After noting that everybody feels very strongly about abortion, and our opinions are all over the place, and nobody agrees, Harry and six of his cohorts write a statute and impose it on the country. That's bad. But what's really bad is the statute itself. You won't believe how dumb it is. Here's how it starts. "With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the 'compelling point,' in light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester."
Right away we see that this is a horrible statute. It's not just a bad interpretation of the Constitution. Everybody knows Blackmun is not actually reading the Constitution. It's a bad statute. If Harry Blackmun is in the statute-writing business--and he's not--he should be fired. Because that's a horrible statute.
Why is it bad? Okay, read it again. In regard to the health of the mother, the compelling point when the state can regulate an abortion is "approximately the end of the first trimester." You got that? Forget the baby or the squid or whatever you want to call her. He's not talking about the unborn. He's talking about the woman. According to Roe, a State has no interest in protecting a pregnant woman in the first three months of the pregnancy.
I don't care what kind of Ivy League scholar you are, you got to be a frickin' idiot to sign on to that. An abortion is an invasive medical procedure. There was no RU-486 in 1973. No pill you could take. You can't just assume it's safe and that nobody could die from an abortion. In 1973, an abortion meant that somebody was cutting into you with a knife. And you really want that somebody to be a doctor.
Blackmun writes that an abortion in the first trimester is "an abortion free of interference by the state." You got that? However you want to do it. You want to have an abortion in a barn, go ahead. The state can't interfere. You want to have some auto mechanic do an abortion in a hotel room? That's up to you. The state can't interfere. The state has no interest in protecting a woman's health in the first trimester. Abortion is so simple and easy and safe, the state has no business sticking its nose in at all. Unless it's the second trimester, then it gets more complicated. But for the first three months, it's the wild west of abortion.
Blackmun writes, "This is so because of the now-established medical fact...that, until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth." Yeah yeah, it was really stupid getting pregnant, cause now you might die. But we the Supreme Court have come up with an improvement. Abortion! It's way safer than giving birth. It's so safe, there can be no state regulations at all in the first trimester. So abort away! Chances are, you'll be saving your own life.
Listen, the state regulates dentists, okay? The state regulates veterinarians. All doctors except abortionists have state regulations up the ass. According to Roe v. Wade, an abortion doctor has a wild, three-month party. It's anarchy in the first trimester. Get drunk! The state has no interest in protecting the woman's health. The Supreme Court decrees that abortion is always safer--no, wait, "may be" safer--then giving birth.
All of medicine is regulated by the state. It's the state that requires doctors to go to medical school and be certified by authorities. You're not allowed to call yourself doctor otherwise. The state regulates all medical procedures for your health. And these unelected morons in 1973 strip the states of all authority to regulate abortion in the first three months of the pregnancy. There are not words to describe how stupid this is. I mean, there's just widespread agreement in our society that non-doctors should not be carving into pregnant women.
Right away we see that this is a horrible statute. It's not just a bad interpretation of the Constitution. Everybody knows Blackmun is not actually reading the Constitution. It's a bad statute. If Harry Blackmun is in the statute-writing business--and he's not--he should be fired. Because that's a horrible statute.
Why is it bad? Okay, read it again. In regard to the health of the mother, the compelling point when the state can regulate an abortion is "approximately the end of the first trimester." You got that? Forget the baby or the squid or whatever you want to call her. He's not talking about the unborn. He's talking about the woman. According to Roe, a State has no interest in protecting a pregnant woman in the first three months of the pregnancy.
I don't care what kind of Ivy League scholar you are, you got to be a frickin' idiot to sign on to that. An abortion is an invasive medical procedure. There was no RU-486 in 1973. No pill you could take. You can't just assume it's safe and that nobody could die from an abortion. In 1973, an abortion meant that somebody was cutting into you with a knife. And you really want that somebody to be a doctor.
Blackmun writes that an abortion in the first trimester is "an abortion free of interference by the state." You got that? However you want to do it. You want to have an abortion in a barn, go ahead. The state can't interfere. You want to have some auto mechanic do an abortion in a hotel room? That's up to you. The state can't interfere. The state has no interest in protecting a woman's health in the first trimester. Abortion is so simple and easy and safe, the state has no business sticking its nose in at all. Unless it's the second trimester, then it gets more complicated. But for the first three months, it's the wild west of abortion.
Blackmun writes, "This is so because of the now-established medical fact...that, until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth." Yeah yeah, it was really stupid getting pregnant, cause now you might die. But we the Supreme Court have come up with an improvement. Abortion! It's way safer than giving birth. It's so safe, there can be no state regulations at all in the first trimester. So abort away! Chances are, you'll be saving your own life.
