Fact-checking Poynter’s fact-checking about the SCOTUS Decision Dobbs

A proverb from the Arab world that states “The dogs bark but the caravan goes on” is a great way to sum up how people who are able do it, and those who are unable can whine. Poynter’s self-declared fact-check about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Dobbs in Jackson Women’s Health Organization , Roe. Wade.

The article was written by two PolitiFact authors and attempts to highlight flaws, contradictions, and discrepancies in Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion. Although it doesn’t do any of this, the article is a great example on how hope droning tendentiousness can disguise non-existent content.

The cherry-picking starts in earnest with the bold claim that one article written in 2021 by a professor at the world-renowned University of California Davis — okay, maybe it’s not that world-renowned — disputes the notion that the 14th Amendment’s clause regarding how no state may deprive any individual of life, liberty, or property without due process of law in any fashion covers abortion. The paper Poynter leans on for this assumption starts thusly:

In the aftermath of oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the question is no longer whether the right to abortion will be curtailed, but rather how far. Many justices expressed a desire for the right to be rolled back completely. Some others looked at the possibility that states could ban certain procedures, but not all. Justice Gorsuch asked Elizabeth Prelogar, Solicitor General, “If the Court rejects the viabilityline, can you see any other intelligent principle that the Court might choose ?”

?”

The Solicitor General replied in the negative for both strategic and principled reasons. Justice Gorsuch’s question is crucial if, as it seems now, there are at least five votes against the viability rule. Instead of reducing reproductive autonomy, could there be a legal principle that can allow for a more limited — but still significant — right to abort at an earlier stage before viability?

This article identifies this principle in an unexpected source — the Constitution’s original meaning. This argument is based on a popular view of originalists like Randy Barnett and Michael McConnell: The original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines rights individuals have enjoyed over a long period of time, even as a matter statutory law. Similar approaches are reflected in the Court’s substantive due process cases that focus on history and traditions.

This understanding supports a more narrow abortion right.

While I openly admit to not being a lawyer eagle (or even being an expert on the subject), it begs the question of whether this understanding supports abortion when life starts at conception. If this is not the case, an argument that I do not see as having any gravitas — when does life begin? Also, the author uses an inferred argument rather than actual verbiage to argue that historical belief systems use implied meanings over unfiltered literal meanings. This court rejected this idea, which is why Roe was overturned. It declared that implied federal powers were summer snow in direct Constitutional language.

Another fact to check… you’ll want to read it.

“It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.”

Alito corrects that U.S. female voters turn out at higher levels than their male counterparts. This has been the trend more recently than .

He was using women’s high turnout rates as a reason to claim that “both sides” of an abortion debate can be influenced by their participation in the legislative process. In 2021, the trend in states was toward passing more abortion restrictions.

In 2020, the share of voting women was 68% and voting men was 65%, according to a Census Bureau survey. Researchers cite various reasons, including that women “are more likely to rely on government services and are often more directly affected by highly debated issues like reproductive rights, child care/family leave, among others,” Kelly Dittmar, a Rutgers University political scientist, told PolitiFact in September.

Reacting at that time to the draft opinion, Julie A. Wronski (associate professor of political science, University of Mississippi) stated that this argument is missing context. “The context of the argument is that the types of voters in (Mississippi), lean Republican. And abortion attitudes are polarized by party identity.”

Translation: WHO LET THOSE #[email protected]! WHAT REDNECKS ARE IN THE VOTING BOOOTH!

Sarcasm aside. This isn’t fact-checking. It is blatant hatred against a segment of the population that doesn’t want to vote according to their supposed superiors. We’re looking at “bigotry” as this offense is often attributed to Southerners by people who practice soft bigotry with low expectations.

In the end, the Poynter fact check fails to even make a dent in Court’s decision that the abortion issue is state-based and not federal. This is the modern equivalent to a shipbuilder’s trade book from years past. It demonstrates how many design and construction professionals have serious objections about how an obvious crackpot builds a vessel, which serves no practical purpose.

Some dude named Noah.

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