Moments ago, a federal Judge issued a temporary restraining order against a Mississippi law that would have closed the state's only abortion clinic. The law, which went into effect today, requires doctors at the clinic to get admitting privileges to local hospitals. The doctors have tried to get those privileges since the governor signed the law in April, but no hospital has granted them. Mississippi was about to become the first state in the nation to effectively ban the constitutionally protected medical service of abortion.
Judge Daniel P. Jordan ruled that the clinic is likely to succeed in proving that Mississippi's law is unconstitutional. He wrote:
In this case, Plaintiffs have offered evidence—including quotes from significant legislative and executive officers—that the Act’s purpose is to eliminate abortions in Mississippi. They likewise submitted evidence that no safety or health concerns motivated its passage. This evidence has not yet been rebutted.
The order lasts until July 11, when the court will hear the clinic's request for a permanent injunction of the law. Meanwhile, all our commenters who said video of state Rep. Bubba Carpenter boasting about the end of abortion in Mississippi was valuable legal evidence, you appear to have been right.
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State and federal judges have been kept extremely busy during the past two years, the result of having to invalidate a rash of poorly conceived, mean-spirited, and largely unconstitutional laws emanating from GOP-controlled state legislatures.
I'm glad about this. Glad someone stepped in to stop Mississippi doing something incredibly stupid that basically goes against Roe v. Wade and goes against the medical needs of some of its citizens all for the sake of "having moral values."
Ironic, isn't it, that the same people who fight so hard to stop abortion from ever happening are from the same party who's so quick to shout from the rafters that they're the party of "freedom" and "personal responsibility." Apparently a woman's personal responsibility over her own uterus and her own life for potentially the next 18 to 21 years doesn't count.
The late, great George Carlin said it once and I stick with it to this day: "Pro-life is anti-woman." They dress it up as some courageous "we're standing up for life!" crusade (incidentally "life" is the most generic, non-specific feel-good phrase you can claim to support, right next to "freedom") but all they're doing is restricting a woman's choices about her own body and her own life.
Please forgive an unbeliever's ignorance. Isn't hubris one of the seven deadly sins? Serves y'all right, Bubba.
In my opinion, the common definitions of "hubris" that can be found are too simplified. Years ago there was a discussion of the term in an introduction to a television production of Oedipus Rex (by Sophocles). Yes, the following quote is from Wikipedia, but I think it is a good summation of "hubris" as explained in that television production:
"Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris
The Deadly Sin you are thinking of is the one that the early Roman Catholic Church called "Superbia". That word is commonly translated as "pride", but I don't think that is a good translation because "pride" can be quite benign, whereas Superbia is always wicked. A common definition of Superbia attributed to Dante is "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor".