the supeme court, contrary to the doom sayers (see our own senator blumenthal doing a fair impression of ted keneddy borking judge bork) does not meet around a table and make decisions based on topics (roe v wade: "yea or nay").
the court hears cases brought to it and is convinced or not by the arguments therein.
challenges to roe v wade will continue to come from the states (as they have since before judge kavanaugh was in law school) and will likely continue to include the 10th amendment language: "powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution...are reserved to the states or to the people," as a lynch-pin for their assertion that the right to abortion is nowhere in the constitution "delegated" to the united states...("privacy" being another matter covered by statute, but practically sundered by data profiteering making justice brandeis's "right to be left alone," a relic).
the counter-argument will likely continue to include the 14th amendment prohibition of "any law" which shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."
the sticky wicket here is of course "any person," not just citizens and, now that corporations have been deemed "persons," the meaning, interpretation, if you will, of that, which is likely to change as science continues its inquiries, may elude specification.(remember when the atom was thought to be the end of discovery?)
Trump thinks he's got his real fixer. Will Kavanaugh hitch his legacy to the Trump train-wreck?
Fascinating to imagine the response of millions and millions of American women when five men rule to take away reproductive freedoms their mothers and grandmothers fought for. As ever, Mr Douthat allows his personal religious beliefs to cloud his perception of reality. Just as abortion existed for millennia before Roe, overturning the statute would not end abortion, only safe and legal ones for women, rich and poor, who choose to end their pregnancies for whatever reason. Roe originally passed to protect medical providers but since then generations of American women have embraced its core convictions of privacy and autonomy over their own bodies. To even attempt an overturn would mean all-out revolution in the body politic, and Chief Justice Roberts knows that very well.
5
All current arguments aside, Kavanaugh was at least less than forthcoming about his Bush-era role regarding detainees.
If he lied, under oath, to Senator Durbin in 2007 re: same, he not only should not be confirmed, he should be prosecuted for perjury.
4
The Republican Party starting with Reagan has been an alliance of upper income people and businesses with racists and religious conservatives. I would be very surprised if the Supreme Court even with Kavanaugh overturns Roe. There are other issues that concern me more. The Supreme Court is missing the forest for the trees. Justices like Roberts should be aware of what is happening with our country and think in terms of the effect of their decisions. A case in point is Citizens United. Could not Kennedy and others of the majority have given some thought about the extent to which the decision would poison our political system?
5
If the courts can compel a woman to donate the use of her uterus and blood supply to a fetus for 9 months, then what's next? Will the courts compel a man to donate his blood or organs to save the life of his already-born child? It seems like a child who is already alive would have greater standing to make such a case of forced donation than a fetus that is not even viable.
I'd be very surprised if conservatives or libertarians would agree to the latter, yet they are intent on carrying out the former. What's the difference? Oh right, pregnancy only affects women, and it's women they hate. Got it.
13
Reality: Women will undergo abortions, legal or not. The World Health Organization estimates that 42 million women seek the procedure annually, half of them illegal & unsafe. Legal abortion is 14 to 21 times safer than childbirth and has a far lower maternal mortality rate.
Where abortion is illegal, many children end up orphaned when women die in unsafe procedures, as most women seeking abortion are already mothers. Thousands of women die annually in the Philippines & South America from unsafe illegal pregnancy termination.
According to the WHO, every 8 minutes a woman in a developing nation dies of complications from an unsafe abortion. WHO deems unsafe illegal abortion as the easiest preventable cause of maternal mortality.
In overturning Roe, Kavanaugh & his ilk will bring back the days when teenage girls & young women bled out alone & in pain in back alleys & motel rooms, their insides tortured & destroyed by some profiteering illegal operator. Emergency rooms will see the lives of young women snuffed out by sepsis & complications from unsafe illegal procedures. Maybe one will be your daughter or niece or aunt, friend or neighbor.
If the USA had good sex education, the need for surgical abortion could be almost eliminated. Those facing an unintended pregnancy could take mifepristone/misoprostol early on. But GOP & Christian misogynists want to punish women for engaging in sex and seem joyful at the thought of dead women & girls. Life in patriarchy.
6
You forgot about overturning legal protection for contraception. That is part of the program as well.
11
If abortion goes back to the states, I am hoping that California boycotts Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and South Carolina.
5
It's reassuring to note that "The Weekly Standard" thinks that we haven't quite got the much awaited complete Nazi Supreme Court.
4
If Douthat truly expects a "gentle rightward drift" after Kavanaugh is seated, he is overlooking the political realities surrounding the court. Like Gorsuch, Kavanaugh understands that his is a political appointment, a fulfillment of campaign promises to overturn Roe, and we should understand that he will enthusiastically uphold his half of the bargain.
We should also understand that justice who has been appointed for the expressed purpose of overturning Roe will not hesitate to also overturn Obergefell, for starters, and is not likely to be sympathetic to affirmative action, firearm regulations, or the Affordable Care Act. In very short order, we will be living in a very different legal landscape than the one we had taken for granted just a few weeks ago.
In very short order, the rights of same sex couples to marry, of women to make their own reproductive choices, of poor people to access medical care will all be left up to states. The changes will be swift and profound. Don't expect Justice Roberts to be able to hold back the deluge that Trump and his evangelical supporters have unleashed.
10
The Protestant religious right managed to get their way with the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, no legal booze, except alcohol for religious purposes don't ya know. Only lasted from Jan, 1920 until Dec 1933. WW I created anti-German sentiment, Germans brewed most of the beer at the time, and without WWI, who can say, but the beer lobby was holding it's own against the religious fanatics until the war.
The true public majority opinion was revealed immediately. the law was ignored, thus the repeal. Women want choice except for the religious again with their renaming of anti-abortion on religious grounds to pro-life, which should be pro-forced birth.
If Roe is overturned, with state governments sticking their religious noses all the way into women's wombs and outlawing abortion and jailing doctors and women that defy the law, it will be like it was with prohibition. half the voters are women. Even GOP women are not all against choice for their own lives, thus other women's choices. There will be a backlash on a cosmic scale. Democrats will take over states, at least long enough to change the law back to permit access to legal and safe abortions. Any SCOTUS decision against a national right to privacy law will unfortunately stick until the reactionary conservatives leave the court, decades from now.
Maybe the left will take all elections more seriously for a while. In the end, it was the Electoral College that vetoed Hilary's winning the popular vote.
Help, US women!
5
If all the “pro-lifers” are so concerned about abortion, why aren’t they concerned about war?
We don’t know the circumstances of a woman’s choice of abortion, but a woman in an area being bombed has no such choice.
7
We're better described as pro-justice.
Abortion is the equivalent of slavery. Slavery was about a members of a perceived inferior race being property of their owners. Abortion is about members of a perceived inferior gender becoming property of the state, there is no other way to define a situation where the state legislates what you can or cannot do with your body.
