My Automated, Rush Transcript of Dobbs v. Mississippi

I ran the YouTube Feed through Otter.ai.

In advance of the Court's official transcript, you can use this automated, rush transcript. I ran the YouTube feed through Otter.ai. I can't vouch for its accuracy. Please, if you are writing an Op-Ed or blog post about the case, quote from the transcript, and not your recollection of the transcript. Now, I will begin to write my op-ed, which will appear in Newsweek tomorrow.

(It will take some time to process, so please refresh the page if the entire transcript isn't loaded yet).

Comments

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" which will appear in Newsweek "

I am old enough to remember when Newsweek was a responsible, credible, legitimate publication.

[Commenter_XY]

Arthur, just curious. How many articles have you published in Newsweek, at their invitation? Clingers want to know.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Never published in Newsweek, so far as I can recall.

I have had at least a thousand bylines in mainstream publications, though . . . and worked as a stringer for The New York Times, which I understand is the mark of the beast among disaffected, vanquished clingers.

How is that relevant to the sad, desiccated, zombie rag that Newsweek has become?

[Commenter_XY]

So....zero. 🙂

[Sebastian Cremmington]

EXTRA EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT!!! POTUS got blowjobs and hand jibbers in the Oval Office from an intern. ARM YOURSELF WITH KNOWLEDGE!!

[Don Nico]

SC,
That really was not necessary.

[Doug Heffernan]

The blackman kid has to make some scratch to cover his pizza bill. He can't give all of his wisdom away here for free.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, yay!

Anyway, a bit unclear when speakers change.

[QuantumBoxCat]

Political pundits get your keyboards ready!

On your mark....get set.....Gooooooo!!!!

[dwb68]

why rush the transcript with unreliable AI, when it will be available in a few hours.

Mostly what i heard was a vigorous discussion of stare decisis and when the court should overrule even egregiously wrong decisions. Honestly, I did not count to 5 to overrule Roe or Casey. I counted to 5 to supplant Casey with some other rule. Even justice Barrett seemed sympathetic to reliance interests and perceived illegitimacy.

[Joe_dallas]

DWB68 - any other observations on how the court will likely rule based on the tone of what you heard?

thanks

[dwb68]

very hard to predict. Barrett seemed keenly interested Casey. Casey went through all the reasons not to overrule a wrongly decided precedent. Which tbh seem to still apply. There is a very high bar for overruling a precedent, even a wrongly decided one. If I were making a prediction, I would predict 5-4 not to overrule Casey and Roe on stare decisis grounds, then some plurality opinions on Roe itself.

[Brett Bellmore]

If Casey and Roe survive, yeah, probably 5-4, I can't see more votes than that.

Yes, there's a high bar for overruling precedent, the Court absolutely loathes admitting they've ever made a mistake. Heck, even the Slaughterhouse decision wasn't directly overturned. They invented substantive due process to avoid that.

But you'd think a decision like Roe, that has festered like a foreign inclusion in the law, never achieving broad acceptance, could be overturned, if ever a mistake could.

[Krychek_2]

Depends on how you define broad acceptance. I think most polls show that most Americans generally agree with Roe v. Wade, and the hostility to it comes from a relatively small but vocal cadre that will not give up and has made overturning it their top priority for the past 50 years. If you mean they're not on board, you're right.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

"Most Americans" do not agree with Roe v Wade because they don't know what Roe v Wade is. They agree with some vague media / political interpretation of Roe v Wade.

[dwb68]

You can get a poll to show that the majority of Americans would eat kittens, if you worded it correctly.

Most ppl do know know what Roe v Wade held, but do understand the idea of access to abortion. Abortion is not an all-or-none issue. Most ppl would agree with access up to about the first trimester, after that acceptance declines. Most ppl would find aborting a 36 week old "fetus" vile and abhorrent.

