You're viewing a single thread.
To be fair, if we think about the bigger picture and not just abortion, unless US States disappear then people's rights will continue to vary quite a bit depending on their geographical location in the same country, including their body autonomy...
But the federal government is allowed to say "Alright, this is the baseline for rights. Go from there."
That's a minimum though, some States will offer just the minimum, others will offer much more
I think the argument is there's a baseline that should not be up for debate. But some states should be able to offer different beyond the baseline. For example, presume that the federal government lacks the will to provide universal health care, it still should be quite reasonable for states to provide it, should they feel they have the ability and the will.
And then it comes back to what I said, unless States cease to exist and everything is administered at what is currently the federal level, rights will vary based on geographical location. I'm just pointing out that the language used doesn't work based on that.
States rights have always been about allowing one group of people to have the power to oppress another group within a state and without federal intervention. It’s why Democrats tend to focus on federal policy and Republicans are obsessed with things like states or parental rights.
Picking up your point, I believe that reform should extend to the point of dissolving states and creating provinces instead, all under central government like nearly every country on earth.
Look at Canada, provinces don't solve that issue either
It's helpful to have a sort of pyramid in government for the sake of balancing the workload (someone managing foreign policy shouldn't be bothered to give a shit about a pothole in Utah) but what we could do is not burden states with these kinds of things and kick it up to the federal level. For a while it was, and it was stable and consistent, but now it's not and that's the mess
So long as States are allowed to provide more than the Federal minimum you're still opening the door to having people with different rights based on their geographical location though...
Let's say healthcare is now 100% public and managed or forced on States by the federal government but medication isn't covered, you could have one State saying "alright, that's dumb, we will handle medication coverage then" and now living right across the State border means that you're paying for insulin or private coverage while your friend in the next town over doesn't know how much either of those things cost because it's all paid by taxes...
I'm using that example because something similar happened in Canada (one province decided to create its own medication insurance policy while it was an handled by the private sector in the other provinces).u