Poll contradictions on Roe, Dobbs, and abortion indicate many Americans are confused and/or misinformed
Which comes as no surprise.
The MSM and so many politicians have made it their business to misinform and confuse. It can be very politically expedient. Also, it’s pretty easy to get confused about court rulings; it’s not as though most people wade through them by actually reading them, and it’s not as though they’re a cinch to understand even when they are read. Yes, the main points are usually easy to get – although often distorted in the media. But the details of the reasoning behind those main points aren’t all that simple to understand and often require careful reading and extra background knowledge.
I got my own education in that problem about ten years ago, when Romney was running against Obama. Some discussion connected with politics was going on in my book group, and during the course of it I made a reference to federalism being the principle behind something or other. I got various blank stares and “What’s that?” in response. Most or perhaps all of these people were college graduates, but quite a few of them seemed to never have heard of what I was referencing.
And if you think about it, some background knowledge about the powers retained by the federal government versus those allowed to the states, the history of that principle and the arguments for why our government was set up that way, would also be necessary to understand Roe and Dobbs and have a truly informed opinion about it.
When I thought about that day of the 2012 book group conversation (which was not about Roe, by the way), I realized that, had I not gone to law school and/or had I not become very interested in politics so many years later, I might have not known or cared all that much about federalism, either. Looking back on my school days, I know that we certainly must have studied government. But how much did we study it and, more importantly, how much had I remembered about federalism from that long-ago high school course? Probably not all that much. Maybe mostly the phrase “states’ rights,” which was strongly associated with bad stuff like the Civil War and Governor Wallace of Alabama. So that might have been all I would have remembered of the subject.
So now we get this sort of thing:
These results are just mind-numbing because they are nothing but a ball of contradictions. 55 percent do not approve of the overturning of Roe…
But the biggest “huh” moment comes when you see that 72 percent (!) of Americans believe that abortion should be banned after 15 weeks. Guess that that requires? The overturning of Roe (and Casey).
To summarize, you’ve got far more than a super-majority in favor of a provision that requires the ending of something they claim they don’t support ending. Again, it’s just mind-numbing.
So are Americans just really dumb? Or are they being fed so much misinformation that they don’t even know that they hold contradictory positions? I think the answer is mostly the latter. The media have been relentless in conflating the ending of Roe with a supposed federal ban on abortion that simply doesn’t exist.
Polls seem to be indicating that Dobbs isn’t going to make much of a difference in people’s voting decisions in 2022. Who knows? It’s certainly the case, though, that the Democrats are really hoping it will make a difference and that the difference will favor them.
But they’re also talking a lot about “codifying” Roe. That’s an interesting word: codifying. It’s being used right now to mean “Congress passing a bill to make abortion the federal law of the land, superceding state laws that various states are trying to pass.” In other words, it’s one of those euphemisms meant to disguise what’s really happening, which is that SCOTUS said this is an issue for the states and the Democrats are saying that no, it’s a federal issue and they have the power to pass legislation to make it the law of the land and take away the right of states to make their own laws on this. If they actually accomplished this, wouldn’t the Court probably say it’s unconstitutional? Perhaps, or perhaps more threats from the left would manage to intimidate the conservative justices.
At the moment, it’s likely that such a “codification” of Roe would be blocked by either Manchin or Sinema and their opposition to ending the filibuster. But I don’t think that the Democrats really give a rat’s patootie about passing it right now, and in fact I think they don’t want to do so. I think what they really want is to use it as a campaign issue and rallying cry in 2022 to whip up people to vote for them in order to supposedly pass it in the new Congressional session.
If they ever really had to hammer out the details of such a law, though, it would be interesting to see what they would come up with. If it’s too moderate, they would not just be “codifying” an abortion right and stopping red states from banning it, but wouldn’t they also be keeping states such as New York and California from passing the extremely lenient bills those states would like to pass? Doesn’t this cut both ways? It seems to me that such a “codification” is a potential minefield for the Democrats, so they might want to keep it in the realm of discussion only.
