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

Paragraph 4 of 5

Sentence 5 of 7

This looks like two closely related claims:

“The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing it to the large number of Americans who dissented in any respect from Roe.”

The claims:

• “The Court short-circuited the democratic process.”
• “[C]losing [the democratic process] to the large number of Americans who dissented in any respect from Roe” “short-circuit[ed]” it.

I see that first claim as inaccurate. The Court removed the abortion issue from the democratic process, but with the understanding that the right to abortion was beyond legislative debate. The Dobbs assertion that the abortion issue is appropriately dealt with in the “democratic process” is classic question-begging.

Part II of the Dobbs decision purports to establish that state-level regulation of abortion isn’t constitutionally prohibited, but that’s a different question in my mind. That’s why most of this needs more thought, though.

For a similar reason, I can’t buy into the second claim, either. Placing an issue outside of the scope of the “democratic process” isn’t the same as “short circuiting” the process any more than saying you can’t hit a home run in soccer short-circuits soccer.

I’m going to leave both of these claims undetermined:

• “The Court short-circuited the democratic process.”
• “[C]losing [the democratic process] to the large number of Americans who dissented in any respect from Roe” “short-circuit[ed]” it.

As a side-note: I’ve been struggling with Part III, and I think it’s because the claims being made here aren’t directly supported by citations and they’re not really developed in the text. There are a lot of assertions, and my intention is to let that kind of thing sit for now, but since the beginning of this part I’ve made some futile attempts to make connections. It hasn’t worked.

My focus is broken and I need to fix it.