Non-Actionable Puffery

This one's entirely a U.S. politics post – feel free to skip.

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There's a difference between knowing abstractly that Roe v. Wade will almost certainly be overturned this term and actually reading a draft of the opinion. Assuming that the final published opinion is substantially similar to the leaked draft, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health will turn over all responsibility for determining the legal status of abortion to state legislatures, which will lead to an even more radical divergence in abortion access between liberal and conservative states.

The median age in the United States is about 39 years; Roe is 49 years old. The majority of Americans have never lived in a U.S. without a federally recognized constitutional right to abortion, however limited that right may be. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey – a case that will be overturned alongside Roe – the justices who wrote the controlling opinion did not endorse the reasoning in Roe, but nevertheless upheld its fundamental principles on stare decisis grounds, even though Roe was at that point only 19 years old. Considering the number of people who have relied on Roe over the decades, it should have been afforded far more protection under stare decisis than this patently partisan Court has evidently decided to give it.

If you have some extra cash, now is a great time to consider donating to abortion funds, especially in those states where draconian abortion restrictions are poised to go into effect as soon as Roe is formally overturned. You can find a list of U.S. abortion funds on the website of the National Network of Abortion Funds; I've sent a little something to the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. (And as an extra incentive, the wonderful chestnut_pod is offering thank-you gifts of drabbles or podfic for donations of $18 or more to any U.S. abortion fund or to the NNAF itself; see details on their journal here.)

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Less important thoughts:

(1) A draft of a Supreme Court opinion being leaked is genuinely unprecedented, and I'm very curious how the Court will react. It's common for published opinions to be very different from their early drafts; will that be the case for the final opinion in Dobbs, or will the publication of the draft "freeze" it to some degree?

(2) I'm a little surprised that Alito is writing for the majority rather than Barrett. It makes sense in terms of seniority, but I would have expected the Court to go with Barrett solely for the optics, on the theory that having a woman write the opinion overturning Roe would make the result appear less sexist.

deepad has posted information here about the devastating COVID surge in India and what people in other countries can do to help.

In short: A key issue when it comes to vaccine equity is intellectual property protections. Over 100 countries support a proposed temporary waiver of intellectual property rights - a WTO TRIPS waiver - related to COVID vaccines. This waiver would allow vaccines to be manufactured generically worldwide, leading to a significant increase in vaccine production. The vast majority of the development costs of the COVID-19 vaccines were paid for through public funds, making it especially perverse to insist on patent enforcement. As Professors Madhavi Sunder and Matthew Kavanagh of Georgetown University observe: "These technologies, paid for by taxes, should be treated as public goods—compensating innovators fairly, but not with a global monopoly over producing and pricing vaccines critical to saving lives and ending the pandemic." (Bloomberg Law)

For US, UK, and EU residents: deepad's post includes sample scripts for calling your representatives and urging them to support a WTO TRIPS waiver. I called my representative and also sent an email through the contact form on his website; I'll be calling my senators' offices next.

deepad also highlighted bit.ly/MutualAidIndia, a list of on-the-ground relief efforts seeking donations, including from overseas.