The Glorious Return of Abortion Regulation to the States
By Today, the Senate will vote on legislation to federally enforce excreable parental notification laws. (HT: Prof. B.) This would offer a worthy companion to its ludicrously arbitrary partial-birth abortion law.
Why, this is almost enough to make me think that trying to hide substantive opposition to reproductive freedom behind “states’ rights” rhetoric is transparently disingenuous, and this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we could see in the future. However, if Roe is overturned and the federal government is consequently given even more leeway to regulate abortion, they’ll actually do it less, because…look, it’s Halley’s Comet!
…The ACLU has an excellent memo on why this legislation is terrible. Perhaps most relevant is the first point: “This legislation will not create good family communication where it does not already exist.” Productive communication with your family is a fine thing, but the legislation doesn’t really do anything to accomplish this.
…random liberal notes that the thing passed, 65-34. Voting was fairly predictable (mostlt along blue/red state rather than partisan lines, for the most part), with Max Baucus a midly surprising nay. The only blue-state Dems to vote yea were Inouye, Carper, and Kohl, brickbats due to all.