Happy Sunday! I’m delighted to introduce my colleague, Cathy Young, who will be taking over the Sunday Morning Shots. I’ll be back tomorrow. If you’re not familiar with Cathy’s work, you really should check her out; she’s a remarkable journalist and an important thinker and I feel privileged to share this space with her.
pregnancy is incredibly hard on the body. The US already has abysmal ratings re maternal mortality and that is going to get worse with the overturning of Roe. The point that most miss is the loss of bodily autonomy for 10 months. A pregnant woman can't eat what she wants, drink what she wants, etc. And the odds that a woman is going to give up the baby for adoption after suffering that are really low.
As to other rights not going away, this is a pretty bad take. Things like gay marriage, contraceptive use, interracial marriage are all based on privacy rights, same as Roe. And Alito stress that Roe is an unenumerated right, same as gay marriage, use of contraceptives, interracial marriage. They are all going to be challenged.
Finally, states are already trying to out-do each other for ridiculous laws. No travelling out of state without a negative pregnancy test! Death penalty to women who get an abortion! Life in prison for doctors upholding their oath to do no harm! Are in 1952 or 2022?
I am a little tired of this 'I'm sorry but this is a both sides' rationalization. What was once the Republican party has moved so far to the right with it's radical behavior and tactics that a Democrat taking a position on a policy that 10-15 years ago was considered conservative is now characterized as an extremist. The absolute shattering of the SCOTUS nominating process by Mitch McConnel is the prime example. And the argument RGB could have retired under Obama so the left shouldn't complain? Wow. Yet we should ignore the galactic level of hypocrisy exhibited by the GQP pushing through Comey Barret is an off the charts radicalization of the nominating process. Oh yes, and Merrick Garland stunt, how in the hell is that a conservative principle?
As far as other rights being eroded under the cloud of this 'draft opinion', Louisiana has already proposed banning IUDs and McConnell came out with a statement that a 'national ban' is a real legislative possibility. Heer is correct.
Nice intro! One quibble, or rather, an answer to your question: The reason people are connecting Amy Coney Barrett to the "domestic supply of infants" concept is that in her testimony she argued (to widespread and I think justifiable astonishment) that abortion wasn't really needed because all 50 states had secure drop-off sites for infants. In other words, no worries if you're forced to have a baby, someone is sure to want to raise it, no questions asked. And this remarkable suggestion is repeated almost word for word in the Alito draft. There may be some elision involved here, but I don't see why it's unjustified or "creepy" to connect it to ACB, who has reintroduced the open discussion of the idea that abortion and adoption have a direct and inverse relation.
Charlie is right that Cathy Young is a remarkable writer and probably an important thinker. My only comment is one I use whenever abortion rights are being discussed, which is please STOP referring to "pro-life"... which is a vastly broader term than only abortion (we all have met that "conservative" Karen who is against any and all abortions, yet salivates over the Death Penalty)... So spare me the "pro-life" moniker, and call it what it IS... It's an Anti-Choice for Women position. There's Pro-Choice,, and Anti-Choice. the term pro-life when applied to abortion is so off... so wrong... if only because sometimes the choice itself is between the mother's life and the zygote"s life... There is simply no choice there that can be clearly understood as pro-life. Terminology and words matter. I do expect to see that even among the Bulwark writers. Going forward, kindly use the correct phraseology: Pro-Choice or Anti-Choice.
Leaving it up to the states would be more democratic if democracy existed in all states. Laws aren't made by voters; they're made by legislators. There are permanent minority-rule states. Moreover, even if the majority rules, it can brutally treat the minority. That's why some people want abortion to be a right. Precisely so it isn't up for a vote.
Actually, in 1973, the conservative Christian evangelical movement (it wasn't the Christian Right then) had little to no opposition to Roe v Wade, with the president of the Southern Baptists writing that abortion for rape, incest and the life of the mother was a Good Thing. The Christian Right was actually created by Jerry Falwell, who was upset that his "Christian Academies" (i.e., whites-only segregation alternatives) had been declared illegal in the Bob Jones University case, and he was looking for an issue on which to build a movement to support his view of the way things should be. He was smart enough to figure out that it was unlikely he could get people upset about his loss of a right to get federal money for a segregated school, so he picked up abortion and made it the issue.
