The notion that there has been and continue to be discussions about when to grant civil rights and declare personhood is false. Civil rights go to a living, breathing human being who has been born. Period.
??? you seem to be unilaterally declaring your stance on when personhood happens to be the correct one. while the majority of the country agrees with allowing abortions in at least some capacity, the same is not true for claiming there is no such thing as personhood prior to birth.
What this represents is a step in reducing the rights of half of America by having the government inserting itself into a woman's right to control her own body. What did the anti vaccine people say, "my body, my choice"? Apparently, conservatives think that only applies to men.
very convenient, to first define something as not-a-person with no rights, and then pretend that such unilateral statement isn't absolutely mandatory for entire quoted line of reasoning to function. the moment one considers the fetus to be a person, it stops being a functional argument.
i get that you want to pretend that there isn't room for discussion on this, but it is the central issue. the point of debate that matters to policy. there are a lot of things children at varying ages can/can't do legally at various points in time, including some you list. that does not mean they aren't people.
but actually no, the discussion of personhood is not settled, period. it's the central question around policy that legislation is going to have to address again, and if they want to keep their seats they had best represent as many of their voters as possible. which probably means using a definition different than yours.
This could undo a great deal of what has been accomplished in the area of civil rights.
doubtful, it would require specifically taking away civil rights via passing law. unless you believe a "great deal" of civil rights don't have broad support in the us right now?
As for your other point... Congress could theoretically make a federal law legalizing and standardizing the regulations on abortion nationwide
i think this would only work if scotus allowed it to work. it's not a power the constitution defines as within federal purview, though as you said that only matters insofar as scotus thinks it matters.
But going back to my above point, my characteristically cynical view, is that the SCOTUS Justices generally first decide what result they think is "right", "desirable", "practical", "workable", etc., then they work backwards to craft a legal framework to justify the desired result.
this unfortunately is quite common, both for scotus and in general. certainly makes legitimacy take a hit.
I've been thinking about the Right to Privacy, which is perhaps the one, great unenumerated right upon which many other things rest, such as the right to marry. iirc, the whole right to privacy is founded on the 3rd and 9th amendments, neither of which mentions a right to privacy (nor of course any of the subsequent rights that are founded on the right to privacy).
this seems to be a bit of a reach, especially wrt 3rd amendment. there are many reasons other than privacy that forcibly quartering people in houses is undesirable. that also implies imposition on property rights, and given that you're quartering military and the context in which the revolutionary war was fought, likely implies non-zero direct danger/threat of harm that would otherwise not exist to the non-soldiers in the house.
i'm also not convinced "right to marry" has anything to do with "privacy". marriage is a legal contract first and foremost. absent that contract and (for some/many) religious connotations, marriage would be nothing but another word for "significant other". imo a binding legal contract is kind of the opposite of a private endeavor, there are pieces of information that must be included for it to function that would not be needed w/o it.
This challenge and ruling seemed inevitable, given the sheer success of the Republicans plus Trump in the last cycle. I just hope that people have prepared on-the-ground resources to enact the Plan B ...
legislation can be/should be plan a all along.
