Supreme Court States That Abortion Is Not Rooted In The American Nation’s History, This Software Engineer Proves The Statement Is Not True
A few days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, deciding that the US Constitution does not provide for the right to abortion, and the states have the right to regulate this area on their own. At the same time, the effect of the decision of the long-standing case Roe v. Wade has been cancelled.
This decision has become one of the most discussed in the history of American legal proceedings, and now social networks are literally inflamed with fierce discussions between those in favor of the right to abortion and their opponents. At the same time, some participants in the dispute are more interested in the formal side of the Supreme Court’s verdict.
For example, John Skinner, a software engineer from Texas, was intrigued by the Supreme Court’s claim that abortion is not “deeply rooted in the history and traditions of this Nation.” Skinner went to archives and did a lot of research on whether Americans in the 18th century used the word “abortion” itself, and if so, in what sense. The Twitter thread in which Skinner presented the results of his research went viral, garnering nearly 200K likes in total.
More info: Twitter
Texas software engineer decided to check whether the Supreme Court was right in its wording
Image credits: Janine (not the actual photo)
So, the Original Poster originally suggested that Americans in the 18th century didn’t talk about abortion at all. It turned out he was very wrong. They talked, and a lot! Moreover, the term itself was used in two meanings: directly practical, as well as metaphorical.
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
The Original Poster found a lot of mentions of the term in the various documents dated in the 18th century
By practical significance, Skinner is referring to the termination of unwanted pregnancies. For example, in 1752, a man had “too familiar conversations” with a milkmaid, as a result of which she became pregnant. Wanting to keep everything a secret from his wife and not trusting the midwife, the man turned to local healers, and they gave him some “herbs.”
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Unfortunately, Skinner writes, the “herbs” turned out to be arsenic, and the unfortunate woman died. As a result, both the hapless lover and his acquaintances, the “alchemists,” went on trial. At the same time, they were punished for the fact of poisoning, and not for the abortion itself, which only indicates that abortions were a fairly common and completely legal thing.
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Americans also used the term in its metaphoric meaning, for example, to criticize their opponents
At the same time, as Skinner notes, the use of the term “abortion” in a metaphorical sense also confirms the simple fact that people perceived it as something ordinary. For example, a quote from a 1774 political critique: “unless our ministry are such skillful midwives as to procure an abortion, we shall be surprised with something monstrous.”
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
In other words, the OP claims, we can find out that abortions were a skilled work performed by midwife, intentional, seen as something good, and in addition – a kind of protection from “monstrous births.” This latter, in turn, is a consequence of the medieval Christian belief that some babies are hell-sent monsters whose birth must be prevented.
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
The OP also found a poem which the author compared the American Revolution to abortion, and its enemies to the very “monstrous births”
In addition, Skinner found mentions of abortion as a symbol of freedom in the work of the poetess known as Philo-Sappho. Some historians believe that a woman named Anna Dix from Massachusetts was hiding under the pseudonym. In the poem quoted by Skinner, the American Revolution itself is compared to abortion, and its enemies to those very monstrous births.
Image credits: Jake&Brady (not the actual photo)
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Moreover, during the Revolution, Anna actively helped the rebels, and the tavern which she run often served as their base for various operations. And back in 1792, Anna Dix became the first female litigant before the US Supreme Court. That year, and also six years later, Anna stood up for her right to run a business on her own.
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
So the OP found out that the right to abortion goes back long before the Roe v. Wade case
Thus, Skinner states, the right to abortion is nothing new in the US, and goes back long before the 1973 decision in the Roe v. Wade case. At the same time, as the OP admits, he is by no means a professional historian, but simply an interested amateur who decided to find out how right the Supreme Court was in its wording. As it turns out, it was wrong.
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
The OP’s main goal was just to verify or disprove the very Supreme Court’s dogmatic wording
Of course, John adds, we should not be guided by exactly what 18th-century people said about abortions. Many of those people were complete idiots who owned slaves and died from unnecessary bloodletting, admits the OP. The bottom line is that abortion was common enough for the time, so the Supreme Court’s claim is totally wrong.
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
Image credits: jskilesskinner
The Twitter thread created by John Skinner has become incredibly popular and sparked a new round of discussion, so we are sure that you too have something to say in the comments on this post.