As far as there being "no movement" on going after contraception, you're just flat-out wrong. The more extreme end of the "Pro-Life" movement considers most birth control - since it prevents conception - to be an "abortifacient," and they want that banned.
And finally, "Pro-Life" is not pro-life. It is Pro-State-Enforced-Pregnancy. The last time I looked, Actual Conservatives are opposed to the state intervening in personal decisions. What passes itself off the past 50 years as "movement conservatism" is actually "Pseudo-Conservative" as defined in Richard Hofstadter's 1954 "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt."
"Unlike most of the liberal dissent of the past, the new dissent not only has no respect for non-conformism, but is based upon a relentless demand for conformity. It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment as it is represented by the Eisenhower Administration. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
"The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows 'conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness' in his conscious thinking and 'violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.'”
The issue wasn’t the *availability* of domestic adoption. It was the simple fact that domestic adoption was just far more complicated.
We already had a biological child. It didn’t seem fair to him, at his age, to act as a foster family first (a prerequisite in Alabama at the time). It also didn’t seem fair to engage the real possibility that someone came out of the woodwork down the road and contested the adoption (a small but real risk).
So, we went international.
I’m also completely dismayed at the lack of discussion over adoption. It’s insanely expensive, and the expense doesn’t stop when you’re officially mom and dad. The ongoing mental health challenges of being an adopted child are real - and expensive - and only “sort of” covered by health insurance.
We’re well six figures on that front alone. Adoption is hard, expensive, and barely supported by our politics.
If people are going to cite adoption in this discussion, it needs to be a comprehensive and honest discussion. I haven’t seen anything along those lines anywhere. Probably because it’s a bad fit for Culture Wars preferred binary mode.
I am 77 years old, so have had a lot of experience. Two comments: 1. Every opinion on abortion is coming from a place of belief. I think the person who has to live with the consequences should make the decision. 2. I think you underestimate the determination of people who are anti-abortion. Most of them base their positions on their version of God, salvation, "natural law", truth, conception, murder, etc. They are not open to discussion because they have the "truth". My husband and I come from large families which contain both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. They are one issue voters. They support a man as corrupt and cruel as Trump because they think he and his acolytes will make their beliefs the law of the land. They will not stop at the criminalization of abortion.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Shots! I really appreciated your thoughtful analysis. I do understand how people distorted the use of “domestic supply” in the draft decision, but still hate the overall point he was making.
Charlie - Listening to you and Bill Kristol bemoan late-term abortion was as exasperating for me as the concept of late-term abortion seemed to be for you, heavy sighs and all. Yes, there was one mention of fetal abnormality and threat to the life of the mother, but to hear your concern, one would think that abortions in the second and third trimester were every-day occurrences.
In reality, they are extremely rare. Why don’t you help people understand the agonizing reality of late-term abortion by getting someone knowledgeable about it on your show to explain why it is essential that there be a provision enabling it, rare though it may be. Do you really think it is moral to have a baby brought to birth when that baby will die as soon as it’s life is no longer supported by the mother? Or if the baby dies in utero, don’t you agree that there be some provision to take the dead baby out of the mother’s womb before it poisons and kills the mother?
Late-term abortion is unscrupulously used by some anti-abortion activists and the exploitive politicians supporting them as cudgels against pro-choice legislation when, in fact, it is a necessary medical procedures that should be supported by anyone who cares about the well being of child-bearing women. Please, Charlie, there are valid reasons for late-term end of pregnancy. It’s not a provision for irresponsible caprice, which is the charge made by anti-choice activists.
This is not something people want to talk about right now - all the more reason to confront deliberate mis-information.
Great to see Cathy taking over; she will continue to give us a great Sunday read. Enjoy your weekends, Charlie! With six weekly podcasts, 5 Morning Shots, and freelancing work every week, you need to treat yo self from time to time. You deserve some off time.