[grb]

dwb68 : "Most ppl would find aborting a 36 week old "fetus" vile and abhorrent"

Which is exactly why the Right focuses on the microscopically-small number of late-term abortions: It's the only area where they have the slightest chance of maintaining public support. Of course they run a crude scam in doing so, since they know perfectly well those cases almost always involve horrible medical decisions. In fact, the sympathy of an average person would be for the grieving women then, but only if they knew the facts. You can be certain the Right doesn't want that.

You see, it's all a sleight-of-hand for America's own Taliban : At any cost people must never understand or discuss real women, real choices, and the real facts. Otherwise the Right's support plummets even farther, and then how do they get to impose their version of Sharia law on the country?

For the umpteenth time, a reminder: 91 percent of all abortions are performed in the first trimester and 98.7 percent of abortions are performed during the first 20 weeks. Beyond that, the numbers steady decrease to a effective percentage of 00.00%.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abortions-by-week-of-pregnancy/

[Bob from Ohio]

"Right focuses on the microscopically-small number of late-term abortions"

Left focuses on the microscopically-small number of rape and incest abortions.

[grb]

Bob from Ohio : "Left focuses on the microscopically-small number of rape and incest abortions"

Sure, because it puts the lie to all the Right's pretentions of faux-piety. You'd have to be a zealous cold-hearted bastard to make a small girl carry a relative's child because anything that impedes a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb prevents little proto-Sally or proto-Biff from having its soul's destiny on earth per God's will.

That's quite a reach when you're dealing with a ten-year old rape victim.

Unfortunately for you, Bob, that's not equivalent to the Right's con on late-term abortions - or at least not in the way you wish. Let's consider an example from a recent NYT article:

"A few weeks after Texas adopted the most restrictive abortion law in the nation, Dr. Andrea Palmer delivered terrible news to a Fort Worth patient who was midway through her pregnancy. The fetus had a rare neural tube defect. The brain would not develop, and the infant would die at birth or shortly afterward. Carrying the pregnancy to term would be emotionally grueling and would also raise the mother’s risk of blood clots and severe postpartum bleeding, the doctor warned. But the patient was past six weeks’ gestation, and under the new law, an abortion was not an option in Texas because the woman was not immediately facing a life-threatening medical crisis or risk of permanent disability."

The Right's scam involves running from the facts of cases like this as far as possible. As with the ten-year-old rape victim, the actual person and real decision must be obscured or ignored. In this case, they'll sell the women as a heartless harlot and her doctor as vicious murderer. That's the only way they get the "vile and abhorrent" reaction that dwb68 notes above. As I said, its a conman's sleight-of-hand, start to finish.

[MatthewSlyfield]

No need for a poll like that, get some data from grocery stores on how much "cat soup" is sold in the US. 🙂

[Brett Bellmore]

Polling is crap, on anything more complex than chocolate vs vanilla.

Knowing whether you agree with Roe v. Wade requires understanding Roe v. Wade, and exactly how common do you think that is, anyway? Most of the people saying they agree with Roe v Wade don't even know what they're agreeing with.

[dwb68]

And yes... Democrat threats to pack the court will have an impact on the justices.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, it's not like they're empty threats. The real question is whether any act of submission (That could put together 5 votes.) can prevent packing at this point.

The only reason they haven't packed the Court already is that their majority in the Senate is too fragile to permit it. They WILL pack it the next time they have the votes, that's baked in at this point.

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : "They WILL pack it....."

Barrett after Garland, that's just, fair, equitable & richly deserved. It's a situation of the Right's own creation. No amount of faux-pious whining changes that fact.

[Toranth]

Appointing justices when your party holds the Presidency and the Senate is in fact "just, fair, equitable & richly deserved", just like refusing to seat them when the opposition party holds the Senate. It's also historical - the most common situation, just as not even receiving a vote is the most common way to fail to make it to the Court.

Packing the Court is not just, fair, or equitable. "Richly deserved" meaningless opinion, but I think you'd find that the majority of people disagree - 55% and rising, according the polling.