Oh, and executive action.
I wonder if they actually care about passing a law at all – they had the opportunity during the first two years of the Obama administration, for example, when they *could have* passed a national abortion law, or immigration law, or whatever ‘wedge issue’ law they wanted, yet they never even proposed something like that, let alone brought it to committee. I suspect that the value of these ‘wedge issues’ would be substantially diminished if actual laws were passed – settling the issue – as they would lose the ability to name-call, fund-raise and demagogue over them. More profitable (financially or electorally) to *pretend* that some terrible person is stopping them from doing something about it.
But I suppose that’s politics.
I rarely have cause to quibble with Neo, but I think she’s inadvertently adopted the left’s view of government power when she said: “some background knowledge about the powers retained by the federal government versus those allowed to the states” would be required to understand Dobbs.”
I think it’s the other way around–the states have all power that isn’t granted to the federal government in the Constitution. The states (and the “people”)–not the federal government–“retain” powers and the Constitution empowers a federal government of limited powers.
In understanding the case of Dobbs, Roe inappropriately usurped from the states the power to decide how abortion is regulated by concocting a “constitutional right” to abortion out of thin air (i.e., substantive due process). The right to regulate abortion (and to exercise other police powers) is “retained” by the states–not “allowed” to them by the federal government.
Dobbs, not Dodd. 🙂
Yes, Dobbs.
There seem to be gynecologists who are just as confused as everyone else; either that, or the AP and other “news” services are making things up again. There are reports of doctors who hesitate to treat women for ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage, when in fact there is no place in the USA where such treatment is illegal. In the case of the 10-year-old from Columbus, OH, it was claimed that she could not have had an abortion in Ohio, when in fact, because of her very young age and the risk to her health from a pregnancy at that age, she could easily have qualified for treatment near her home.
Kate:
Those doctors may indeed be confused. Or some of them may be pro-abortion activists, like the doctor who publicized the case of the 10-year-old, who want to propagandize about certain hardships that don’t exist in order to create the perception that Dobbs bans those things, and therefore to affect the election.
Our illustrious senator, Patty Murray, is up for re-election. Shei’s basing her entire platform on abortion rights. She has dreamed up all sorts of possible laws that will target women who get abortions for traveling to another state for an abortion. Would such a law be constitutional? She claims the Republicans are making, or have made, such laws.
She has dreamed up all kinds of potential harms to women outside Washington by the overthrow of Roe. Of the problems that we have in Washington such as inflation, runaway crime, expensive gasoline, a slowing economy, sky high real estate prices, crumbling roads, a crippled health care system, and more; she says nothing.
The Democrats seem to be centering their election campaigns on abortion and how all kinds of new laws will be passed by those deplorable Republicans making abortions unattainable for women in Red Sates.
Patty in her own words. Seven minutes of lies and innuendo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_nDQOCCvJ8
Thanks, fixed. But I seem to have an intermittently crossed wire between Dobbs and Dodd.
Although generally seen as mere quibble, the distinctions understood by our framers and founders between concepts such as sovereignty (of states), powers (of goverments and people), and rights (of people alone and never attributable to states) have been unfortunately lost to most of our contemporaries. Yet, bereft of these crucial distinctions understanding our regimes is hardly possible. So — in the colloquial — we’re screwed.
Check out your favorite news site: the Squad just got “arrested” for blocking traffic outside the SC. AOC and others made a show of it by putting their hands behind their backs even though they weren’t cuffed. Escorted to a holding area and then released. But I guess it gives them more street cred. Bunch of maroons.
Bragg caves! Alba prevails!
The oddly-yclept ‘Bonchie’ relieves him or herself with “So are Americans just really dumb? Or are they being fed so much misinformation that they don’t even know that they hold contradictory positions? I think the answer is mostly the latter. ”
Oh blah blah blah in the kind of repeated AND repetitive AND always the same slop and drivel running off these cliched writers’ slack lower lips and into the drool cup on their chins.