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It doesn't matter. For all their posturing and debates about it politically and legally, it will never be about that for people who view it as a moral issue. It's about their fetishizing of babies. They believe life begins at conception and that's perfectly fine. As a pro-choice person, I actually do, too. But I believe much like animals and people who are suffering, sometimes that life should end. I also believe in the death penalty in some cases. A fetus feels no pain and the mother should not have to die or be forced to carry for any reason. Stop creating this fantasy in your mind of what a horror an abortion is because it's not. Those pictures they hold up are usually of back-alley abortions, which is what happens when they aren't done safely with a doctor. And I flat out refuse to listen to a single law, addendum or amendment regarding abortion if it STILL does not address the man in the equation who never has a single repercussion placed upon him for his part of the situation. Abortion is a medical procedure that should be no one's business but a person and their doctor.
Even when someone doesn't agree with me I feel like I can look at their point of view. I get downvotes here for saying 'to play devil's advocate'... but this is just one time I can't do that. I was talking to someone yesterday about how she is all for stand your ground laws and she owns multiple guns yet is staunchly pro-life. So I said, 'why is killing someone who comes on to your property okay but not abortion?' and she said, "because the person on my property is possibly threatening my life." So I was like, "but you don't believe in abortion in the case of the mother's life being at stake?" and her response was because then it 'God's will'. But who are you to decide God's will? Why isn't your life ending when someone robs you God's will, too. And imagine the hubris! The argument can never stay in a logical place. It always devolves to religion that shouldn't be forced upon me the same way my religious beliefs shouldn't be forced on you. Which is why any religious argument should be kept off our laws.
Load More Replies...
It's almost like those who want to overturn rights are uninterested in facts and would quote as truth something they don't bother to check first - I notice this is a common thing..
It’s very much a “well this is my opinion so it must be correct!” kind of thing :/ they can’t even back it up with science but still think it has just as much value as expert opinions and scientific findings.
Load More Replies...
Anyone with any grasp of Western history knows that until relatively recently (mid to late 1800s) white men with status regarded abortion (and birth control) in the same way they regarded menstrual protection. As something icky and completely irrelevant to anything actually important. Dowdy and insignificant women's matters.
The irony of saying American history doesn't show any proof that abortion is a protected right is that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is an INALIENABLE right as noted by the Constitution of the United States of America, but those rights will always be subverted by the right be bear arms ... pro-life, Christian nation, indeed ...
The most ironic thing in all this SCOTUS turn back time theocratic madness is that probably none of the current judges would be allowed to serve on the court at all due to their ethnicity and/or gender back when the Constitution was written. So called originalism and textualism is just utter BS in all its forms imo. I bet they know it too. It says "For the People". Just saying.
Kind of off topic, but Clarence Thomas's wife is white and he's actively fighting against a provision that could, in effect, outlaw interracial marriage. F*****g irony if you ask me. Don't even get me started on the nerve of his wife calling Anita Hill and asking her to make an apology for her own husband sexually harassing her. That was the craziest thing I heard last week.
Load More Replies...
So I assume that the judges of the Supreme Court would turn down cancer treatment, heart bypasses, kidney transplants etc for themselves and their families because these procedures are not rooted in the American nation's history?
Indeed. The list of contradictions in everything they're arguing is just endless. History and tradition in this context are just code words for white and religion imho. As the list of their latest rulings show they're just inventing legal arguments at this point. The upcoming case on the validity of the insane Independent state legislature theory should tell you everything you need to know about where this is heading. The conservative majority on the SCOTUS of today is a bunch of rogue corrupt theocratic extremists. The Supreme Court Case That Could Upend U.S. Elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTcWqHXV0Ds
Load More Replies...
You have to wonder what the gestation slavers think they're going to do with all those extra children that will be born? You can bet they won't personally be adopting any. No doubt they'll bring back orphanages which worked *so* well in Romania back in the 60s through 80s.
Lol I have visions of that part in the Matrix where Neo wakes up in the field of other people in their pods being used as batteries. Lol or maybe Soylent Green vibes.
Load More Replies...
The person who wrote the opinion to overturn R v. Wade cited a 16th century judge who had a woman executed for witchcraft.
I think he quoted or referred to someone from the 13th century as well. It's just bananas. On the other hand, the signs that this was the republicans end game has been there for a decades.
Load More Replies...
Does this mean Republicans should hence forth be known as Republibans? It seems apt.
It's not the purpose of the Supreme Court to represent popular opinion or serve the needs of the American people. Like the US Senate, it exists to provide a last ditch defense against those very functions, on those terrifying-to-oligarch occasions when actual democracy threatens to break out. Never forget that, then as now, those who controlled early American history and designed the nation’s government were elitist white rich men interested primarily their own ascendance, who didn’t shrink from supporting genocide or slavery.