[Bob from Ohio]

"perceived illegitimacy"

If she [and Roberts and Kav] rules against Mississippi, it won't be "perceived".

[Commenter_XY]

I felt Justice Sotomayor inadvertently made the case to over-rule Roe. Not quite an 'own goal' but sort of straddling the line. In her comments, she was very afraid that the decision would be seen as political. And I thought to myself, "My dear Justice Sotomayor, that is precisely why you should send the abortion issue back to the states. It IS a social and political question that the people, not unelected judges, must answer."

[great Unknown]

there seems to be some circling around the concept of "super precedent".

[dwb68]

supercalifragilisticexpialodocious precedent!

hyperbole is rarely persuasive.

I dont think Roe is a super precedent.

[great Unknown]

Nor do I. More importantly, and based on her testimony during confirmation hearings, nor does Justice Barrett. However, I suspect that Justice Kagan's "questions" were trying to establish that line of argument.

IIRC, Senator Feinstein declared Roe to be super precedent, and I suspect we will be hearing that claim regularly over the next few weeks - or at least until SCOTUS renders a decision.

[Queen Amalthea]

I think Mazzone over at Balkin has the best read on how the Court can decide this.

https://balkin.blogspot.com/

[dwb68]

yeah Balkins' opinion is a real possibility, based on what i heard today.

[Queen Amalthea]

Just to be clear about credit, it appears on Balkin's website but it's the opinion of Jason Mazzone

[QuantumBoxCat]

On my reading of Roe, the Court never actually said that states my not ban abortions prior to viability. Rather, the Roe Court said that a woman's right to an abortion was strongest during the first trimester, and during this period the decision should be left to her and her doctor. The Casey court (5 justices) claimed that part of Roe's central holding was that states could not ban abortions prior to viability, but I genuinely do not read Roe as ever saying that.

Casey's articulation of the Undue Burden standard only garnered 3 votes, and while I recognize that this standard has prevailed, I don't put much reliance on opinions (or opinion sections) that do not receive a majority of votes.

I think a conservative block of the Court could uphold the Mississippi law and still claim they are adhering to the Courts ruling in Roe. If the conservatives could manage to stick together in voting, they could even draft a majority opinion that clearly articulates a revised Under Burden standard, claiming that the standard in Casey was never agreed to by a majority of the justices. Essentially, they could rewrite abortion law in a manner more preferable to their views, while still upholding Roe's protection of the right. The liberal block would be unhappy and the further right justices would likely also be unhappy.

[Bored Lawyer]

That is certainly a creative, and intriguing, take. The issue here is too charged for something that rational, but it would certainly be an interesting outcome.

Other than cases where there are medical complications, is 15 weeks that onerous in the run-of-the-mill abortion case?

And, FWIW, such a ruling would put the United States in line with many European countries, which we are always lectured are far more enlightened than us. There, first trimester abortions are allowed without restriction, but after that you need a good reason for it. (That is obviously an oversimplification, but an apt summary. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Europe)

[Longtobefree]

"I can't vouch for its accuracy."

Then don't publish it under your name.
You post it, you own it.

(never trust a CPU you can lift)

[dwb68]

and like magic, the official transcript is up.

[Bored Lawyer]

In what way is it "like magic." Did someone have to say magic words? Avada KaDavra?

[MatthewSlyfield]

Huka Pucus.

[dwb68]

since you are Bored Lawyer, spend some time looking up irony.

[Bored Lawyer]

I have an irony deficiency. Taking liver pills for it.

[dwb68]

Advocates for abortion kept emphasizing the burdens of raising children and the effect on women's careers.

Might not have been the best plan to convince a female Supreme Justice with 7 children, 2 of which are adopted.

just saying.

[Bored Lawyer]

Interestingly, I saw someone say that she asked, why can't you just give up the baby for adoption if that is so important to you? Then you can have your career and not have the burden of raising the child.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Yeah, don't all women who may need an abortion have a net worth of $2.5 million?