Thread by @SamAdlerBell

Brennan's dissent in Harris v McRae is a fascinating document (he saw the Hyde Amendment as an attempt to impose the moral judgment of "the majority" on a decision the Constitution entrusts to the individual), but more so for the highlighted portion below: tcf.org/content/report…

In other words, in upholding Hyde, SCOTUS found that the government may use its coercive power to withhold state spending from the most financially insecure citizens in order to to accomplish the same end that the state is forbidden to write into law.

I find these post Roe v Wade decisions fascinating bc you see how rooting the abortion right in a privacy framework put the Court in a symptomatic (liberal) bind: how is depriving someone of the resources to exercise a fundamental right different from violating their rights?

Here's the Court's workaround in Harris v McRae:

But look closely: the state "may not place obstacles in the path of a woman's freedom of choice, [but] it need not remove those not of its own creation. Indigency falls in the later category."

the logic goes: government didn't create the poverty that prevents poor women from accessing abortions, so while poverty IS an obstacle, it isn't the government's responsibility to rectify it.

I find when the Court gets close to the fundamental contradiction (most universal liberal rights are, in fact, class rights available only to the rich), it begins protesting too much. Who says the government didn't create her indigence?? Well, the ideology of capitalism says so.