that most people on both sides focus on.

I haven't seen any proof of any other issue having even remotely the same importance for them as abortion.