Worthy of Better, Stronger Together for Reproductive Rights bundle live on itch.io

Now, it is certainly true that the US Constitution defines the relationship between federal powers and state powers in a way that is intended to restrict federal powers. This is largely because in the US, the states were pre-existing entities whose governments wanted to continue doing their own things, committing their own injustices, rather than suffer the possible injustices of this new entity they were creating. They needed to make a federal government, but they didn't really want to make a federal government. So they tried to make one that basically wouldn't work, or at least, which would work for warfare and little else. They didn't succeed, partly because the politicians in the central government were, just like the state ones, powerhungry, partly because if a country's going to exist it needs to function, so workarounds to constitutional roadblocks had to be found. Note that one reason for doing this that they did not have was the notion that small states were somehow more democratic than large ones. Frankly, a big part of the motivation was the slave states wanted to make sure nobody interfered with slavery.

They also built the federal government to be fairly undemocratic (e.g. consider the Senate), and that part was fairly successful, so one might think that giving the individual states more power would lead to an increase in democracy. One would think wrong. The individual states are also very good at being undemocratic. Their politics are gerrymandered to hell and gone, just as deeply drenched in money as the federal politics, and of course the ways the political landscape is sewn up by the two major parties to the exclusion of all others are rooted in state institutions, which are carefully designed to make it very difficult for other parties to get on ballots or in general make any headway. The United States can only be called democratic if you squint real hard with a bunch of drinks under your belt, and that's true at both the federal and state level. And the results are similarly horrible; I'm constantly reading about some disgraceful, vicious abuse by some US state-level government, often something the state's citizens bitterly resent. There is then nothing sacred about decision-making going to state rather than federal governments (or vice versa); most countries don't even worry about that very much, it became an issue due to the specifics of political horse-trading in circumstances specific to the United States.

But the abortion dispute has, in any case, nothing to do with states' rights or democracy. In general, the right wing culture warriors have wielded whatever weapons come to hand while claiming them to be principles; when past judges have made major decisions, they say the idea of "activist judges" is terrible; they keep saying this right up until the moment they get their own activist judges in position. They back intimidation and even assassination by protesters when it comes to abortion clinics, but take principled stands against any protest around anti-abortion judges. They back states' rights when it's convenient, but use sweeping federal powers when they can get their hands on them. Even this very court, whose Roe vs Wade decision is supposedly all about states' rights, just struck down a state's right to regulate firearms. States' rights are a convenient tool to get their guns, gays and God stuff, not an actual principle they believe in in any serious way. Same goes for the constitution itself, whose stuff about religion they routinely ignore.

And in terms of democracy, polls are clear that the majority of voters in the US favour abortion rights, including majorities in most of the states which are banning abortion rights. Legislatures doing it were elected on other issues or other parts of the sort of right wing cultural zeitgeist that have broader agreement, or they won without majority support from the population because of that gerrymandering. But they sure as hell didn't gain power on promises of banning abortion, nor did they take a vote on the question. So, this decision is to allow state legislatures to better run roughshod over the wishes of their citizens. And that's democracy and freedom?

Finally, in all of this you completely ignored my fundamental point, and the real fundamental issue. You talk of what freedom looks like. I think freedom looks like actual people being free, as in for instance having the right to do things that they want and have strong reason to do. This ruling takes that away from a lot of people. It makes them less free. That is the bottom line, that is where the rubber meets the road--if you oppose actual people being free, you are not supporting freedom. Even if your point is that in theory, sometime in the future, somebody else might get some freedom as an indirect result of the decision to restrict these people's freedom, it is utterly dishonest to ignore the freedom of the actual people you are actually taking it away from.

And hey, there are times when I don't support freedom. So for instance, seatbelt laws--I'm all in favour of circumscribing people's right to ride in motor vehicles without seatbelts. There are other values and rights which need to be balanced with freedom. That's why the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." But when I back restricting freedom, I don't pretend I'm doing it in the name of freedom.