Pic Of The Moment: A Bit Of Background On Samuel Alito's Opinion That Would Overturn Roe v. Wade

[EarlG]

In Leaked Abortion Decision, Justice Alito Relies on Jurist Who Supported Marital Rape

Hale is almost universally appreciated as an excellent judge and jurist, with his central legacy coming through his written work, published after his death. However, more recently, his execution of at least two women for witchcraft, his defense of marital rape, and his belief that capital punishment should extend to those as young as fourteen might bring this into question.

Wikipedia: Matthew Hale

Follow @demunderground

[pwb]

1. Nothing Supreme about this court or United about the states..

Welcome to, The States Of America.

[Aussie105]

52. Two words come to mind.

Disjointed.

Regressive.

[SunSeeker]

2. Just gobsmacking. I bet that cite doesn't make it into the final opinion.

Cleanup in aisle 9.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. So Alito wants to take us back to the 17th century

[underpants]

7. Gonna party like it's 1699!

[2Gingersnaps]

23. So where the hell are those strict Constitutionalists?

Sir Lord Alito is citing a 17th century English Barrister. Please Dear God don't tell these already rapey republicans Sir Hale was OK with that too.

[Hekate]

29. Opus Dei. Also the doctrine of the "noble lie" if in God's service.

[peppertree]

36. Indeed. They pretty much ran the show in Latin America in the '70s and '80s - much to their loss

I personally know of at least one professional - very successful, closing in on the peak of his career - whose career was ruined because he refused to join Opus Dei when asked to.

And this was in California - not Latin America. So you can imagine they're capable of down there.

Even today, presidents who fall afoul of Opus Dei tend not to last in that part of the world.

[2Gingersnaps]

38. Which is why I am so very fond of that "Separation of Church and State" business.

Freedom of religion or freedom from religion.

[peppertree]

47. +1

The real target of this whole GOP fascist rut.

[2Gingersnaps]

53. Exactly!

It's OK if you are doing it in the name of all that is good and Holy, who conveniently sees what is good and Holy the same way you do. No coincidence there what so ever.

[dalton99a]

4. Religious nut quoting religious nut

[AZ8theist]

26. How UNEVOLVED Homo Sapiens are....

Pathetic this scum bag would quote a witch burner from the 1600's....

[2Gingersnaps]

40. British even, I thought we had a whole war about that........1776?

[AnotherMother4Peace]

5. Maybe Clarence Thomas' hospital stay made them hurry this piece of shit through. nt

[TygrBright]

6. He's a real peach. Bet he was down with the whole "divorce by sale" thing, too. n/t

[Frustratedlady]

8. So, now we're into witchcraft? Sheesh! Why, exactly, do we care about English decisions, anyway?

Hey, Alito. Turn your attention to the United States of America. We are our own country. If you want to lean on British rule, move there. We'll even pay your passage. (Maybe we can use part of that $750K Trump was charged for cheating guests at his hotel during HIS inauguration. As far as I'm concerned, that was another freebie to TFG and his family for cheating his own guests.)

Another ruling by our legal system that doesn't make sense.

[SergeStorms]

9. Religion is always their fall-back position.

Of course it's all patriarchal in nature, and religion gives them the perfect "excuse" to rein in anyone they deem "uppity".

That Aliti would use some 17th century barrister doesn't surprise me in the least. Republicans want to turn the clock back to a time when white men controlled everything and everyone, so Hale's opinion would fit their needs quite well.

Conservatism has officially "jumped the shark".
It's time for it to die the death of a thousand stupidities and take it's rightful place in the dust bin of history, along with buggy whips and using leeches to cure "the vapors".

Strike that: buggy whips actually had a purpose at one time. Conservatism did not.

[ZonkerHarris]

10. I knew the GOP wanted to bring us back to the 50's. Didn't realize it was the 1650's

[appalachiablue]

39. +1

[justhanginon]

11. Some members of the SCOTUS have turned the court into a religious and politically

infused pig sty. Unfortunately, thanks to Senator McConnell pushing some of them through, their stench will remain for a long time to come.

[geardaddy]

12. And I bet Hale being a puritan

would have had Alito and all the other Catholic justices sentenced to death. So, Sammy-boy, you want to move the country back to that time, go ahead. You'll be persona non grata both here and Engerland.

[peppertree]

16. +1

It's the same problem Kennedy ran into in his day - and to a lesser extent, Biden.

Growing up in the Deep south, I attest to the fact many - if not most - southern Republicans don't even consider Catholics "Christian."

[ShazzieB]

24. I lived down south till I was 12.

Growing up in the Deep south, I attest to the fact many - if not most - southern Republicans don't even consider Catholics "Christian."

I can definitely attest to this. I knew plenty of people who thought this way, including kids who were being taught to do so.

A girl in my school was even bullied for being Episcopalian, because the (very poorly informed) bully thought it was pretty much the same thing as being Catholic.

[peppertree]

35. Incredible. So much intolerance.

Some of them are just as bad as those Sunni Muslims who hate Shia Muslims, and vice versa.

Personally, I believe we all go to the same place - even monsters like Hitler or Putin.

Except that to me, "Heaven" is but a vacation - and the hateful are compelled to come back as the very type of people they hated or hurt.

As you can imagine, this opinion (I dare not call it 'belief', as I'm certainly not sure) didn't make me a lot of friends in Mi'ssippi.

But that's what I like to think. They're welcome to their Heaven/Hell fixation.