We’ve been reading this “I think the answer…” followed by “is” followed by thick tranches of cliched crapola for decades. To read these “measured insights” yet again is as mind-numbing as having a three-foot piece of rebar nailed down the center of the spine.
No longer are such folk that the scribbling hack pets in a standard cliched “right” response, nice as they may be, merely political “opponents.” We tended to think of such folks in the past as merely misinformed, underinformed, or in the main malinformed.
It no longer matters if “opponents” are smart or dumb. If smart they are malicious and/or support those of malign intent against the Republic and hence they have become the enemy. If dumb they are useful idiots and are used as ideological cannon fodder against the republic and hence still the enemy.
Churchill may well have said, “Jaw-Jaw is better than war-war” and he would have been right. Until it was, as we now have it, war war.
Maybe we need to be “He who gets slapped” to WakeTFup!
Chad King:
I think you are misinterpreting what I wrote.
To clarify: enormous powers are allowed the states, and only a few are retained by the federal government. The powers allowed to the states are allowed by default in the Constitution, which allows the feds to retain only a few and the rest are allowed to the states.
My mother was a schoolteacher, and when I was young, probably junior high school or so, I read a book we had called “Your Rugged Constitution”. Aimed at young readers it was a straightforward clause-by-clause explanation of the Constitution and I believe it also contained some background on the debates in the constitutional convention leading to its adoption. Or I may have read about those elsewhere. Much of those debates revolved around the degree of power to be given to the federal government as well as divisions between large and small states (hence the Senate with its equal representation by state).
Needless to say this was long before “woke” politics infected teaching (I am close to your age neo) and the book was very complimentary to the document and the Founding Fathers. Now the Barnes and Noble review says, “this truly rugged and much-admired classic is sure to inform, and also delight readers with its retro 1950s ethos.” Yes, its “retro 1950s ethos” of belief in our form of government!
Though she has been rather coy about explaining exactly how, Ann Althouse seems to believe that the Commerce Clause could be used to constitutionally justify a national abortion law, though possibly that might mean just passing a law that would codify the right to obtain an abortion in a state where they are permitted, free from any type of commercial restrictions. I’m guessing that would largely be pre-empting restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance plans, providing travel expenses, and so on. Though some people seem to be making noises about attempting to forbid leaving a state to obtain an abortion in some way, I’m at a loss to figure out how that would be Constitutional.
Polls seem to be indicating that Dobbs isn’t going to make much of a difference in people’s voting decisions in 2022. Who knows? It’s certainly the case, though, that the Democrats are really hoping it will make a difference and that the difference will favor them.
The current polls are of some import, but I believe that the Dem campaign and NGO coffers are full of cash; much of it coming in after the SC Dobbs decision leak. I’ll wager that the misinforming of the electorate will get worse heading towards election day, not better.
______
Some modest amount of my understanding of government and the Constitution came from my third grade civics class, probably including an inkling of Federalism.
Federalism is one of those backwards sounding bits of terminology and that doesn’t help matters. I recall at some point in my younger adulthood listening to GOP politicians talk about “statism.” For a brief time, my science trained mind couldn’t figure out why they were talking about “stasis.” Oops. Just call it “big government” people.
Getting back to the civics education topic or lack thereof, it’s important to appreciate the extent to which people today are uninformed. The effectiveness of propaganda or intentional misinformation is amplified by having an uninformed group of people consuming it.
Christopher B:
Whether or not Althouse is being coy, I won’t be coy: I have little doubt they would try to use the commerce clause for the purpose, and declare it almost infinitely elastic. The question is whether the current SCOTUS would buy that. I don’t think they would.
Yes, but how many ANTIFA activists does SCOTUS have?
