rudderless and another attack on women by the state

I finished those two pieces last Friday, started boxing the one up, the white feather, on Monday...many layers of bubble wrap and foam on all four side, top and bottom in a box, taped up, that box in a bigger box with packing material on the bottom, top, and all four sides. Taped up the outer box, which I had to cut down, and weighed it on Tuesday. Wednesday, purchase and print out the shipping label and drop it off at the post office. Now comes the hard part, trying to settle on a price. I figure it has at least 50 hours of labor in it but I don't think that includes the time I spent on the aluminum or plywood. I tallied up all my material costs so now it's a matter of deciding how much I think my time is worth, or rather trying to come up with a labor cost that doesn't make it unsellable or just flat out give it away. I hate this part.

I did dinner Tuesday night...sauteed the rest of the cabbage with onions, garlic, and bacon; roasted one of the small butternut squashes I still have, mashed it, added an egg and some melted butter, and the leftover dried cranberries from last week's salad and baked that; browned and steamed some dumplings. It was a pretty good dinner.

It was so hot Monday night at yoga in that metal building even with the sides halfway up and the big fan on that sweat was dripping off me. Literally. I know some people swear by hot yoga but I don't like it, just makes me feel overheated.

Our high for today, Wednesday, is supposed to be just 89˚ with a real feel of 103˚. And that's just what it feels like. I walked by the azaleas on the west side of the house this morning and was shocked to see they had dropped about half their leaves in the last few days.

I finished my most recent book and was going to post that list before this one but with the new law in Texas banning abortions after six weeks I wanted to post this explanation by a lawyer. It really is a stupid law and unenforceable. You can report a suspected abortion but the state cannot do anything about it because there is no enforcement written into the law. They are counting on individuals and groups filing civil actions in which they have to prove an abortion took place after 6 weeks and if successful they will get a 10K reward. They can file against not just the woman and the doctor but anyone who helps her get to the clinic, even an uber driver and the person bringing the suit doesn't even have to live in Texas. The state is counting on the crazies filing frivolous lawsuits so in essence it's enforcement by harassment. The state thinks women will not get help or will not seek an abortion for fear of a civil lawsuit being filed. So stupid. Because how is any neighbor or individual or group going to know which any specific woman had an abortion after six weeks unless she tells someone that A. she's pregnant and B. what she plans to do about it, unless they plan on suing everyone who walks into a PP or other women's health clinic. I would think HIPPA would not allow them access to medical records on a suspicion. Anyway, here's what the lawyer has to say:

A few folks have messaged asking for an explanation of last night's shadow docket opinion in Whole Women's Health v. Jackson, which functionally makes abortion illegal in Texas for the time being.

Copy/pasting a chat transcript below, to the extent that it's helpful. If others who know this case better than I do have opinions, please chime in.

The interesting thing here is whether or not the court has the ability to stop the law from being enjoined statewide, versus being enjoined in individual cases. So, in this case, the state of Texas has no ability to enforce the law at all. It's entirely enforced by private individuals who can bring a civil action and, if successful, get $10k in damages. Normally, the way you stop a law like this is you sue Ken Paxton (since his office would be enforcing the law) and get an injunction. However, here, you can't do that, because Ken Paxton can't enforce the law.

Now, if, let's say Westboro sues someone under the law for providing an abortion. You could get an order enjoining Westboro from enforcing the law, or defeat Westboro's case against you on a motion to dismiss, arguing that the law is incompatible with well-established SCOTUS precedent (see, e.g., June Medical Center, rejecting a similar law, opinion by Roberts).

Here, there are three procedural questions:

First, could you sue Westboro BEFORE the law takes effect in order to prevent them from enforcing it? Here, the court punts the issue and effectively says no, citing the Defendant's affidavits in the case saying they have no intent of actually enforcing the law.

Second, can you get an injunction statewide preventing both Westboro and any other far right churches from enforcing the law? Here, the court says we don't know, procedurally, and we need the issue to be fully briefed before it gets to us and we make a decision.

Third, can you get an injunction statewide that is binding on judges, prohibiting judges from issuing orders that enforce the law? Here, the court again punts and says we don't know procedurally.

Roberts does a good job in his dissent explaining exactly why this is totally unprecedented (he literally leads off by calling the law unprecedented). Sotomayor and Breyer's dissents do a good job explaining exactly why this is just a feint from the state of Texas to avoid an injunction of a facially unconstitutional law on the basis of what amounts to a procedural technicality.

The majority takes the position of - well, this is a somewhat novel procedural issue, and the standard to issue an injunction is very high (you have to show "a likelihood of success on the merits", which is very difficult to show on a novel issue of law). And they explicitly "stress" that this is not a ruling on the underlying law's constitutionality, and agree that the suit here has raised "serious questions" about the constitutionality of the statute.

Sotomayor in particular spends time doing the work of detailing exactly how the court's action here is cowardly and has meaningful practical effects for women in Texas, laying out how at midnight on Aug 31 there were women turned away from abortion clinics and protesters rallied outside waiting to snitch on people who were there.

Kagan's dissent is just a couple paragraphs but she spends them blasting the court's "shadow docket" and the majority's use of orders like these to create massive shifts in the status quo while hiding behind procedural bullshit.

The opinions are only about 12 pages together, and they're worth a read, but that's the cliffsnotes. SCOTUSBlog also has good coverage.

So, is Roe outright dead? It's unclear.

There is a chance that SCOTUS does hold that the law is unconstitutional on a merits hearing, but such an order is extremely unlikely to come any time before late June (the end of the court's annual term, when they release the opinions on controversial cases).

It's possible the case gets held up at the appellate level and doesn't get heard until next term, which would mean potentially a decision in June 2023.

So, we are looking at months of this law being in effect, at least. I expect that other southern states will quickly follow suit to the extent their legislatures are in session or can be called to special sessions. And it's very possible that they remain in place under similar circumstances until SCOTUS rules on the constitutionality of these laws.

So, grim news.