[geardaddy]

45. You make an excellent point

The KKK are also ant-catholic, as are the Missouri and Wisconsin Synods of the Lutheran church.

[peppertree]

48. Thank you.

It is what it is.

Some people not only seem to have never learned to be tolerant - but they make it a downright sport of being intolerant.

A very dangerous little sport, if history is any guide.

[lildDemz]

20. Another legal figure of Hale's generation wrote

"...as great a lawyer as he was, he would never suffer the strictness of the law to prevail against conscience; as great a chancellor as he was, he would make use of all the niceties and subtleties of law when it tended to support right and equity." Puritan right and equity.

[geardaddy]

21. Thanks for posting that.

Of course Sammy-boy quoted this dude. He wants a white, christian nation.

[Raven123]

13. He was English and lived before the Constitution as drafted. Totally irrelevant

[AllyCat]

14. And why is he using the words of an ENGLISH lawyer

Being used in US decision. We did separate from England. There was a war and everything.

[KS Toronado]

15. Why didn't he go further back than the 1600's for a quote

Why didn't he go back to what Jesus said about abortion 1,000's of times?
Spoiler alert: he never mentioned abortion. Alito a christian only in his head.

[NoMoreRepugs]

17. Seriously, these are the smartest guys in the room??

[LetMyPeopleVote]

18. K&R

[JustAnotherGen]

19. I'm still stunned that

he would leverage the opinion of a non American jurist. Like - the hell?

[58Sunliner]

22. I can't effing believe this pos would actually quote a man who, essentially categorized

a quick child, who died in the womb, as a crime. What that could mean is that women who spontaneously abort, could be charged. And the misprision BS is about concealment of knowledge of a spontaneous abortion. GFC. And why the eff is that asshole quoting a misogynist killer from the 1600's.

[appleannie1]

25. We don't live under the rules of the Crown.

We live under the Constitution. So he can shove his 'rules of the Crown' where the sun don't shine or he can just move to Merry England. He and the blond bimbo would get along just great.

[orleans]

27. please put this on your twitter feed--i wanted to retweet but i'm not seeing it nt

[Hekate]

28. The removal of a fetus that died in the womb is done to save the mother's life, Mr Alito...

Because, you heartless idiot, once dead it begins to rot, and if the mother’s body cannot expel it, doctors must or she will die.

[Rhiannon12866]

32. And this will be happening yet again:

Senator Gary Peters Shares His Abortion Story
https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a34339956/senator-gary-peters-abortion/

[Hekate]

30. Bookmarking

[Nululu]

31. "quick child" Before quickening, abortion legal in English law

Quickening in a future the time when a child kicks or 5 months or later.

This is a pseudo religious argument to end ALL privacy rights.

[Hassler]

33. Wonder how much of a trial balloon this is, to see how far they

Can go THIS TIME. Wouldn't be surprised if Gorsucks, Judge Beer and Amy Grin-and-Bear-it are behind the release. Maybe old Balls and Strikes hisself

[Bucky]

34. Doesn't a "quick child" refer to a child just being born?

I don't think anyone on even the furthest fringes of the pro-choice movement disputes that you shouldn't commit an abortion after the mother has gone into labor.

Justice Alito is deeply deluded if he thinks that judgment based on 17th century science has anything to do with the modern debate on first trimester abortions. What an absolutely unfit lunatic!

[Hekate]

37. "Quickening" refers to the first sensation of movement that a mother feels, ie about the end of...

…the first trimester. However far back in written history a person wishes to go, law and tradition held that prior to quickening a pregnancy could be in doubt — menstrual irregularities and whatnot. As long as midwives held sway over birth it was women’s business, and herbal remedies might be employed to bring on the menses.

It’s only when men decided that they and only they should have the word on medicine — and deliberately excluded women from universities and medical training — and degraded the status of midwives as “dirty handed granny women” — and outlawed midwifery because the practitioners had not been to medical school — and burned them as witches…

Note that the man who Alito cites so approvingly also had at least 2 women burned for witchcraft.

[yardwork]

42. Great. /nt

[trof]

43. Donnie Two-Scoops has fucked us for at least two generations.

Maybe longer.
The rules for SCOTUS judges' terms needs to be changed.
Can congress do that?

[LiberalFighter]

44. He is a sick $*%)$*%(*

[Sogo]

46. So, apparently "Making America Great Again," has something to do with

returning it to British monarchical rule....

[tclambert]

49. One step closer to bringing back trials for witchcraft.

"Make America Great Again" means taking us back to the good ol' days of 1692 and the Salem Witch Trials, right?

I think Republicans have revealed their true agenda.

(Turns out I'm a second cousin, 11 times removed of one of the people hanged for witchcraft, and a 3rd cousin 10 times removed of another.)

[jmowreader]

50. Now, hold on a second

Sir Matthew said aborting a "quick child who died in the womb" was a great crime and a great misprision.

Let's see if I've got the sequence right.

A "quick child" is a fetus that can move on its own.

So...first the fetus passes the point of quickening.

Next, for whatever reason said fetus dies in the womb.

The doctor then removes the dead fetus from the mother before it goes septic and kills her. This act Alito is referring to as a great crime and a great misprision.

That Alito is referring to an act taken to save the life of the mother - at this point, the fetus has converted itself into a lump of dead, rotting flesh - as a great crime and a great misprision shows the true intent of the Republican Party: they don't give a flying fuck about the woman, the fetus reigns supreme even if it's dead.

[Hekate]

51. Well spotted