They’ve been trying to gin up an assassination for quite some time now. They’ve paying cash bounties for SCOTUS sightings at malls and in clubs and in restaurants. They’ve been offering a double bounty if the judge is still there a half an hour after the tip comes in. And if they can kill off a couple of judges, the drooler gets to nominate their replacements.
And this is the level they are working at right now.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10996803/ShutDownDC-group-offers-bounties-Twitter-conservative-Supreme-Court-justices-public-sightings.html
They’ve upped it since the 8th.
Stasis happens, oddly enough, to have an old and powerful political implication in its meaning “condition of civil war” in the Ancient Greek written by Thucydides as he described events in Corcyra (which see, for a vision of hair-raising horror). Nowdays it seems only Victor Davis Hanson sorts of folk use the term in that sense. It us.
Indeed, I believe Justice Thomas might find a perfected opportunity to go after that nasty Wickard v Filburn decision. Wouldn’t that be a ripe Georgia peach for the plucking!
so parsing the tea leaves, the majority is in favor of delivering the decision to the states, and many states would be restrictive, perhaps not as restrictive as western europe,
I think most folks are absolutely clueless about how our govt. is supposed to work.
I will surmise that if you ask 100 adults what federalism means , 95 of them would have no idea what it means or worse, believe it means something contrary to its actual meaning.
Jay Leno, when he had his TV show, on occasion had a “man on the street” segment, in which he asked folks (adults of all ages) basic history questions, such as “which nations did the USA fight against during WWII?”
The answers were all over the map; England? Spain? France? Germany?
My brother and a best friend of mine – both senior citizens – have no idea what federalism means and probably could not even tell you how many branches of govt there are and what those three are.
I am not joking.
By the way, the US Constitution nowhere says that the SCOTUS should rule on any laws passed by Congress or the States.
It was John Marshall, the 4th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in the precedent setting “Marbury vs Madison” case, who guided the court to allow judicial review of laws passed by Congress or the States.
That precedent still stands today (obviously).
I don’t see how passing a law at the national level is constitutional. I know that hasn’t stopped Congress before.
And these “executive actions” have gone too far. They NEED to be reined in.
(If pro is the opposite of con, what’s the opposite of Congress? It’s a joke for those of you who wax pedantic.)
In my state of Michigan, the last couple of years’ stats show 89% of abortions happened at twelve weeks or earlier. Presumably, a substantial number of the remainder came in under fifteen weeks.
Not in the business, but I suspect that of the remaining remainder, a goodly proportion were medical issues and not matters of convenience and a very late decision.
Which is to say that resistance to a law with a fifteen week–say–limit plus the usual rape, incest, medical issues would be philosophical and not a matter of putting a burden on a huge number of women.
Good riddance to Wickard if it goes. Putting that aside, however, Sen. Sinema noted recently that if Democrats go nuclear on the filibuster in order to “codify” Roe, then they create precedent to allow Republicans to enact a national abortion ban the next time they are in power. The same goes for the commerce clause (formerly the “interstate commerce clause”). It’s probably in Democrats’ interest that a “codification” of Roe be unconstitutional because it if is, a national abortion ban is also unconstitutional.
I’ve been saying since the Dobbs draft leaked that overturning Roe would be a political nothingburger once people realized that abortion was still going to be very, very legal in all blue and most purple states. How many persuadable voters in swing districts will really care that abortion is illegal in Mississippi or illegal after 15 weeks in in Florida (or whatever it is there now). I think that’s why we have the false propaganda about the 10 year old in Ohio, the nonsense about ectopic pregnancies, and the additional nonsense about travel bans. The left cannot allow people to find out what Dobbs really means.
The confusion is deliberate and fostered by every leftist with a microphone. How many empty-headed celebrities have we seen spouting the claim that SCOTUS has banned abortion?
I don’t see how passing a law at the national level is constitutional. I know that hasn’t stopped Congress before.
