Tag Archives: Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court is not supposed to wholeheartedly embrace democracy; it is supposed to be a check on it. From Glen Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

The Court, like the U.S. Constitution, was designed to be a limit on the excesses of democracy. Roe denied, not upheld, the rights of citizens to decide democratically.

Politico on Monday night published what certainly appears to be a genuine draft decision by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Alito’s draft ruling would decide the pending case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerns the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy except in the case of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormalities. Given existing Supreme Court precedent that abortion can only be restricted after fetal viability, Mississippi’s ban on abortions after the 15th week — at a point when the fetus is not yet deemed viable — is constitutionally dubious. To uphold Mississippi’s law — as six of the nine Justices reportedly wish to do — the Court must either find that the law is consistent with existing abortion precedent, or acknowledge that it conflicts with existing precedent and then overrule that precedent on the ground that it was wrongly decided.

Alito’s draft is written as a majority opinion, suggesting that at least five of the Court’s justices — a majority — voted after oral argument in Dobbs to overrule Roe on the ground that it was “egregiously wrong from the start” and “deeply damaging.” In an extremely rare event for the Court, an unknown person with unknown motives leaked the draft opinion to Politico, which justifiably published it. A subsequent leak to CNN on Monday night claimed that the five justices in favor of overruling Roe were Bush 43 appointee Alito, Bush 41 appointee Clarence Thomas, and three Trump appointees (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett), while Chief Justice Roberts, appointed by Bush 43, is prepared to uphold the constitutionality of Mississippi’s abortion law without overruling Roe.

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One rule to bind them all, rather than 50 different rules shaped to the population of each particular state. If indeed Roe v. Wade is overturned, it will kick the abortion issue back to the states, where it has always belonged. The thought is anathema to totalitarian liberals (but I repeat myself). From Jeff Deist at mises.org:

Inflation in the US is at forty-year highs, while interest rates on ten-year Treasury notes just hit 3 percent—signaling trouble for home buyers. Truck drivers pay more than $1,000 to fill their rigs with $5 per gallon diesel to deliver your increasingly expensive groceries and Amazon packages. Crime and homelessness skyrocket in large cities, exacerbated by virulent opioids like fentanyl and krokodil. And America’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine gives rise to the most serious threats of nuclear strikes against the West since the 1960s.

Yet so-called social issues, from abortion to critical race theory to teaching gender identity in elementary schools, dominate our politics and media. Virtually every voter has a strong opinion on these issues, and pays far more attention to them than, say, the M2 money supply or the next Fed Open Market Committee meeting—though the latter could have a far greater impact on that voter’s life and finances.

Why is this so?

The short answer is the Supreme Court.

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Abortion may no longer be the burning issue it has been, which means Roe v. Wade might be overturned without the feared firestorm. From Adam Mill at amgreatness.com:

Now may be the perfect time to render a thoughtful decision without fear of an organized retribution from the Left.

It seems like only yesterday the Left went to war to stop Judge Brett Kavanaugh from ascending to the Supreme Court. Crackpots and charlatans flocked to the call for accusations, no matter how fictional, that might sink his nomination. The Left extracted a compromise from squishy Republicans to give the FBI enough time to frame . . . er, “investigate” Kavanaugh before proceeding to a confirmation vote. The Left is still furious at FBI Director Christopher Wray for failing to gin up a predicate for stopping Kavanaugh’s eventual confirmation.

Even then, it was very clear that the public relations assault had nothing to do with Kavanaugh’s history with the opposite sex. As they tried to weaponize sketchy sexual abuse allegations against Kavanaugh, we learned later that Democrats suppressed allegations of sexual abuse committed by their own leaders and supporters (Andrew Cuomo, Harvey Weinstein, U.S. Represenative John Conyers, former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and Bill Clinton to name just a few examples). When these leaders were held accountable, it usually followed a long period of cover-ups and denials by their political allies.

But Democrats didn’t really care about whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault in the 1980s. It was, everyone knew, all about abortion.

Here are five factors I believe have caused the Left to de-prioritize abortion as a political issue:

1) The decline in necessity. 

If you talk to women who are pro-abortion, you might notice they often tend to be Baby Boomers. The boomers came of age in an era during which the traditional role of a woman as a child-rearer and wife was compared to slavery. Women who chose these traditional roles were made to feel inadequate when compared to those who delayed or avoided having children. In 1972, when the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, women who chose motherhood had their first child at an average age of 21. Motherhood at that age required forfeiting career and education opportunities that, in the minds of feminist thinkers, prevented women from accessing the promise of equality.  That explains why abortion was such an emotional issue to women of that generation.

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