I do not understand the angloamerican law based on previous precedents. What we have to do with the past executive doing? We also have a history of slavery; as a next step, I expect witch-hunts.
Stupid to say anyone "loved abortion!" though. I doubt all but a very few sick people would claim that. It's about having the ability to not bear a child if you don't want to, if you can't support a child, or if it will put you in danger. People forget one of the reasons abortion remained legal in the U.S. for so long is that it's the very conservative evangelical Christian types who suffer the most from anti-abortion laws. It's their kids who are not allowed to get sex education and have ridiculous rates of underage pregnancies, and for whom getting pregnant unwed is such a serious stigma they go for the back-alley wirehanger abortions and bleed to death or die from infections. I say let these confounded morons reap what they sow with their own daughters, then.
I didn't read the article as saying we "should" go back to that standard, only that the SC was wrong in stating that abortion was never a part of American life, when it clearly was.
Load More Replies...
Fiver, putting your other questions aside, I have the understanding that the Christian Bible states that life begins when the first breath is drawn, so any Christian who is against abortion for religious reasons, has clearly misunderstood, misinterpreted, or is plainly ignoring their own religious text.
Load More Replies...
Things would get rather exciting if we started making laws without regard to precedent.
Load More Replies...
Baby killers??? Do you even know how pregnancy with humans works?? Please don't tell me that I have to explain to you that a 6 week old embryo or a 12 week old fetus just cannot survive outside the womb and that we therefore cannot speak of a baby but instead of a bundle of cells that could at some point become a baby. You know, they have a saying about people like you in my country; when you were born they threw the baby away and kept the placenta instead. Also, I love turtle eggs way mkre than whatever excuse for a human being you are, and I will teach my kid to be weary of people like you.
Load More Replies...
Oh well. Sorry, not sorry that women aren't baby machines.
Load More Replies...
Lol "big science background" usually means you have your PHD from Facebook University. I'm also remarkably curious as to where you found the "imagining that shows a fetus actively trying to resist being sucked out of the womb" because you lost a LOT of credibility just with that statement alone.
Load More Replies...
It doesn't matter. For all their posturing and debates about it politically and legally, it will never be about that for people who view it as a moral issue. It's about their fetishizing of babies. They believe life begins at conception and that's perfectly fine. As a pro-choice person, I actually do, too. But I believe much like animals and people who are suffering, sometimes that life should end. I also believe in the death penalty in some cases. A fetus feels no pain and the mother should not have to die or be forced to carry for any reason. Stop creating this fantasy in your mind of what a horror an abortion is because it's not. Those pictures they hold up are usually of back-alley abortions, which is what happens when they aren't done safely with a doctor. And I flat out refuse to listen to a single law, addendum or amendment regarding abortion if it STILL does not address the man in the equation who never has a single repercussion placed upon him for his part of the situation. Abortion is a medical procedure that should be no one's business but a person and their doctor.
Even when someone doesn't agree with me I feel like I can look at their point of view. I get downvotes here for saying 'to play devil's advocate'... but this is just one time I can't do that. I was talking to someone yesterday about how she is all for stand your ground laws and she owns multiple guns yet is staunchly pro-life. So I said, 'why is killing someone who comes on to your property okay but not abortion?' and she said, "because the person on my property is possibly threatening my life." So I was like, "but you don't believe in abortion in the case of the mother's life being at stake?" and her response was because then it 'God's will'. But who are you to decide God's will? Why isn't your life ending when someone robs you God's will, too. And imagine the hubris! The argument can never stay in a logical place. It always devolves to religion that shouldn't be forced upon me the same way my religious beliefs shouldn't be forced on you. Which is why any religious argument should be kept off our laws.
Load More Replies... It's almost like those who want to overturn rights are uninterested in facts and would quote as truth something they don't bother to check first - I notice this is a common thing..
It’s very much a “well this is my opinion so it must be correct!” kind of thing :/ they can’t even back it up with science but still think it has just as much value as expert opinions and scientific findings.
Load More Replies... Anyone with any grasp of Western history knows that until relatively recently (mid to late 1800s) white men with status regarded abortion (and birth control) in the same way they regarded menstrual protection. As something icky and completely irrelevant to anything actually important. Dowdy and insignificant women's matters.
The irony of saying American history doesn't show any proof that abortion is a protected right is that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is an INALIENABLE right as noted by the Constitution of the United States of America, but those rights will always be subverted by the right be bear arms ... pro-life, Christian nation, indeed ...
