The Disintegration of the United States
Conservatives plan to let the states take over. Liberals - progressives certainly - haven't a clue.
Some state capitols: Clockwise from top-left: Iowa, California, Wisconsin, New York
Conservatives were handed the long-sought grail of shrinking the federal government's power and moving it to the states when the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June. Trigger laws that ban abortion awaited in thirteen states, eight other states enacted immediate bans, and still more plan to outlaw the procedure in varying degrees. Together they aggregate to almost half the country, setting off a scramble for patients, medical workers, lawyers, and state officials to deal with the seismic change. The cover of the conservative National Review magazine proclaims without irony "A More Perfect Union" with artwork showing the patchwork quilt of abortion laws splintering the states into anything but a union.
The transfer of power to the states — “to the people’s elected representatives” in Justice Alito's words in his Roe opinion — would be a return to the years before the Civil War when southern Democrats argued that the federal government had no right to interfere with state matters. In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas voiced his opinion that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't provide a basis for creating new rights. That set off alarms that other rights also anchored to the amendment — the right to use contraceptives, the privacy of sexual acts, same-sex marriage — are on the conservatives' checklist for reversal. If not banned outright, they too would be left to the states to pick and choose.
Politicians joined in. Marriage should be "left to the states," said Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Obergefell v. Hodges, the ruling that allowed same-sex marriage, was wrong, he said. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said that he had never supported that 2015 Supreme Court decision. Marriage is nowhere in the Constitution,
"and I think the states — traditionally that has been — because the definition of marriage…the states have defined it one way or another and I think that that's the right difference".
Florida Senator Marco Rubio agreed with Hawley. Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn thinks Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that cleared
the privacy right to use contraceptives, was "constitutionally unsound". Senator Mike Braun of Indiana thinks even 1967's "Loving v. Virginia, which sanctioned mixed-race marriages, should be overturned and left for each state to decide.
All above are Republicans. They seem untroubled by the dissolution of the United States into 50 Balkanized sovereignties each with its own congeries of laws, many to most in conflict with those of neighboring states.
Using the phony excuse of near-non-existent fraud in the 2020 election, 27 states have introduced 148 "election interference" bills according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks voting legislation around the country. That categorization covers proposals that would "create processes to overturn election results, criminalize election officials for honest mistakes, or require suspect audits of past and future elections". Categorization as "restrictive" expands the count to 393 bills in 39 state legislatures. Going the other way, Brennan counts 596 bills that expand access to voting proposed in 44 state legislatures. The point is that all the states are going their own way, creating their own notions of democracy.
The most notable is the Texas law that permits citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion with bounty rewards of up to $10,000. Beyond encouraging vigilantism, what's remarkable is that the Supreme Court deferred to the state and let the law stand rather than staying it until it could be reviewed.
States that ban abortion are now drafting laws that make it a felony for their citizens to go to another state for an abortion… Click to continue reading