Listen, the state regulates dentists, okay? The state regulates veterinarians. All doctors except abortionists have state regulations up the ass. According to Roe v. Wade, an abortion doctor has a wild, three-month party. It's anarchy in the first trimester. Get drunk! The state has no interest in protecting the woman's health. The Supreme Court decrees that abortion is always safer--no, wait, "may be" safer--then giving birth.
All of medicine is regulated by the state. It's the state that requires doctors to go to medical school and be certified by authorities. You're not allowed to call yourself doctor otherwise. The state regulates all medical procedures for your health. And these unelected morons in 1973 strip the states of all authority to regulate abortion in the first three months of the pregnancy. There are not words to describe how stupid this is. I mean, there's just widespread agreement in our society that non-doctors should not be carving into pregnant women.
After the first trimester is over, everything goes back to normal. States can go back to regulating this medical procedure like any other medical procedure. "It follows that, from and after this point, a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonable relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health." You got that? It's the second trimester, and this is serious.
Harry outlines for us what sort of regulations a state might do to protect women from the knife. "Examples of permissible state regulation in this area are requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status, as to the licensing of the facility, and the like."
All of this sounds really good to me. Harry has successfully identified some state concerns in regard to the woman's health. You want a qualified physician. You want him to be licensed. You want a qualified facility, and you want that to be licensed. The problem is not with Harry's list of health concerns. The problem is that Harry thinks the State has no interest in having these regulations in the first trimester. I'm sorry, I'm going to call him a dumb fuck again. Oh my God, that is so stupid.
I know, you think I'm exaggerating. You think I'm making this up. Of course you do, because this is so frickin' insane, the Supreme Court could never write it. But they did. That's the problem with writing your opinions out for everyone to read. All your wrong, stupid shit comes back to haunt you. Roe v. Wade is published. You can't rewrite it to make it look smarter. It is what it is.
The Supreme Court had to fix this stupidity in their very next abortion case. Oh, they were embarrassed. Oh, they were mortified. Oh sure, they pretended like they hadn't written those sentences. But they did.
You probably haven't heard of Connecticut v. Menillo. The Supreme Court is very glad that you haven't heard of Connecticut v. Menillo. I will quote from it. "In 1971, a jury convicted Patrick Menillo of attempting to procure an abortion in violation of Connecticut's criminal abortion statute. Menillo is not a physician, and has never had any medical training." Oops.
According to Roe v. Wade, a first trimester abortion is so safe that the State cannot regulate it, even for the woman's health. As we recall, "requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion" have to wait for the second trimester. That's when you can regulate for the woman's health. As long as Mr. Menillo, non-physician, is doing first trimester abortions, he is definitely doing something that is safer than giving birth. And any abortion in the first trimester is "free of interference from the state."
So the authorities in Connecticut look at each other, shrug, and start releasing all those non-physician abortionists out of prison. They're releasing the drunks, the med school dropouts, all those people who feel confident enough to terminate a pregnancy but haven't actually been licensed by anybody to practice medicine. You're free to go.
Just imagine you're Connnecticut. You've got some morons up above you who have just dictated an insane frickin' rule. You can either follow them off the cliff of insanity, or you can say, fuck it. I'm rewriting Roe v. Wade because it's too stupid to be law. Those are your options. And people are sitting in jail, demanding to be released, based on the laws as written by Justice Blackmun and the Supreme Court. Are you going to follow this stupid law? Or are you going to lie and try to cover up for your moron boss?
Connecticut decides to follow Roe v. Wade. Minnesota decides to follow Roe v. Wade. Pennsylvania decides to follow Roe v. Wade. Michigan and New Jersey, on the other hand, refuse to release all those non-doctors who are doing abortions. Yeah yeah, we know what Roe v. Wade says. But we're going to ignore it and keep you in jail. Because cutting people up is a dangerous occupation, and we think it can be regulated by the state. Regardless of what Roe v. Wade says.
The problem with ideology is that reality will bite you in the ass. I mean, it sounds really cool to say abortion should be "free of interference from the state." No doubt Harry is thinking of nice, sweet, feminist abortions, by Harvard-trained physicians, on a nice cloud somewhere. He's probably not thinking of alcoholic doctors who have had their licenses stripped from them and are doing abortions in a trailer park.
In Connecticut v. Menillo, as the Supreme Court desperately covers up its shit and pretends like Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota just can't read, the Court says of course you can convict non-doctors for doing abortions in the first trimester. Because, you know, women might die. And the Supreme Court loves women. Unborn babies, not so much, but the Court definitely loves women.
It's kind of funny that no Supreme Court Justice will sign this opinion. Writing anonymously, the Court notes that "Jane Roe had sought to have an abortion performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions." Yeah, it's almost like a state needs to be able to require those things. There are a lot of reasons a Court might issue a per curiam opinion. In this case, I think it's acute embarrassment.
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