We are all Slave now.

[Not Bob]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

This is the part that I don't get. Why is it states that have the best ways to discover a better way? The implication is that one size does not fit all. New York surely knows what's better for it's communities than a group sitting in DC. But why does a group sitting in Albany know what's better for the West Village or the Finger Lakes, for that matter? It seems like a totally arbitrary cutoff.

TM

Great point. The short answer is because that’s the way our nation was set up - 13 distinct and separate colonies, jealous of each other, were combined into one country (not very well under the Articles of Confederation, but Not Bad under the Constitution). And the colonies were all governed, more or less, from a central location by either a royal governor and/or some collective body. And here we are.

I think the theory is that cities, towns, and counties are created under the state’s authority. They can be dissolved by the state (subject to a state’s own constitution).

This is ok in theory because each part of New York sends representatives to Albany to make decisions. So all parts of the state can collectively decide in a post-Roe* world whether one can get an abortion in the Villiage or Buffalo. (One can see this sort of thing in action on something like the MTA - deBlasio gets the blame for crowded subways but it’s NYS government that ultimately decides how much funding to give for maintenance and modernization).

*Roe took the legality of abortions away from the individual states. If it’s reversed, unless the reversal says “life begins at conception,” it will go back to being a state issue.

ETA: TL;dr - what SEC said.