Why is it so controversial to suggest that the USA needs a new constitution?

$baby wrote:

Half true wrote:

Abortion is still legal though. If you want one bad enough, you can get one. Plenty of women have been having to travel many miles to get an abortion before Dobbs. In 2019 there were 6 states with only 1 abortion clinic. It’s not like there was a planned parenthood on every street corner.

Activist groups and companies are saying they’ll even pay for womens travel expenses. The people who are dead set on getting an abortion can still get one.

Two problems here, though.

1) women with lack of knowledge, travel, money, healthcare (more likely to be low income and minority) are going to bear the burden of this law because they are the ones who will find it difficult to get to an already limited number of clinics (even if the resources to coordinate travel and expenses to get to out of state clinics are available). For instance, Jackson Women's Health, the clinic named in the Dobbs case, is (now was) the only clinic in Mississippi (a state with one of the highest (the highest) of people below the poverty line and African American residents. The closest clinic accepting patients to that state is in Illinois (which is literally like a different country if you are born and raised in rural Miss.)

2) abortion is not "still legal though;" the laws of several states (Alabama comes immediately to mind) prohibits the mailing of abortion-inducing pills, it criminalizes doctors from performing abortions with lengthy prison sentences, and seeks to prohibit its citizens from crossing state lines to access abortion services. I will note that J.Kavanaugh specifically stated that if challenged, he would find such a provision to be unconstitutional based on the constitutional right to travel. However, note that there is no explicit "right to travel" just as there is no explicit "right to privacy" (on which abortion rights are based), therefore this leaves open the possibility that the justices may decide that cases which found such a right to travel were wrongly decided and therefore not governed based on stare decisis principles. Lastly, there is support for the assertion that J.Kav's words should not be taken at face value bc regardless of what a previous poster stated, there is a record of him specifically stating that he is not a "rock the boat kind of judge" and that he viewed Roe as settled law (both Susan Collins (R) and Joe Manchin (D) have publicly stated they felt deceived by him specifically in regard to how he would vote on abortion rights.

Half true wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

The question is whether your democracy is working or not. It isn't. It is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. You are facing a crisis of either autocracy from the radical white minority on the Right or the breakup of your country. The question then becomes whether either outcome can be averted by changing or even getting rid of your constitution. (There are democracies that don't have a formal constitution.) Is the constitution part of the solution or part of the problem?

Your takes are so bad.

Dems and progressives had no problem with the senate, electoral college or SCOTUS for the 40 years that they held most of the power.

Now that they are out of power, they want to say that the system needs changing? Maybe it’s not the system, maybe it’s you and the people in your party. Dems have moved more to the left and people don’t like it. All this social and cultural justice stuff turns a lot of voters away.

Polling shows that conservatives are more likely to have friends who have different political views than themselves. Progressives aren’t likely at all to befriend people of the other political side. They can’t relate to anything going on right now because they live in a bubble.

There’s nothing wrong with the constitution, just the mental toughness of a political party who wants to take their call and go home, or worse yet, want to turn the constitution into Calvin Ball.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Half true wrote:

Your takes are so bad.

Dems and progressives had no problem with the senate, electoral college or SCOTUS for the 40 years that they held most of the power.

Now that they are out of power, they want to say that the system needs changing? Maybe it’s not the system, maybe it’s you and the people in your party. Dems have moved more to the left and people don’t like it. All this social and cultural justice stuff turns a lot of voters away.

Polling shows that conservatives are more likely to have friends who have different political views than themselves. Progressives aren’t likely at all to befriend people of the other political side. They can’t relate to anything going on right now because they live in a bubble.

There’s nothing wrong with the constitution, just the mental toughness of a political party who wants to take their call and go home, or worse yet, want to turn the constitution into Calvin Ball.

You aren't keeping up with where your country is going. It is becoming increasingly polarised while the prospect of a majority consensus is disappearing. Bi-partisan solutions are receding. This is reflected in the prevailing view that the losers in an election - or a court decision - should just suck it up and go home. That is a winner takes all approach which can split a nation - as it did in 1860. "A house divided cannot stand" - as Lincoln said. You're heading there again.

The Constitution should be a force for unifying a nation on the basis of a common set of principles. It has now become a weapon in partisan politics, to impose the will of an extreme minority over the majority - as this SCOTUS has just demonstrated.

Half true wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

You aren't keeping up with where your country is going. It is becoming increasingly polarised while the prospect of a majority consensus is disappearing. Bi-partisan solutions are receding. This is reflected in the prevailing view that the losers in an election - or a court decision - should just suck it up and go home. That is a winner takes all approach which can split a nation - as it did in 1860. "A house divided cannot stand" - as Lincoln said. You're heading there again.

The Constitution should be a force for unifying a nation on the basis of a common set of principles. It has now become a weapon in partisan politics, to impose the will of an extreme minority over the majority - as this SCOTUS has just demonstrated.

That’s your own view of the ruling based on a victim mindset. “The systems in place didn’t bring about my desired outcome, therefore, the system needs changing.”

SCOTUS sent power back to the states where the people can effect the change they want in their states.

Maybe the “suck it up” mindset can be traced back to Obama’s famous quote: “Elections have consequences”. That was basically his way of telling conservatives to suck it up and deal with what was going on at the time.