The most ironic thing in all this SCOTUS turn back time theocratic madness is that probably none of the current judges would be allowed to serve on the court at all due to their ethnicity and/or gender back when the Constitution was written. So called originalism and textualism is just utter BS in all its forms imo. I bet they know it too. It says "For the People". Just saying.
Kind of off topic, but Clarence Thomas's wife is white and he's actively fighting against a provision that could, in effect, outlaw interracial marriage. F*****g irony if you ask me. Don't even get me started on the nerve of his wife calling Anita Hill and asking her to make an apology for her own husband sexually harassing her. That was the craziest thing I heard last week.
Load More Replies... So I assume that the judges of the Supreme Court would turn down cancer treatment, heart bypasses, kidney transplants etc for themselves and their families because these procedures are not rooted in the American nation's history?
Indeed. The list of contradictions in everything they're arguing is just endless. History and tradition in this context are just code words for white and religion imho. As the list of their latest rulings show they're just inventing legal arguments at this point. The upcoming case on the validity of the insane Independent state legislature theory should tell you everything you need to know about where this is heading. The conservative majority on the SCOTUS of today is a bunch of rogue corrupt theocratic extremists. The Supreme Court Case That Could Upend U.S. Elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTcWqHXV0Ds
Load More Replies... You have to wonder what the gestation slavers think they're going to do with all those extra children that will be born? You can bet they won't personally be adopting any. No doubt they'll bring back orphanages which worked *so* well in Romania back in the 60s through 80s.
Lol I have visions of that part in the Matrix where Neo wakes up in the field of other people in their pods being used as batteries. Lol or maybe Soylent Green vibes.
Load More Replies... The person who wrote the opinion to overturn R v. Wade cited a 16th century judge who had a woman executed for witchcraft.
I think he quoted or referred to someone from the 13th century as well. It's just bananas. On the other hand, the signs that this was the republicans end game has been there for a decades.
Load More Replies... Does this mean Republicans should hence forth be known as Republibans? It seems apt.
It's not the purpose of the Supreme Court to represent popular opinion or serve the needs of the American people. Like the US Senate, it exists to provide a last ditch defense against those very functions, on those terrifying-to-oligarch occasions when actual democracy threatens to break out. Never forget that, then as now, those who controlled early American history and designed the nation’s government were elitist white rich men interested primarily their own ascendance, who didn’t shrink from supporting genocide or slavery.
I do not understand the angloamerican law based on previous precedents. What we have to do with the past executive doing? We also have a history of slavery; as a next step, I expect witch-hunts.
Stupid to say anyone "loved abortion!" though. I doubt all but a very few sick people would claim that. It's about having the ability to not bear a child if you don't want to, if you can't support a child, or if it will put you in danger. People forget one of the reasons abortion remained legal in the U.S. for so long is that it's the very conservative evangelical Christian types who suffer the most from anti-abortion laws. It's their kids who are not allowed to get sex education and have ridiculous rates of underage pregnancies, and for whom getting pregnant unwed is such a serious stigma they go for the back-alley wirehanger abortions and bleed to death or die from infections. I say let these confounded morons reap what they sow with their own daughters, then.
I didn't read the article as saying we "should" go back to that standard, only that the SC was wrong in stating that abortion was never a part of American life, when it clearly was.
Load More Replies... Fiver, putting your other questions aside, I have the understanding that the Christian Bible states that life begins when the first breath is drawn, so any Christian who is against abortion for religious reasons, has clearly misunderstood, misinterpreted, or is plainly ignoring their own religious text.
Load More Replies... Things would get rather exciting if we started making laws without regard to precedent.
Load More Replies... Baby killers??? Do you even know how pregnancy with humans works?? Please don't tell me that I have to explain to you that a 6 week old embryo or a 12 week old fetus just cannot survive outside the womb and that we therefore cannot speak of a baby but instead of a bundle of cells that could at some point become a baby. You know, they have a saying about people like you in my country; when you were born they threw the baby away and kept the placenta instead. Also, I love turtle eggs way mkre than whatever excuse for a human being you are, and I will teach my kid to be weary of people like you.
Load More Replies... Oh well. Sorry, not sorry that women aren't baby machines.
Load More Replies... Lol "big science background" usually means you have your PHD from Facebook University. I'm also remarkably curious as to where you found the "imagining that shows a fetus actively trying to resist being sucked out of the womb" because you lost a LOT of credibility just with that statement alone.
Load More Replies...
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