Not all Utahns were included at the 1895 convention, Judge Paige Petersen noted.
• “Women were in the audience, but they weren’t any of the delegates,” Petersen said.
• “How do we know … what they thought the meaning of their rights were?” Peterson asked. “It seems important in this context because women are the ones that experience pregnancy and experience childbirth.”
“There is an unbroken history and tradition … before 1973, of prohibiting abortion. And that unbroken history has to be part of this Court’s analysis, rather than present-day policy arguments about the benefits or the or lack thereof of abortion,” attorney Taylor Meehan argued.
So their entire argument is based on the belief that we must hold on to the beliefs of people from 1895 from now until the end of time?
“Yeah, we were wrong before, but it is a tradition in our state to be wrong, and that tradition must be preserved above all else!”
This is a real argument, being made in a real courtroom, in front of a real judge, in the year 2023.
I hate this fucking timeline.
I get your sentiment of your despair, but shitty lawyers are gonna be shitty lawyers. What would actually be worse is the judge accepting this argument in 2023.
Clarence Thomas enters the chat
The dude that cited 12th century English common law?
Utah is one of the states that refused to ratify the Equal Rights Amendments. Utah has a long history of attempting to silence women’s voices. The Mormon church was instrumental in making sure it failed in the state. The fact that women weren’t involve in the discussion a hundred years ago is par for the course there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Equal_Rights_Amendment_and_Utah
What??? The racist, sexist, violent, polygamist church run by rich white men didn’t want to ratify the civil rights amendments???
Fyi, black people were restricted from having the priesthood (essentially the power allowing you to perform every saving ordinance) until 1978. It is Mormon doctrine that they are essentially cursed.
Wtf. I love Utah now. 😅
It’s honestly so ridiculously rare to see good political news here. Our legislature is owned by Mormons, farmers, and Mormon farmers. The Mormon Church has their hands in EVERYTHING.
“We don’t get involved in politics” my ass. Remember when they used tithing money to campaign against Prop 8? Remember when they sent an email to every member in their records to vote against Prop 2? (Medical Marijuana) Remember when their closed door meetings with legislature gutted the Medical MJ program that WE FUCKING VOTED ON. Many, many, many more examples.
Oh, cherry on top, Salt Lake County is gerrymandered as fuck lol.
Why is this the first time a judge is mentioning this…
It’s not. Another judge mentioned it as a reason that abortion wasn’t a thing in during the colonial period.
He ignored that women were discussing it in home keeping books and guides. They just didn’t call it “medically necessary abortion” - they called it bleeding or stopping the blood.
Joseph Smith, Mormon founder, had a doctor friend, John c Bennett, who is theorized to have been the abortionist of choice for Joe and his many rapes.
Abortion wasn’t a Christian right thing until the 1980s. Until then, it was mostly a Catholic thing. The only places where it’s “tradition” is Catholic majority states.
Why would conservatives care what a woman has to say about women’s health? Misogyny is a core principle of conservatism.
Conservatism should be illegal. It is a net harm to humanity. Nothing good in history has ever come from conservatism. Nothing at all.
