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To be perfectly honest, I'm a ******** coward. The thought of living in a country where it's okay to deny me rights based on who and what I am terrifies me, and the thought of accepting life in a country NOT MY OWN that's run my hypocrites disgusts me.

The current law proposed bans abortion across the board. That includes rape victims. What happens to those women? What's going to happen when they're forced to carry and birth the child of a man who violated them? Do you know what it feels like to have your body used against your will? Do you? It's not fun. Even if it isn't "rape," it leaves scars, and the proposed law gives no out for women to escape the emotional trauma of rape.

So yes, I intend to leave the United States once I'm of age. And yes, I'm running away, because I'm afraid. But as it so happens, I'm British by upbringing. It wasn't until after I had started school that my family moved to the states. So it's not so much running away as it is going home, at least to me, but you obviously see it differently.

Please, take me with you! gonk

I can't believe the ban is still in effect. It's terrifying. And now the Patriot Act has been passed into law, taking away our rights protecting us against illegal searches and seizures and our right to privacy. If things keep going the way they're going now, we'll be living in a Nazi Germany-style US soon.

Okay, then there are some cases - off the top of my head - which really need to be explained to me if the Supreme Court doesn't overturn precedent based on belief, some of which are incredibly pertinent to this debate:

Casey v. Planned Parenthood
Lawrence v. Texas
Brown v. Board of Ed.
Bush v. Gore

Or, heck, why don't we just pick a case at random from the sordid history of 4th Amendment search and seizure jurisprudence. I'm trying to think of a single thing which the Rehnquist court didn't screw around with (and of course, a fair bit of what they were screwing around with was more-or-less created out of near-thin air under the Warren court).

And anyway, everybody knows that cases are rarely overturned out of the blue. SCOTUS almost always leads up to it through a series of cases which erode the undesired precedent's legal underpinnings before finally overturning the problematic case. That was how Roe was built up, and if they ever overturn it that's how it's going to be torn down.

The Supreme Court has always paid a lot of lip service to stare decisis, but I've rarely seen it hold people back when they wanted something overturned, and even when it did hold people back stare decisis usually rated only a concurrence.


I agree that they're probably not going to overturn Roe yet, but I disagree with the reason you've given. I think they're not going to overturn Roe because they don't need to overturn it - Roe was basically gutted by Casey, anyway. They just need to stick with Casey and keep determining that any of the various things states try to do don't create "undue burdens".

I don't have to be in a country to support the people that are oppressed there. People are oppressed in a lot of countries I'm not in, and I try to find ways to do what I can. Not everyone is in a position physically, emotionally, financially, etc. to put up with the oppression themselves. It's awesome if you can stick it out, and I have a lot of respect for that, but to put down those who can't honestly makes me sick. In fact, you might actually be able to help more from the outside BECAUSE you aren't oppressed where you are. Perhaps a woman who is not burdened with a pregnancy and the raising of an unwanted child, because she had the ability to get an abortion where she lives, has more time and energy to fight for the women who didn't get that choice....