Agree absolutely. I think a law that inhibited agreements between clinics and potential clients domiciled in other states or domiciled abroad might be legit. So might a law that prohibited the assemblage of multi-state corporations devoted to abortion practice. And the federal government could certainly debar the performance of abortion on federal property, in the territorial waters of the United States, and in certain sorts of conveyances. Another thing that could be done and has been done is to define medical care in such a way that it would exclude certain things done with the technical competence physicians and surgeons acquire. Being excluded, it would not be on the menu of services covered by Medicaid.
That appellate courts have chosen to behave as if the distinction between interstate and intrastate commerce is factitious does not give a franchise to the conscientious legislator to do likewise. General police power belongs to the state legislatures.
it becomes more and more obvious that Dems are a death cult, well the prog subset, they want to physically erase the past, see their jihad against monuments which began with charlottesville, the demoralization of the youth, as bezmezov described it, and the extinguishing of the support systems for civilization that’s abundant energy, plentiful and affordable food, sufficient materials to construct and support industrial society, another piece of this monstrous vision fell into place, with tucker’s investigation of the difference between chinese and american tiktok feeds, the former are educational uplifting the latter is all seven levels of idiocracy,
this blitzkrieg against innocent life specially that supported by family, is another aspect of this, of course when persons are soaking in mind arson, its hard to recognize corrective steps like dobbs, and they react like donald sutherland at the end of body snatchers (btw that ending doesn’t make any sense,
I am starting to come to the conclusion that the Left would be very, very comfortable with a dictatorship, provided s/he was a Democrat.
Biden’s love of executive orders is evidence if that. Think of a President Ocasio-Cortez, or what Hillary Clinton would have tried to do, if she could pull it off, or Barack Obama.
The constitution dies with Democrats.
SCOTTtheBADGER:
I came to that conclusion a long time ago.
the spanish republic had similar indices, so is the chavista podemos party that was in coalition with the socialists, it was support rallies for women’s rights that spread the virus in the spring of 2020, the right opposition is split over there with the establishment populares, which have a rare bright light in isabel ayuso, the citizens party which are ostensibly the tea party, and vox which is the maga culture warriors, there is overlap between both of the last two factions,
Teach Government and Civics in the schools and drop the Gender Studies.
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I’ve mentioned this before, but the state of Illinois required all students to pass a basic civics test in 6th? grade or you could not move onto 7th? (or maybe 7th? and 8th?). This was in the ’70s and I recently verified my memory with someone else who was in school in Illinois around the same time. I think the test was similar to what immigrants took to obtain citizenship. Kids who did not pass during the school year had to retake it in the summer.
The year of the test our Social Studies class focused on preparation and Federalism and enumerated Federal powers were part of the curriculum. The three branches of government and their purpose, as well as checks and balances between them and the States were drilled heavily. We memorized the Bill of Rights. We were taught election laws and how the Electoral College functioned.
When I lived in Texas I was told there was something similar in the curriculum there, and it included a big section on Texas state history. Whenever topics like states’ rights, Federalism or the U.S. founding come up I find Texans well versed in the fundamentals.
Regarding Scott at 6:31 and neo,
For me one of the biggest surprises of huckster, flim-flam man and reality TV star DJT as President was how loyal he was to the Constitution and Federalism. I’ve apologized several times for having judged him so unfairly. He has his flaws, but I know of no other President since Reagan who adhered so closely to the Constitution limits placed on the Chief Executive.
Rufus T. Firefly:
We had to learn it too. But I submit that most people don’t retain it even if they have to learn it, unless they have a special interest in it. If it’s not a good course, and it’s just dry stuff they have to memorize for the test, I think most people will forget.
I was born in Dollars Taxes ( https://youtu.be/lgRbxHttZSM ) Rufus, but from six years old educated in Fairfax Va. I’m hoping the Texans said something along the lines of “State’s rights? Why, there’s no sucha thang.”
Rufus, I, too was very pleasantly surprised by Mr. Trump. I wish he was still running the Nation.