Cathy, did you expect that they would overturn Roe? Are you at all concerned with the fact that Murkowski and Collins couldn't tell they were being lied to? And they got to actually speak with the now Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Why should any of the rest of us have any faith in them?Help me to understand why you're so confident the Court won't get even more radical when no one thought it would go this far? Unless you always thought that they would overturn Roe and then stop there?
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss concerns regarding Griswold or Obergefell, though, because crazies need a bug bear. Strange things are happening at the state level at the urging of vocal minorities (CRT, Don't Say Gay, voting laws) and people are dreaming up creative solutions to deny folks what they thought were their rights (SCOTUS was foiled by the bounty law). A dangerous combination. Maybe Bostock is a bright light, but god there's all kinds of crazy going on right now.
You yourself express amazement at where we are today. I don't feel alarmist when I speculate on what things will be like in a couple years based on what I see happening now. And looking at SCOTUS on voting laws and pandemic measures, I feel no confidence there.
Good column! Well reasoned and thought provoking, but I disagree that, at least proportionally, the left and progressives in general have or are overreaching. There is a hue and cry yes, but it's the instinctional cry of ouch.....I've just been stepped on and am in pain. That's what left is doing now, and we are likely to quit crying and settle down soon. Give us our right to suffer with this injustice
I am in agreement with Heer, and while I believe it is unlikely to work, given the current bent of the court and right wing luddites, it is almost certain they will continue to chip away at the other intimate decisions. They are the most mean spirited, arrogant, and determined crowd, and they seemingly have no conscience or qualms about dictating their rules on the rest of us.
I find it very tedious whe the press keeps attempting to find equilavancies when rhe situation is so lopsided on the one side.
And I think that it is likely that you at The Bulwark have come from an antiabortion past, and it may take your newfound progressivism of recent years to "kick in" on this issue.
This is off topic from the abortion discussion but I am curious how conservatives, not MAGAs, see the Citizen's United opinion when applying Alito's logic, that is there is no reference in the Constitution regarding abortion and there is also no mention in the Constitution that corporations are people and money is speech. None, not even a whiff.
pregnancy is incredibly hard on the body. The US already has abysmal ratings re maternal mortality and that is going to get worse with the overturning of Roe. The point that most miss is the loss of bodily autonomy for 10 months. A pregnant woman can't eat what she wants, drink what she wants, etc. And the odds that a woman is going to give up the baby for adoption after suffering that are really low.
As to other rights not going away, this is a pretty bad take. Things like gay marriage, contraceptive use, interracial marriage are all based on privacy rights, same as Roe. And Alito stress that Roe is an unenumerated right, same as gay marriage, use of contraceptives, interracial marriage. They are all going to be challenged.
Finally, states are already trying to out-do each other for ridiculous laws. No travelling out of state without a negative pregnancy test! Death penalty to women who get an abortion! Life in prison for doctors upholding their oath to do no harm! Are in 1952 or 2022?
I am a little tired of this 'I'm sorry but this is a both sides' rationalization. What was once the Republican party has moved so far to the right with it's radical behavior and tactics that a Democrat taking a position on a policy that 10-15 years ago was considered conservative is now characterized as an extremist. The absolute shattering of the SCOTUS nominating process by Mitch McConnel is the prime example. And the argument RGB could have retired under Obama so the left shouldn't complain? Wow. Yet we should ignore the galactic level of hypocrisy exhibited by the GQP pushing through Comey Barret is an off the charts radicalization of the nominating process. Oh yes, and Merrick Garland stunt, how in the hell is that a conservative principle?
As far as other rights being eroded under the cloud of this 'draft opinion', Louisiana has already proposed banning IUDs and McConnell came out with a statement that a 'national ban' is a real legislative possibility. Heer is correct.
Nice intro! One quibble, or rather, an answer to your question: The reason people are connecting Amy Coney Barrett to the "domestic supply of infants" concept is that in her testimony she argued (to widespread and I think justifiable astonishment) that abortion wasn't really needed because all 50 states had secure drop-off sites for infants. In other words, no worries if you're forced to have a baby, someone is sure to want to raise it, no questions asked. And this remarkable suggestion is repeated almost word for word in the Alito draft. There may be some elision involved here, but I don't see why it's unjustified or "creepy" to connect it to ACB, who has reintroduced the open discussion of the idea that abortion and adoption have a direct and inverse relation.
