As always, you can find the Dobbs v. Jackson decision here.

Part II is about history and tradition, which are both valuable if the history reveals good reasons for their preservation of tradition. On the other hand, if an idea appears in history without explanation, it’s just trivia. There’s a lot to dig into considering that out of 200 hundred sentences, most of which broke down to two or more claims, I only identified 91 true claims. Probably a 33% rate.

Maybe the most significant reminder I got in the process of going through Part II is that we don’t know anything. I don’t and most of the citizens of the United States don’t. There’s so much information packed into each sentence, whether about a past cases or general principles or specific legal jargon, that very few people could read the Dobbs decision and know for a fact that they had a handle on everything it presents. Lawyers know more, sure, and those lawyers who have concentrated on reproductive rights know even more. The Supreme Court Justices have a solid understanding, but even they have to refer to sources and rely on clerks to research case law. We’ve spent the last year and a half arguing about this decision like we have a clue, and 95%* of us absolutely don’t.

I’ve been aware enough of the abortion issue to have my own impressions of it for decades. Those impressions were shaped by people around me, things I was told, and things I read. Some of it came from formal study and some from personal research. None of it prepared me to speak with any kind of authority when the Dobbs decision was presented to the world.

That was a valuable reminder for me, and being conscious of it helps me continue—which I’m going to do.

I’m going to move forward in two ways:

1. I will continue breaking down sentences in Part III, but probably only one a day.
2. I wull also start digging deeper into specific elements of Part II, examining the history and tradition to get a better picture of what the Court is bringing as support for its claims.

I might take a couple of days to formulate a plan, but I’ll start posting regularly again soon. Not that anyone’s reading this regularly. Or at all. Which is fine—these are mostly my notes.

*A statistic I just made up.