A Hamilton County judge permanently struck down Ohio’s so-called “Heartbeat” law that banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, saying it conflicts with the constitutional amendment passed by Ohio voters.
More : https://t.co/mpdb7NPFn9 pic.twitter.com/x3OMbKFAuW— WSYX ABC 6 (@wsyx6) October 24, 2024
Universal suffrage democracy is always a tyranny, because the vast majority of peasants have no stake in the society. This is why in the original American republic, only landowners were allowed to vote. Landowners are going to necessarily be more intelligent people than landless peasants, and they are also going to have a stake in the future of society.
If you have mass media and allow not only peasants but women to vote, you just have a ridiculous and cartoonish system where the outcomes of elections are based on people’s emotions. You also have a system where no one can be blamed for anything, and no one has any ability to petition grievances. It’s the worst of all worlds.
The lack of any meaningful oversight whatsoever allowed democracy governments to form these various organizations like the CIA and the various other intelligence agencies, as well as massive bureaucracies, which are totally unaccountable to anyone at all, and are a black box. If every single congressman was replaced with an upstanding citizen, they could in theory vote to abolish the CIA and fire everyone who works in various departments, but there is no way under the current system anyone but shills will win elections. Further, the fact that the intelligence agencies exist now means that every government official can be blackmailed or threatened into going along with the program.
It is all broken.
I’m totally against universal suffrage democracy. I think a “democratic republic” where only landowners can vote is probably fine, though an “autocracy” like China is also fine.
Note: China has social mobility without voting in national elections. The fundamental problem with traditional monarchy and a system of nobility is that there is no social mobility, and the only people who can move up are peasant women lucky enough to get pregnant by a noble. China has developed a system that is basically monarchy but without a strictly defined class system. Please also note that the idea that monarchies are oppressive is simple nonsense. Democracy is the most oppressive system. A lack of social mobility might be “oppression” in some vague sense, but the idea that monarchs were ever able to do whatever they wanted is just a lie.
This all having been said, the United States and now the West as a whole has moved drastically away from the established norms of universal suffrage democracy and into a system of dikastocracy, where the government is run by judges. Random judges no one has ever heard of can just override the laws introduced by the democracy government.
An Ohio judge permanently struck down the state’s ban on abortion after about six weeks on Thursday and criticized its Republican attorney general for attempting to circumvent the will of Ohioans who voted to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.Judge Christian Jenkins of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas in Cincinnati said, opens new tab the Republican-backed 2019 state law would interfere with women’s ability to receive abortions and discourage doctors from performing them, in violation of a constitutional amendment approved by voters last year.
Judge Christian Jenkins
The office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, acknowledged that the ban itself could not stand in light of the ballot initiative, but had argued that 14 other provisions of the state law should be upheld.Those included requirements to have doctors check for fetal heartbeats before performing abortions, inform patients seeking abortions when their fetuses are viable, and have patients wait 24 hours after seeing a doctor before undergoing an abortion.
Jenkins said those provisions were unconstitutional because the ballot measure’s broad wording prohibits any burden on the ability to exercise the right to have an abortion.
This is a garbled mess.
The constitutional amendment was passed in November of 2023, a non-election year, with 56% of the vote. Now, a year later, this rando judge decides that it overrides the 2019 law passed by the state legislature. The 2019 6-week law was passed before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as a “trigger law” that would come into effect if Roe was overturned and states were again allowed to regulate abortion.
According to the way the system is setup now, the judge is presumably correct that the constitutional amendment overrides the 2019 law. But why is it up to him, and not put to a referendum? Why did it take the courts a year to decide something that is obvious?
There was debate about the rules, so allowing one guy no one has ever heard of to be the ultimate decider who can permanently dictate state law does not make any sense.