Charlie is right that Cathy Young is a remarkable writer and probably an important thinker. My only comment is one I use whenever abortion rights are being discussed, which is please STOP referring to "pro-life"... which is a vastly broader term than only abortion (we all have met that "conservative" Karen who is against any and all abortions, yet salivates over the Death Penalty)... So spare me the "pro-life" moniker, and call it what it IS... It's an Anti-Choice for Women position. There's Pro-Choice,, and Anti-Choice. the term pro-life when applied to abortion is so off... so wrong... if only because sometimes the choice itself is between the mother's life and the zygote"s life... There is simply no choice there that can be clearly understood as pro-life. Terminology and words matter. I do expect to see that even among the Bulwark writers. Going forward, kindly use the correct phraseology: Pro-Choice or Anti-Choice.
Leaving it up to the states would be more democratic if democracy existed in all states. Laws aren't made by voters; they're made by legislators. There are permanent minority-rule states. Moreover, even if the majority rules, it can brutally treat the minority. That's why some people want abortion to be a right. Precisely so it isn't up for a vote.
Actually, in 1973, the conservative Christian evangelical movement (it wasn't the Christian Right then) had little to no opposition to Roe v Wade, with the president of the Southern Baptists writing that abortion for rape, incest and the life of the mother was a Good Thing. The Christian Right was actually created by Jerry Falwell, who was upset that his "Christian Academies" (i.e., whites-only segregation alternatives) had been declared illegal in the Bob Jones University case, and he was looking for an issue on which to build a movement to support his view of the way things should be. He was smart enough to figure out that it was unlikely he could get people upset about his loss of a right to get federal money for a segregated school, so he picked up abortion and made it the issue.
As far as there being "no movement" on going after contraception, you're just flat-out wrong. The more extreme end of the "Pro-Life" movement considers most birth control - since it prevents conception - to be an "abortifacient," and they want that banned.
And finally, "Pro-Life" is not pro-life. It is Pro-State-Enforced-Pregnancy. The last time I looked, Actual Conservatives are opposed to the state intervening in personal decisions. What passes itself off the past 50 years as "movement conservatism" is actually "Pseudo-Conservative" as defined in Richard Hofstadter's 1954 "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt."
"Unlike most of the liberal dissent of the past, the new dissent not only has no respect for non-conformism, but is based upon a relentless demand for conformity. It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment as it is represented by the Eisenhower Administration. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
"The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows 'conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness' in his conscious thinking and 'violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.'”
As someone who adopted from Russia in 2006….
The issue wasn’t the *availability* of domestic adoption. It was the simple fact that domestic adoption was just far more complicated.
We already had a biological child. It didn’t seem fair to him, at his age, to act as a foster family first (a prerequisite in Alabama at the time). It also didn’t seem fair to engage the real possibility that someone came out of the woodwork down the road and contested the adoption (a small but real risk).
So, we went international.
I’m also completely dismayed at the lack of discussion over adoption. It’s insanely expensive, and the expense doesn’t stop when you’re officially mom and dad. The ongoing mental health challenges of being an adopted child are real - and expensive - and only “sort of” covered by health insurance.
We’re well six figures on that front alone. Adoption is hard, expensive, and barely supported by our politics.
If people are going to cite adoption in this discussion, it needs to be a comprehensive and honest discussion. I haven’t seen anything along those lines anywhere. Probably because it’s a bad fit for Culture Wars preferred binary mode.
I am 77 years old, so have had a lot of experience. Two comments: 1. Every opinion on abortion is coming from a place of belief. I think the person who has to live with the consequences should make the decision. 2. I think you underestimate the determination of people who are anti-abortion. Most of them base their positions on their version of God, salvation, "natural law", truth, conception, murder, etc. They are not open to discussion because they have the "truth". My husband and I come from large families which contain both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. They are one issue voters. They support a man as corrupt and cruel as Trump because they think he and his acolytes will make their beliefs the law of the land. They will not stop at the criminalization of abortion.
Welcome to Sunday Morning Shots! I really appreciated your thoughtful analysis. I do understand how people distorted the use of “domestic supply” in the draft decision, but still hate the overall point he was making.
Charlie - Listening to you and Bill Kristol bemoan late-term abortion was as exasperating for me as the concept of late-term abortion seemed to be for you, heavy sighs and all. Yes, there was one mention of fetal abnormality and threat to the life of the mother, but to hear your concern, one would think that abortions in the second and third trimester were every-day occurrences.
In reality, they are extremely rare. Why don’t you help people understand the agonizing reality of late-term abortion by getting someone knowledgeable about it on your show to explain why it is essential that there be a provision enabling it, rare though it may be. Do you really think it is moral to have a baby brought to birth when that baby will die as soon as it’s life is no longer supported by the mother? Or if the baby dies in utero, don’t you agree that there be some provision to take the dead baby out of the mother’s womb before it poisons and kills the mother?
Late-term abortion is unscrupulously used by some anti-abortion activists and the exploitive politicians supporting them as cudgels against pro-choice legislation when, in fact, it is a necessary medical procedures that should be supported by anyone who cares about the well being of child-bearing women. Please, Charlie, there are valid reasons for late-term end of pregnancy. It’s not a provision for irresponsible caprice, which is the charge made by anti-choice activists.
This is not something people want to talk about right now - all the more reason to confront deliberate mis-information.
Great to see Cathy taking over; she will continue to give us a great Sunday read. Enjoy your weekends, Charlie! With six weekly podcasts, 5 Morning Shots, and freelancing work every week, you need to treat yo self from time to time. You deserve some off time.
Cathy, did you expect that they would overturn Roe? Are you at all concerned with the fact that Murkowski and Collins couldn't tell they were being lied to? And they got to actually speak with the now Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Why should any of the rest of us have any faith in them?Help me to understand why you're so confident the Court won't get even more radical when no one thought it would go this far? Unless you always thought that they would overturn Roe and then stop there?
Dynamite Game of Thrones Reference, Cathy!
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss concerns regarding Griswold or Obergefell, though, because crazies need a bug bear. Strange things are happening at the state level at the urging of vocal minorities (CRT, Don't Say Gay, voting laws) and people are dreaming up creative solutions to deny folks what they thought were their rights (SCOTUS was foiled by the bounty law). A dangerous combination. Maybe Bostock is a bright light, but god there's all kinds of crazy going on right now.
You yourself express amazement at where we are today. I don't feel alarmist when I speculate on what things will be like in a couple years based on what I see happening now. And looking at SCOTUS on voting laws and pandemic measures, I feel no confidence there.
Anyhow welcome!
No male should vote or otherwise participate in the issue. It is women's burden and issue.
Good column! Well reasoned and thought provoking, but I disagree that, at least proportionally, the left and progressives in general have or are overreaching. There is a hue and cry yes, but it's the instinctional cry of ouch.....I've just been stepped on and am in pain. That's what left is doing now, and we are likely to quit crying and settle down soon. Give us our right to suffer with this injustice
I am in agreement with Heer, and while I believe it is unlikely to work, given the current bent of the court and right wing luddites, it is almost certain they will continue to chip away at the other intimate decisions. They are the most mean spirited, arrogant, and determined crowd, and they seemingly have no conscience or qualms about dictating their rules on the rest of us.
I find it very tedious whe the press keeps attempting to find equilavancies when rhe situation is so lopsided on the one side.
And I think that it is likely that you at The Bulwark have come from an antiabortion past, and it may take your newfound progressivism of recent years to "kick in" on this issue.
This is off topic from the abortion discussion but I am curious how conservatives, not MAGAs, see the Citizen's United opinion when applying Alito's logic, that is there is no reference in the Constitution regarding abortion and there is also no mention in the Constitution that corporations are people and money is speech. None, not even a whiff.