Comments:Ireland votes to overturn 35-year-old constitutional ban on abortion

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What does this mean elsewhere?305:30, 13 June 2018

What does this mean elsewhere?

If a Roman Catholic majority Ireland is able to pass a Constitutional what does that mean for everyone else. In the US we have been arguing over Roe v. Wade for years, could there be a constitutional amendment clarifying the interpretation or is the US so lost politically that nothing will ever happen. My be is on the latter.

AZOperator (talk)14:24, 28 May 2018

There are several interlocking strategic decisions in the design of the US Constitution that give it different dynamics than some of these other national constitutions we've been covering lately. The US Constitution is meant to be a short document setting down very general, resilient basic rules without getting bogged down in details (a little like the Wikinews:Style guide :-p); the amendment process is accordingly made deliberately very difficult, though not, of course, impossible. Amendments to the US Constitution take the form of addenda, not specifying changes to the pre-existing text (which remains in place even after the amendment, just no longer in force to the extent it's been superseded). And this means that amendments themselves tend to embody big principles, in self-contained form, rather than clarifications of interpretation, as such. Flexibility of interpretation is part of how the US Constitution is meant to function.

Pi zero (talk)14:53, 28 May 2018

I see it more as movement based rather then a legislative methodology. Will pro-choice organizations be embolden by what just happened or will it fizzle out like the Arab Spring.

AZOperator (talk)16:53, 28 May 2018

The Arab Spring, like the Year of Revolution about a century and a half earlier, had natural pushback from the power elite. Abortion isn't an obviously direct threat to them.

Pi zero (talk)05:30, 13 June 2018