Just as the attempt to force the acceptance of slavery down the throats of an unwilling majority led to the break-up of the country and civil war, the attempt to force the idea that women should be the property of the state down the throats on an unwilling majority will lead to the same result. The only thing that is unclear is will secession 2.0 also end in civil war, or in merely in the break-up of the USA.
All abuse is a form of violence. This includes the ongoing willingness of an angry, bigoted minority to perpetuate abuse of the political system, to the point of collaborating with treason, in order to get their way. Eventually violence begets violence. I don't know whether the violence will be major unrest, secession and civil war, or the assassination of a treasonous president and illegitimate SCOTUS justices, but the current situation will and must eventually lead to violence.
4
Back when George W Bush forced us into an unnecessary war(s), we felt so helpless. That feeling is back. The bullies are back.
8
In a perfect world, men would get pregnant after coitus. Ross, we think you'd look great in maternity wear. Every old guy banging a young girl against her will would wake up knocked up.
No victim of incest would be a little girl. It'd be the familial male abuser. Abortion on demand would be the law of the land.
9
Nathaniel Hawthorne opined on the subject of sexual morality in his novel The Scarlet Letter. As usual, the woman suffers social opprobrium as a result of giving birth to a child out of wedlock. Oh, the child was conceived with a man of the cloth. Does he take any responsibility for his actions? Of course not!
This 1850 social commentary on how society works to control individual freedom under the cover of morality is still with us. The Puritans of yesteryear are still with us and the The Scarlet Letter -- an "A"; no, not for abortion but for adultery -- Hester Prynne was required to wear has morphed into controlling a woman's right to make decisions regarding her own body. Now as then, the people who wear their morality on their sleeves are no where as moral as they would have others believe. A quick look at how they live their lives would show they are hypocrites. Nonetheless, they live to control the morality of others through civil law, though their morality is bare.
Likewise, the 1638 Puritans of Boston, the subjects of The Scarlet Letter morality tale, morals went wanting. It would seem that the time has more than come for individual morality to no longer be subject to civil law. Civil laws should regulate social interactions not personal morality.
Abortion is not a civil issue nor is it a moral issue. It is a medical decision to be made by the individual. The public should have no part to play in that decision.
8
Douthat wears his "Catholicism" on his sleeve, while at the same time being such an overt hypocrite, one wonders why he bothers to maintain the fiction. Take his position on the death penalty, for example. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/douthat-justice-aft...
Douthat has bluntly stated that unjust executions are preferrable to abolishing the death penalty, the ultimate abuse of state power. And besides...prisons are so unpleasant anyhow, perhaps death would be better.
Is this a "Catholic" position? I won't say Douthat deserves excommunication, but if I were his priest, I'd deny him communion until he disavows his breathtakingly anti-Christian and anti-life beliefs. In any case he is in NO position lecturing anyone else on "morality".
7
The Republican Establishment will do everything in their power to make sure Roe vs Wade is not overturned. It is the gift that keeps on giving where the oligarchy succeeds in convincing low information "religious" voters to undermine their own well being. Without abortion as a cattle prod, millions of evangelics will start sitting on their hands, while low information voters like oblivious single women will start to show up in much greater numbers. Although John Roberts will continue to undermine reproductive rights with alacrity, I am convinced that he will choose not to overturn, knowing that it would be electoral suicide (and also tarnish his legacy). With current trends in pharmaceutical technology which is the method of choice in most abortions, the ongoing repression in Red States making procedures more and more difficult and support for choice in the Blue States secure, overturning Roe will not have the cataclysmic effect that so dread (please read Her Body, Our Laws by Michelle Oberman). C'mon all you regressives, bring it on. It will be the first step in turning the country blue and MAHA - Making America Healthy Again.
3
If Roe v Wade has at it's core solid Constitutional underpinnings, liberals have nothing to fear. Conservatives appoint judges that adhere to it's fundamental meaning and apply plain language interpretation. The trouble, of course, -- it's not. It is the work product of "progressive" liberal judges who invented a woman's right to privacy out of thin air. You would be hard pressed to find any qualified Constitution scholar to praise it's legal foundation. It's no more Constitutionally viable than Dread Scott, imho.
1
Religious conservatives in red states are not pushing a "gradual widening of the room for second-trimester regulation," but bans based on earlier and earlier gestational age (6-20 weeks) and junk science (fetal pain.) The court has ruled that legislatures can be arbiters of medical fact-finding in substitution of medical knowledge and experience. Most families only learn of horrible birth defects at their 20 week ultrasound. What Douthat soft-pedals as regulation will mean women forced to carry pregnancies to term, and watch their babies die agonizing deaths.
Andrew Ross MD FACOG
11
People forget also that women with wanted pregnancies are threatened by the laws anti-abortion zealots want to pass. Laws that make abortion a crime mean that every pregnant woman is potentially a criminal. Women suffering from a miscarriage will be suspects when they arrive at the hospital - is it really a miscarriage, or did she take a pill? Did she do something that caused it? Did she commit a crime?
Oh, and the treatments that save a woman's life and fertility during a miscarriage will become criminalized or so "crime adjacent" that hospitals won't perform them. The doctor will have to worry about anti-abortion laws when trying to protect a miscarrying woman from septic shock or an emergency hysterectomy. The doctor has to think: what if a scientifically-illiterate or bigoted judge (and we have these in spades) doesn't buy the his explanation? What if the judge thinks the doctor made the baby die? He could go to jail for decades. Better to delay treating the woman. If she dies or is maimed, it's only malpractice. If the fetus dies, it's a felony.
What about women who did something while pregnant that Evangelical judge doesn't like - who did a dangerous sport, took legal medications they needed, kept working too far into the pregnancy, had a history of drug abuse, didn't take the epidural? Anti-abortion prosecutors *already* frequently try to prosecute women for murder or felony child abuse for premature births or stillbirths. Trump just made that the law of the land.
11
Completely ignoring social issues like gay marriage and abortion, here's what Kavanaugh knows and believes if he is supported by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society.
Credentialed Conservative Kavanaugh:
1 Opposes unions having political and economic power,
2 Opposes workers' right to join unions,
3 Supports the right of free speech for corporations and for the Rich,
4 Opposes the right of free speech for the Poor,
5 Supports federal laws enabling creditors to collect,
6 Opposes federal laws enabling debtors to oppose collections,
7 Supports federal bankruptcy laws to help large corporations,
8 Opposes federal bankruptcy laws to help poor individuals,
9 Opposes any and all class action law suits in federal, state, and local courts,
10 Supports government laws and public policy that punish the Poor for their poverty and reward the Rich for their prosperity.
11
Of course Douthat is counting on Kavenaugh overturning Roe, he follows the church fathers in the view that being Catholic comes down to being anti abortion (and likely trying to overturn same sex marriage as well). The church is aghast at the GOP demonizing the poor and immigrants, yet when was the last time they threatened a Catholic who espouses these views with being excommunicated?
I agree with others, that Roe is simply to court the evangelicals, the real goal of a Kavenaugh is to further the power of the rich and create basically a landed aristocracy. For all the smokescreen of "originalism", Kavenaugh and the other conservatives are not originalists, our system was set up to get rid of aristocracy, the hard right GOP is promoting it, pure and simple, and Kavenaugh and the rest are likely going to further the power of the moneyed class (our aristocracy).
The sad irony is the pro life types who bank everything on abortion are going to find themselves right in the cross hairs, they think they aren't helped by politicians, they think their future is dismal? Just wait until Scotus further decimates labor rights and allow money to pollute politics, they will go from having little to not having a pot to pee in, then will whine 'how did this happen?". When you stupidly vote based on what religious leaders tell you, this is what happens, you end up with aristrocracy of money. The churches all once believed in the divine right of kings, now it is money.
2
Down the road, one would have one-trimester and two-trimester abortion States. Better than before Roe v. Wade, worse than with Roe v. Wade.
Please forward this to everyone you know:
https://www.alternet.org/history-hypocrisy-evangelicals-used-be-pro-choi...
Excerpts: Randall Balmer's book, "Thy Kingdom Come" - The Christian right was not originally animated by abortion, but by the defense of private, tax-exempt, racially segregated colleges and schools.”
From Jonathan Dudley: In 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception and abortion, encapsulating the consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time. In the leading article, professor Bruce Waltke, explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth:
“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed….… Clearly, … in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”
From the magazine - “Christian Life” - “The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult.” … The Southern Baptist Convention passed a 1971 resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.
Paul Weyrich: "I was trying to get [evangelicals] interested in those issues and I utterly failed," What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."
That’s when they suddenly got religion about politics — and got political about their religion
4
Dear Judge Kavanaugh,
I enjoyed watching your fine performance the other night in which you assured the American people that you are a common, ordinary, decent American citizen, and not a part of the governing elite, with a loving wife, two loving daughters and that you look to hire as many women law clerks and blacks as you can and otherwise are a good guy.
The problem I have is that you are being appointed to the Court by a President who lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes and is now busily engaged in tearing the country apart.
I hope you will appreciate my quandary concerning your suitability for the Court and would appreciate receiving your answers to the following five questions to give me a better idea of the type of man you are.
I already have a pretty good idea of who you are, so simple yes or no answers will do.
1. Do you believe women possess the right to receive ordinary, well recognized medical treatments from their doctors without interference by the State?
2. Do you believe that Corporations and rich people have the right to purchase as much political advertising as their money can buy?
3. Do you believe that illegal migrants are human beings and possess the right to be treated as such?
4. Are Presidents entitled to shoot a person down on Fifth Avenue while still remaining President?
5. Do you believe that Judge Garland received a fair shake from the Republican Party?
With great thanks in advance for your quick response.
Stanton
7
The “post-1973 abortion regime”? Thanks New York Times for once again choosing a far-right winger to comment on a subject so important! There are enough outlets for these kind of opinions, how about someone who is likely more aligned with the majority of your readers? We need prolifers commenting on this as much as we needed Antifeminists commenting on the me-too movement.
4
Ross: if the theocracy you are praying for becomes reality, will I have to:
• go to church regularly?
• sign a pledge of fealty and devotion to the Christian God?
• act hypocritical?
• treat women as inferiors?
• read the Bible?
• believe in miracles?
• steal, exploit, maim, and kill in the name of the Lord?
• say “I am blessed” 100 times a day?
• speak Latin?
• wear ashes?
• cheat on my wife with impunity – and maybe expect a wink and praise?
• be anti-abortion, but allow humans to be poor, to starve, be ignorant, die from lack of health care, and in illegal undeclared wars?
• protect pedophile priests?
• wear that crazy Mormon underwear?
• destroy and exploit the earth because it says to do so in the Bible?
• speak in tongues?
• look for the Rapture?
• separate mothers and children because the Bible justifies it?
Ross…I would rather die.
5
If Roe v Wade is not overturned by the court, I think that there could be a movement by some Roman Catholics back to the Democratic Party. The might come to the realization that this is a Quixotic cause, that Church teachings align more with the policy positions of Democrats. Maybe the more New Testament oriented Evangelicals might even leave the Republican party. At least I hope so.
3
Basically, Law with a capital "L" in the United States is a political legitimizing device, rather than the independent arbiter of right and wrong, or even the letter and spirit of the Constitution. It is deeply political, and has been for a long time. As a result of the conservative take-over of the Supreme Court, America is very likely to become the first so-called "advanced" country in which a woman who has been raped and brutalized and afterwards discovers she is pregnant won't have the right to terminate the birth, even if it endangers her own health and life.
As the Burmese say: "the law is like a sleeping dog; if you want it to bark, kick it!"
6
Considering what Trump’s opponents are like, I’d recommend Kavanaugh learn kung-fu.
1
Good call on Kavanaugh, a virtual lock for confirmation. With a year or two more of experience, Barrett will then replace Ginsburg.
1
Barrett will get her chance once Ruth Bader Ginsberg steps aside in the coming year, she's losing it.
1
Abortion is like Prohibition.
For decades and decades the citizens of this nation screamed about the "sin" of spirits.
It must be banned! they shouted. It must be forbidden! Make it illegal! they demanded.
For decades the horror of spirits was howled.
Thousands were voted into office on the strength of their hatred of the "evil".
No one made any attempt to study it.
No compromises within the legal system were examined.
No laws were set on its consumption, not on age or place.
And, so one day the Screamers got exactly what they wanted.
They got a real, live, Constitutional Amendment to ban it.
It was banned everywhere.
It was banned for everyone.
That evil Booze was forbidden in the United States!
Victory!
But people kept on drinking. They drank at speakeasies and in college rooms. They carried a hip-flask. They stashed the bottle in the library behind the tallest books.
They ignored the law.
And they despised the sour joy-suckers and warned their children not to marry such creepy people.
So... the Constitutional Amendment was repealed.
They passed another Amendment to nullify the previous Amendment.
It turns out that "nothing is written in stone".
So, too, with abortion.
Go ahead. Ban it.
Make it illegal. And birth control, too. And vasectomies.
All of it.
And we will simply ignore your laws.
We'll tattletale on every evangelical who gets one.
We'll fill the jails and the courts with miscreants.
And, soon, you'll have to pass a new Amendment to get rid of.....
7
Douthat showed his true hand in his last column. He is full bore in favor of theocratic judicial activism if it advances his anti-choice, anti-woman worldview.
9
In Ross v Douthat ("Ross" to friends who get his real case against Roe v Wade) and ("Douthat" who for the rest of us only alludes to his case for overturn), how about coming clean in a column and explain how you justify overturning Stasis in this one case and don't think it's a good idea otherwise. Otherwise your opinions otherwise stand on a house of cards.
3
18% of Americans favor making abortion illegal.
What a glorious victory for the religious right. Democracy will be served? Or will it?
5
Stop press!!! A (self-described) Catholic conservative pundit predicts that a (self-described) Catholic conservative jurist will vote to reverse Roe v. Wade once he joins the Catholic conservative majority of the Supreme Court.
Here's a question to ask the nominee:
"Mr. Kavanaugh, you have two daughters--if one, or both, became unintentionally pregnant, would you insist either, or both, bear the child?"
5
Ah, Camorrista, but even THAT is not the question.
The question is: How MANY unintended pregnancies will he force them to bear?
1?
7?
23?
My reproductive years from first to last were 37 years.
That was 37 potential years that I could get pregnant.
So, I always ask these people: When, when is enough is enough?
And then I always look at how many THEY have.
I seriously doubt that Ross's friends all have 20 or thirty kids.
In fact, I seriously doubt that Mom Douthat gave Ross 20 or 30 or even 37! brothers and sisters.
These Righties are in for one rude awakening!
They don't even want to help with 1 or 2 little ones - let alone 37!
Ha! Tough! Time for Biology Class, Righties!!!
4
It's clear Ross Douthat views the court through his extreme anti-abortion lens. What he seems to forget is that over 70% of the country believes that Roe vs Wade should not be overturned, and abortion should remain legal. So, yeah, let's have that legislative fight, and demonstrate both the power of the women's vote, and the understanding that the right to control one's own body is a view shared by the vast majority in this country. Maybe what we actually need is a constitutional amendment, that will put this to rest for good.
6
According to the Pew Research Center, 57% of Americans (not over 70%) believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. If you have a better source, I would be interested in taking a look at it.
Still, an overwhelming majority!
Kavanaugh was a key player in the partisan witch-hunt of President Clinton, and thought Clinton guilty of numerous impeachable offenses - including lying to the public. With Trump in office, Kavanaugh has changed his tune and now argues that Presidents (or is it just Republican Presidents) shouldn't have to defend themselves against lawsuits or investigations.
The hypocrisy is un-American. One set of rules for me and mine, and another for you and yours. He should not be seated on the Court.
5
"Without that promise the current Republican coalition would not exist".
All that this indicates is that the current Republican coalition SHOULD NOT EXIST.
This is a movement based upon hijacking the independence of the judiciary in order to turn it into an undemocratic wing of the far right. It's a direct attack on America as a Liberal Democracy.
8
So, what is it with conservatives forcing their (restrictive) views on non-conservatives? No progressive has ever said any woman MUST get an abortion, but progressives have said any woman MAY get an abortion.
The difference between MUST and MAY is what distinguishes conservatives from progressives.
Or, as said in other places, "Thou mayest" (timshel).
8
I am a woman, but I am more concerened about Citizens United!
5
I'm not sure why conservatives believe that states rights should have precedence here over a national law, but individual rights shouldn't usurp state's rights. Do our rights belong to the states? What happened to individual freedoms? I thought conservatives were in favor of that.
No government should force women to give birth. I can't imagine a bigger theft of freedom.
5
This is one of the reasons women (and other people) have to get the ERA ratified. The Supreme Court is now in business to protect big business. It is no longer willing to protect your rights. The ERA can be quickly ratified - perhaps by the end of this year.
1
People who vigorously oppose abortion are not pro-lifers but pro-birthers. These are the same people who don't want to provide for these young lives and the mothers of these children. They only want to control them.
Most pro-choice people, on the other hand, are true pro-lifers. We want the children who are born to have good healthcare, good education, shelter, food and all the other things that make for a good life.
I'm concerned too about other Kavanaugh issues, like gay marriage and equality under the law. We must be careful not to let the Senate focus only on Roe and Casey.
7
Returning abortion totally to the states will unfortunately preclude a kind of grand bargain: Conservatives agree to the abortion decision remaining in the last instance with the mother in return for greater incentives to mothers for keeping the child -- knowledge that good adoption options are available, good prenatal care, generous child care tax credit (available for home care)-- so that only in extreme cases would abortion actually be the mother's choice. Individual states are more likely to be either all pro or all anti.
1
If a woman does not want to continue a pregnancy why would she care about adoption options, prenatal care or tax credits? The pregnancy in and of itself could cost her her life, health, job and/or education.
5
Abortion in the US was not regulated in any way until the 1800's. Yet it has been practiced since ancient times. I wonder why an 'originalist' would not therefore infer that the Founders knew abortion was being practiced but did not have a problem with it.
3
My understanding is that a majority of white married women voted for Trump. Perhaps many of these women are no longer in their reproductive years and don't care about other women losing their autonomy. Also, I suspect that most - perhaps all - 'pro-life' women of reproductive age haven't thought through what what happen to them if they were pregnant and serious issues arose (their own health, or with the fetus).
There is a point of interpretation about President Trump’s choice of Judge Kavanaugh that I have not yet seen addressed. Please note that our President is not ever concerned with these political positions compared with his need to serve himself. Since he is looking at the real possibility of a subpoena from Muller, than look at issues the Supreme Court will hear concerning an emergency that requires an answer as to whether the President can be brought to court or even treat as “ equal under the law”.
This country needs to talk about what he does,not or even the better idea, look at what he says and look for the con. That is what he is, under the rhetoric.
3
Actually re Sunday's column: Douthat is correct that religious conservatism needs female empowerment if it is ever to be the basis of our culture again. However, Douthat has always lived in a culture where people who believe in religious rigor and truth, because they are countercultural, have more in common than they have separating them. A religiously conservative culture might very well be like its previous iteration in which people respect when you are active in your church whether that church is really a synagogue or a mosque. But there will be conflict about whose religion's values are accepted as universal values that members of other religions want to emulate.
Any honest person will admit that s/he didn't become him/herself until long after birth To paraphrase, "there was no me there." So it's just a matter of common observation that persons don't exist in the womb.
Science has shown us that human persons come into existence through the interactions of already existing human persons who stimulate. develop the child brain/mind until sufficient complexity is reached and a self-conscious person comes into existence. This scientific knowledge has largely been developed post Roe. And should justify striking down any law that would force a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will After all, once she gives birth, no law would demand she, or anyone else, give a blood transfusion to a newborn needing one. Even less should coercion be made when we are talking about the woman's own health; not a separate beings'.
You however have a religious belief about personhood that you want to impose upon people who don't not have that religious belief. And this religious belief was developed by a bunch of guys who had no connection to infants so could fantasize that people don't owe anything to their mothers but are created by some god, without any work on her part.
The whole anti-abortion movement is about terrorizing, weakening and controlling women, breaking our spirits. It is also about getting her labor and intellectual work for nothing; it is about devaluing motherhood. It tells women we are things to be used for the benefit of others: slaves.
8
The court will do nothing concerning abortion, and why would they ? This would remove a key wedge in the cream pie that republicans throw in America's face every electoral season, and they don't want that at all, the conservatives. They do not want to solve problems, or legislate solutions, or stand on one thing or the other with actual votes, no, of course not. This would kill the advantage in any of it. God, guns, gays, and guts- these are the 4 G's of conservative electoral strategy - and they have worked wonders for forty years. Why teach an old hog new schtick?
2
A lot of people say this, but I think they are wrong. I think moderates project moderation into conservatives and liberals project generosity of spirit onto them. They don’t properly understand the kind of person who becomes a right-wing activist.
Conservatives are not the people who say, “this beating has gone too far.” They are definitely not the people who say, “we won this fight, now let’s try to get along.” Instead they are the people who get excited and emboldened when they draw blood - who like how it feels, who escalate, who kick harder when their opponent goes down. Banning abortion in 20 states will just get them juiced. A nationwide ban courtesy of the Supreme Court will fill them with that hate-filled, angry glee they call “winning.” The next step will be partial and then full bans on birth control.
I know conservatives pretty well. Nothing inside them will ever reign them in. There is no line they won’t cross. We have to defend ourselves and our rights. Nobody else will do this for us, and they won’t ever stop.
2
Oh please... the same conservative and evangelical groups that are obsessed with pushing their pro-birth agendas have had no qualms about separating and caging migrant children and babies, cutting off children’s access to healthcare, and allowing assault rifles in elementary schools. The self-anointed morality police seem to believe that zygotes are entitled to greater protection than living, breathing, thinking beings.
7
"unborn human lives"... Why not just refer to human embryos as "unmatured adults". In the same spirit we could refer to illegal immigrants as "unnaturalized US citizens". And milk will now be known as "uncurdled cheese". Why not? We're all just "unterminated corpses" anyway.
12
I guess the compound construction for embryos in Douthat-speak could be "unterminated unborn corpses".
Seriously. You don't get to call a thing a different thing, that it is clearly not, just by prefixing it with a qualifier that, by the way, makes it clear that it isn't that thing which you are trying to pretend that it is. Even if there is a chance that it might become that other thing depending on how things play out (although the corpse thing is pretty much a lock).
2
Mr. Douthat has discussed one-half of the potential problem facing the Republican Party with their “win” on the Supreme Court. He is correct that there has been a solid voting block for saving the fetus. This issue has become a Trump card that has caused a portion of “conservative voters” to overlook Republican Party policies they find distasteful. A significant raise in the minimum wage; reasonable limitations of 2nd amendment gun rights; a national solution for health care costs; serious concerns about air and water pollution; equal pay for equal work; are just a few of the issues that could be back in the political spotlight if the Supreme Court takes away the “Democrats want to murder babies” card that the Republicans have very effectively played for decades. I do not believe that limiting a woman’s right to have control over her body is a good thing, but I am reasonably sure that there will be unintended consequences for the Republicans if they overturn Roe.
Maybe if the old-school Republicans like those once in my family still existed - but current Republicans don’t care about the issues. It’s a tribal identity. The threat of not conforming to the tribe - of being kicked out on the street and disowned like a gay kid born to an Evangelical family - is unbearable. Questioning the tribe’s authorities is unthinkable. They will always vote Republican and they will believe whatever they are told to believe by Fox and Pastor Jim. They might not want their water poisoned, their kids gunned down at school, their wages stolen - but they will put up with it and enthusiastically destroy anyone who argues for a different path.
1
My fear is not that the right to an abortion will go back to the individual states, but that a far-right court will ban abortion altogether. That is, they will find that a fetus is a constitutional person.
That is the real risk in this appointment, a radical and extreme interpretation that will threaten the lives of all women of child-bearing age without regard for her health or the circumstances of the pregnancy.
If the risk was limited to permitting states to set their own standards, then it is likely that women's health concerns would prevail at least on the coasts and in my home state of Colorado. Perhaps a few more. American women would have an opportunity to preserve their health, or exercise choice, without leaving the country, probably under threat of breaking the law, as was the case in Ireland until quite recently.
But once on the court, a radical anti-choice judge faces no limits. In that position, a logical question is "Why not go all the way? Why take a half-measure?"
Make no mistake about it, the potential for harm from this appointment is extreme. In another case, such risk was termed a "clear and present danger." We face a no less serious threat.
5
Two points:
1. There's nothing to anywhere that remotely suggests that the Founding Fathers considered embryos/fetuses to be full-fledged human beings, so how would an Originalist/Textualist interpretation of our constitution conclude that embryos/fetuses are protected by the Due Process Clause?
2. I don't think Roe v Wade gives anyone "the right to terminate unborn human lives." Rather, it allows a woman to choose not to be pregnant anymore up to the point of fetal viability. (It follows, of course, that the pre-viable fetus dies, but that is not the primary intent.) Intent matters greatly, as we all seem to understand and accept in hospice protocols for people at the end of their lives.
4
If the states are allowed to define when human life begins, then we'll have a situation we haven't seen since before the 13th and 14th amendments: a state line between two different definitions of a human being, and thus between two different versions of citizenship.
"Life" is a red herring in this question. The real issue is whether citizenship begins at conception, and whether that citizen actually gets the equal protection the Constitution theoretically guarantees to it (and yes, said citizen is an it at conception) at that moment. If the state promising protection is compelled to keep that promise starting at the moment of conception, then they are compelled to know that said citizen actually does exit, starting at that moment.
That citizen can't report itself. The bearer has to make that report. If said bearer fails or declines to do that, and if the state has no way to get those reports, then the vulnerable citizen can be denied its existence without the state ever knowing it existed. So these reports will have to be immediate, compulsory, and subject to verification by the state. Otherwise the state is, in its negligence, complicit in the act it seeks to criminalize.
The people who call abortion murder might now give themselves no choice: if they want to stop the murder, they'll need to nullify the Fourth Amendment, and attack the First and the Commerce Clause in their states. Just one thing stands in their way: reality.
Careful what you wish for, Ross.
1
We can only hope that Douthat's vision of fratricide on the right is correct. Grant sharpness to their blades and strength to their arms for their internal war.
4
A recent batch of the same sort of guys had a night of long knives. The moderates didn’t win, and it turned out rather badly for everyone.
Mr. Douthat and others on the anti-abortion/pro-theocracy side seem oblivious to one reality:
When (if) Roe is overturned and certain states outlaw abortion, the dynamics of the battle will change completely.
The religious right will then be on the defensive, trying to defend the status quo (a status quo that will over time prove disadvantageous for many people in those unfortunate states).
One always wants to seize the initiative, to be on offense.
2
I understand that some citizens believe that human life begins at conception--but others do not. I understand that that some citizens believe in a strict construction of the U.S. Constitution-- but of course the Constitution does not specifically enumerate a right to abortion, since the men who wrote it devoted no time to discussing abortion, marriage, or other rights that many of us hold dear. So I have two questions:
1. Why can we not agree to disagree? You can disagree with abortion in your life, home, family, church, etc., without impinging on the freedom of those Americans who do not share your worldview.
2. Can anyone tell me when American women traded the prerogative to make this important and personal decision about childbearing to the U.S. Supreme Court, or Congress, or their state legislature? If a decision as important as bearing or not bearing a child is not a fundamental right, I don't know what is.
3
For awhile I was tolerant of the “originalist” approach to the interpretation of the constitution—the idea that the founders’ spoke with a clear vision of what should be in the constitution and expressed it so unambiguously that no changes in circumstances or society should be brought to bear in construing it’s meaning. I was relieved to know that soldiers could not be quartered in my house during peacetime. But now that anything the government doesn’t like can justify a “war” on something and peacetime is turning into chaotic permanent war where the president decided when we are at war and is above the law, I am getting a little worried because the third amendment only prohibits their quartering during wartime except as provided by law. Trumpist Republicans might pass a law allowing soldiers to be quartered in my house during the war on terror to maintain control of a fractious populace. Those founders sure were perceptive! The third amendment has lain dormant and not cited in any case for 250 years, but the founders knew there would come a time when a minority party in control of the entire government might need it to maintain control. Who knew the constitution actually provided for quartering soldiers in your house? But if you are an originalist, you gotta believe the constitution means what it says. Better make up the spare bedroom for guests!
4
"constitutional right to terminate unborn human lives" Ahem. If you live in a cloistered world where no information gets in, where you have granted a body of mostly men to decide what is right and wrong, then you will speak this way as RD does. But it will never be the case that God or if you prefer Nature, will take away from woman the right to decide when motherhood should happen; that just is the issue-----motherhood is not just about the child, but the mother and child.
3
Yes, the "Federalist Society and all its intellectually impressive work" is why the Republican party has millions of voters in its corner.
-
I suppose that's the type of fairy tale intelligent people regularly inoculate themselves with to be able to consume the raw sewage that is the Republican party.
Remember coat hangers! What women desperate used to end a pregnancy and often died themselves. Many of us have someone in our family who died trying to end an unwanted pregnancy. Talk to doctors who were glad to see the end of abortion prohibition.
3
If your strongly against abortion -- then I strongly support you in not having one. Your personal beliefs are in no way challenged. NO one is forcing you to have a abortion......
3
I see Trump chose a nominee who shares his enthusiasm for hair spray.
6
There is that familiar demeanor that loudly proclaims, "rabid right-wing nut-job" that we have seen on various convicted evangelists, abortion clinic staff assassins, and televangelists who rake in millions from their lost-soul congregants. They always have that certain look: "Touch me not, as I am holier than thou. Repent, for you tempted me. The Devil is at work here; pray that he does not enter your soul as he has mine!"
Does this anti-Christ actually claim to be Christian? Please tell me he's not a Catholic. I am so ashamed if he is........ I, too, call myself a devout Catholic in the style of Pope Francis, the other ultimate liberal.
Even though I am a liberal (a socialist), I find all attacks on life to be vile: abortion, capital punishment (state-sanctioned homicide), assisted suicide, war--particularly mass destruction from chemical and nuclear weapons.
I am a liberal who supports the dignity of LIFE..........
2
Where's Susan Sarandon now? With her nonsense about not a dime's worth of difference between Trump and Hillary? And where are all those Bernie Bots? Try and explain to this lifelong Dem how Hillary rigged the primary. Yeah, right. People like Sarandon and Bernie Bots made their bed. Now let US know how it feel sleeping in it.
DD
Manhattan
11
Abortion is a pill...You can buy at CVS or Walgreens...or Walmart...or via the internet...in the mail...
Nine conservative judges nor nine thousand conservative judges can’t stop a pill...
3
"right to terminate unborn human lives"....this is the crux of the problem. Bible Thumpers and "Right to Lifers" see a fetus as a human being with rights. I don't.
I see a woman with a developing POTENTIAL human being - a woman has the perfect moral and practical right to deliver a baby or abort the fetus - for whatever reasons she decides.
If the discussion were a reasonable one, we could talk about the fetus having a right to birth at a certain age of viability. If it can be born and live independent of the umbilical cord - that is something. Before that, the fetus is an extension of the parents physically, morally and practically. Everyone else - especially politicians and pompous religious meddlers - butt out. It's a private matter.
Whatever the court decides in future test cases, women will own their bodies and jurisdiction over them. Technology is fast developing tools for pregnancy termination that will avoid clinic confrontations and even hospitals. Someday perhaps those tools will be available to all. For now the poor will suffer with dangerous procedures or unwanted kids. The rich will go to a "spa" - or fly to Ireland!
As we discuss the issue of a woman's reproductive rights, isn't it disgusting that the opposition to such seems to be led by older white guys? We are reversing the course of social justice and enlightened progress. Time is marching backwards...
5
I agree 100% with you, Bob. Great post.
But the age, color and gender of abortion opponents is meaningless. They are either right or they are wrong. They are wrong on the issue, not on the basis of their identity.
I am strongly pro-abortion rights. Yet, as always, I find myself arguing as much with those on my side of the issue as I do the other side.
No, abortion opponents aren't mean, anti-female busy-bodies trying to stamp out mere "choice." They are against granting someone the right to choose - as they see it - to kill an innocent human being. Who, exactly, is FOR granting others the "right to choose" to murder, after all?
So, the question is when the product of a pregnancy is a full human being with rights of its own to be factored into the mother's choice, if at all?
That's what it's all about.
I don't know *exactly* when the product of conception becomes a full human being, but I think Roe got it about right. I think the pro-lifers have it wrong.
Pro-choicers who rely on name-calling, cultural chauvinism and slander of pro-lifers rather than debating the central question of abortion are not only being intellectually lazy, but are by extension sounding just as superficial and callous as the other side claims we are.
2
Thank you for your thoughtful replies.
I also would like to suggest that many "Abortion Opponents" seem to be pro-life until the kid is born. Then opportunities for proper nutrition, healthcare and education are distributed largely based on income and assets.
So it's great to care about a nameless fetus - I respect one's right to feel that way. But I don't respect the right to lord that concern over women who have the challenges of actually raising a child in a world where there is inconsistent support in social services - or just plain old medical care.
So yes, there is the right and wrong. And there is also the age old religious arrogance that tries to dominate public thought and behavior. Because this "new" SCOTUS may embrace such tribal and antique attitudes, the very concept of a free country is threatened.
It is ironic that those who speak of over regulation and who wish for small government want that very same government to enter our homes and tell us who we can marry and give birth to.
2
Nothing this court does can change the fact that women have always had abortions and always will. Women of means will continue to have that option; those without money will be forced back into the closet, with a higher rate of mortality. "Banning" abortion will be about as effective as prohibition was; or as the previous ban was. Medical advances have made a doctor's involvement during the 1st trimester irrelevant for many women. Even with the threat of jail- which will never happen- I would not allow the government to dictate if and when I have children. Women who see agency over their own bodies as a fundamental human right will not go back.
7
I do not see anything admirable about the Federalists, a conservative group hellbent on destroying liberties that have been hard fought and won!
With the Kavanaugh nomination, I see the hands of the "church" imposing its archaic beliefs on the majority of Americans who belief otherwise. No wonder the Roman Catholic Church quietly and in some cases, not so quietly promoted Donald! They want only one thing, to end choice for women! Not only with the end of abortion, but also to restrict the use of birth control, in all its forms!
This is the bottom line, Mr. Douthat. Men, mostly white, usually wealthy wanting to control women. After they limit or get rid of Roe, next will be Marriage Equality, etc.,etc. We are on the cusp of losing several freedoms, long upheld and which the majority of Americans want left untouched.
This is about the fact, that a small minority of Americans voted, and those who lazily stayed home....gave us, Donald and Kavanaugh!
Please vote, on November 6th, 2018!
5
Ross, the selection of Kavanaugh goes beyond the parameters of Roe vs. Wade.
It goes right to the heart of what kind of country each of us want to live in and it is clear that both sides have different definitions.
Because of this, we can only respond to existential threats!
It also becomes impossible to find some kind of a middle ground.
In point of fact Ross, there is no middle ground when it comes to Roe vs. Wade.
Either a woman has control over her body or she does not and if she doesn't, then who becomes responsible for that life and have we built a society that will be truly responsive to its needs?
The argument then progresses beyond Roe and this is where the polarities and threats become even more pointed and acute.
It is one thing to argue for rights, but quite another when they exist just on paper and have little outlet in real life.
Ross, we cannot even take care of our existing population, let alone what exists beyond on our borders.
Furthermore, it is just as possible that the SC will make abortion illegal in all 50 states.
What then?
Let's just hope that the overtly pious like yourself have plenty enough bedrooms, income and love to support all these children since our foster care system cannot even deal with the children that currently exist.
Since there is no evidence of this pre-Roe, then it is just a repetition of what already existed.
Our country is drifting apart Ross.
So perhaps it is time to make it a permanent schism!
1
Just looking at this pix of Kavanaugh, with Trump smirking in the background, has me awaiting the day when Trump has to return to civilian life in New York, and someday, somewhere, at some celebrity-studded event, so indicative of Manhattan night life, he accidentally comes face-to-face with Robert DeNiro. I'd pay big money to be there.
DD
Manhattan
2
Have you really given no thought to what sort of backlash terminating Roe might inspire? There may well be some uninformed voters who don't know that abortion would only become illegal in states whose legislatures chose to make it so. But many others who don't only care about the rights of women in their own state would be enraged.
And how would the issue play in swing states? We know California will keep abortion legal and Utah will outlaw it but there will be states in which abortion will now become the number one issue. Which party will that favor?
And, of course, once Roe was overturned there would be a push to outlaw abortion nationally.
2
The best way to rebuild the Democratic party is from the ground up, state by state. Overturning Roe vs Wade could accomplish that.
2
All of the distractions away from the consequential Citizens United case which sealed the thrust towards fascism. Supreme Court justices lived into their 50's in the 1700's.
We need to set term limits, perhaps 25 years, and expand the number to 13 justices. That will reduce the ossification of justice.
1
‘Returning Roe v Wade to the democratic process..”...
It never left . It’s settled law but largely white male bible thumpers, who express the sanctity of life, right up to the moment of birth, can’t accept that. It’s not your choice boys, it is ultimately a women’s right to choose.
2
Others are listing the myriad consequences of Roe v. Wade. Some believe it explains a fall in crime. What is seldom said is that it was an extreme act of voter suppression. The population of Black America would be much larger today, were it not for Roe v. Wade. It is ironic that liberals so desperately wish to protect a practice that is causing them to lose elections, in more ways than one.
The party of McCarthyism and Richard Nixon, the virulent anti-communist party whose current leader is a Putin toady, the gun toting party that that ignores, overlooks and even defends with righteousness the 33,000 gun deaths/year in the US, the party of the death penalty, the party largely responsible for the millions that have been slaughtered in post-world war 2 wars, the party that rips mothers from babies at the US border, the party that will not support health insurance for extremely ill individuals with pre-existing conditions, islamophobe party that that supports the Orwellian nightmare that some people are more equal than others, the party that doesn't endorse a UN resolution supporting breast feeding of new borns by mothers, the party of Mr. Douthat, mirable dictu, wants to prevent women from having control of their bodies. This op-ed piece would be risible if it wasn't so grievous.
4
You keep confusion the right to have an abortion with conservatism. Conservatives belief in small government and the rights of individuals over the interests of the government. The pseudo science call religion is the only place where a fertilized egg is suddenly a human being or a dog or a chicken. It's a ridiculous position and has nothing to do with big or small government. Appointing religious zealots to the court is the actual problem. These people read only those portions of the bible that agree with their point of view. They they impose this bizarre notion on the rest of us. They are no different from the ayatollahs. They are just nuts. Whey does Yale keep admitting these people?
4
And what, exactly is the conservative legal movement's "philosophy" except authoritarianism dressed up in highfalutin lamguage? It is known to the rest of us as protection of the white male supremacist order! The coalition of which you speak is "white male supremacy of the rich" a.k.a. corporate and political power on the one hand and "white male supremacy of the middle and working classes" a.k.a. male authority in the domestic sphere. That is the Republican party today and every institution that supports it. Did I miss anything? No! That is it -- the essence of the Republican party. Establishment-institutionalized Catholicism (which Pope Francis is unsuccessfully trying to reign in) is good training ground for this form of authoritarianism. The Diversity in the right wing of the Supreme Court is breathtaking -- and that includes the white man called Clarence Thomas. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh even went to the same Jesuit high school. How sweet!!
1
...American democracy and judicial independence is trapped in a murky, water filled underground labyrinth in the rainy season. Nevertheless, Douthat keeps pumping water into the cave.
One can only wonder whether Douthat told the NYT when he was interviewed for the job that on any issue touching upon abortion, LBGT and women's rights he would be parroting his Catholic Church's medieval positions. And whether his previous editorial where he said as much would not disqualify him from serious consideration at the Times and by its readers.
1
Bottom line-- if past decisions, such as Roe, Gar Marriage, ACA, etc. are overturned then they can be" re-overturned" in the future by D's once they are back in power.
Kavanaugh has a track record. Past performance is a usually a better predictor of future behavior.
BTW-- I wonder if he will be asked if he leaked grand jury proceedings when he worked for Starr on the Clinton impeachment.
What does the dog do when it finally catches a car?
The GOP elites have been using abortion as an issue while safe in the knowledge that the Supreme Court will uphold Roe. The have used it to keep the anti woman and religious right frothing for almost 50 years. The strategy recently is to placate by making it harder for the poor to get abortions: a sweet spot that lets the anti poor and anti abortion strains work together while red state Republicans send their daughters and wives to NewYork under the cover of a long shopping weekend.
You guys don’t want to make abortion illegal. You want it to be something you can get if you have some money.
4
So the Church of Rome, forever held in contempt for the tens of thousands of its clergy known to have engaged in pedophilia world wide for centuries, now has its Republican Supreme Court. American women should understand that the Republican Party platform adopted in 2016 calls for outlawing all abortions, including those to save the life of the woman. The Church of Rome and its Evangelical allies will not settle for a "narrow" decision returning abortion law to the states. Rather, they will push for a 14th Amendment ruling outlawing all abortions everywhere at al times. If Democratic politicians continue to give Republicans a pass on their party platform, shame on them and shame on American women.
1
To the women of America,
There is no one to blame here, the fault lies with us. We have voted or refused to vote and these decisions will impact our right to control our bodies for decades to come.
It's very possible that this misogynic society will elect to punish women who seek an abortion or even simply miscarry. Afterall, the Bible does authorize stoning all these wanton women (there are never any wanton men).
But I know this, that abortion has and will exist in every society on this planet and the reversal of availability to safe abortions will only mean more women will die.
4
Carol, the tricky part about the politics of all this is that women are NOT a monolith. Trump won a majority of the white female vote, even after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape (and previous Republican nominees, going back to 1968, have won the white female vote by larger margins than he did). And a large percentage of female voters, perhaps even a majority, do identify as "pro-life."
1
It's been a way to mobilize both sides - for the right, by motivating them to seek the overturn of Roe, and for the left, by convincing them that Roe is in peril and needs an ardent defense. However, the fervor has been stronger (in my opinion), and the resources greater, on the part of the right. This is why there are those who suggest that the overturn of Roe will in fact sound the death knell of the "pro-life" movement by removing their motivation (I don't think so, because there will still be many state-wide bans to pursue, but there is room for debate on that).
I could care less about gay wedding cakes and transgender bathrooms. And I am disgusted with the assault rifles "uber alles" movement. However, I do care about money in politics, the survival of Obamacare, and the permanence of National Monuments. It seems that all we can rely on these days is that money talks, and talks, and talks.
Let the oral arguments begin.
Silly me, I thought he meant the deluge of rights taken away--from women, minorities, would-be voters, non-corporate persons, and on...
1
While as usual I admire his sleek (though sometimes twisted and tortured) rhetorical skill, Mr. Douthat could have boiled this column down to one sentence: “We misogynist theocrats have won, women are about to lose their most basic rights, and we rejoice — amen.”
6
What does it mean and how does one "trust originalist and textualist theory," in an everpresent reality of uncertainties? Unpredictabilities? Randomness. Lack of total control, no matter the types, levels, and qualities of one's efforts? What does "the politics of abortion" mean and exemplify when considering, in a democracy, achieving sustainable well being in safe havens- from one's body, to family, neighborhood, community, region , state and nation-based upon equitable sharing of human and nonhuman resources so necessary for daily, healthy coping?Adapting? Functioning? Within and amidst diversities.At all levels? Will any of his question askers,
whatever their political tags and identities ask Judge Kavanaugh his position on personal accountability for harmful words and deeds? For not voicing needed words, and planning, implementing, assessing and learning from needed actions which would enable a menschlich culture? What are Judge Kavanaugh's positions and beliefs about creating sustainable mutual trust in this divided faux-United States? At all levels of daily life! Sustainable mutual respect? Mutual caring for all. Including "the stranger?" Mutual help, when and if needed? What is his position regarding lifetime judicial roles for fellow-flawed-human beings, who are personally accountable to the nation's population, whatever their legal knowledge and experience? How might Justice Kavanaugh judge God's "holocausting" all those in Sodom for sinning, and not Lot's incest?
You know, Ross, before you go all misty-eyed on the projected loving reaction by the extreme religious right, I think you need to check the stats on exactly how the "birthrates" of the Red and the Blue states differ.
They don't.
And a smart man like you ought to be able to figure out "why".
Let that be your warning to your Federalist Society, your Heritage Foundation, your Republican Party, your Libertarians, your.........
2
Silly Ross. DJT picked Kavanaugh for one reason only: because Kavanaugh has publically proposed that sitting presidents should not be “bothered” by lawsuits, indictments, or investigations. DJT sees Kavanaugh as a literal Get Out of Jail Free card. Overturn Roe v. Wade? Unimportant, but if it happens and pleases the base, great. As for all of you who sold your souls to the devil in order to get the overturn of Roe, embracing hypocrites, loonies, racists and corporatists....well, may you have joy in your bargain. As all such bargains do, it will not lead to the results you have been yearning for.
2
I want to see America "Jim Crow" more of its minority citizens' civil rights. We are so well known for that sleight of hand slow-walking of the Other. I don't want to disappoint Zi or Putin who see a fellow traveler in Trump. Remember: the watch word is "Hate with a Christian Smile".
This obsession with abortion that Ross and others have is a mental pathology of some kind. Likely treason by the president? They don't care. The president and his family are treating the White House as a once-in-a-lifetime money making opportunity. They couldn't care less. The immoral and unethical Trump has irreparably damaged the office of president. I see nothing. The president is French-kissing the murderer and autocrat like Putin. So what.
4
Mr. Douthat many times tries to thread the needle in his columns, talking up the right-ward position but (and there are always 'buts') trying to soften the blow for the Times' moderate and liberal readers. In this area, he is wrong -- with this choice confirmed by the gutless Senate, Roe will be overturned, and Douthat's side will rejoice and compare it to the abolition of slavery. Then same-sex marriage, then total overturn of ACA, then possibly Brown vs. Board of Ed. and maybe even African-Americans will revert to being 3/5 of a person. By then, we will all be slaves to a fanatical minority bathed in the aura of their religion.
1
Does anyone really buy the idea that the R establishment cares about abortion as anything other than a wedge issue to gin up votes every two years so they can continue to mine money once the elections are over? If abortion goes, then there goes the Rs' #1 bumper sticker.
Does the 20% who are against abortion know that the unborn also include poor women of color? Not just white women? Are they willing to support poor women of color who have several children who are unwanted, unloved and uncared for? Or does their largess only extend to white women?
1
Modest proposal- The pro-choice movement starts a religion called "Abortionism" where pre-viability abortion is both a right and a "rite." Abortion providers are all ordained and the abortion procedure is replete with ceremony and prayers. Then you just go to the Republican Supreme Court and make a First Amendment "free exercise" argument under the federal RFRA that abortions are a part of your religion and you're home free. While these Republican ayatollahs don't understand rational argument they have a real fondness for "religious freedom."
The only way this nation can move forward and progress is for both sides of the political spectrum to compromise. And in the case of abortion, a small part of a reasonable compromise would be to support government provided contraception to reduce the number of abortions. But I do not hear any support from the right wing to provide such. So, without compromise, where are we?
In the end the people will determine the culture, not the Supreme Court. Abortions will continue even if outlawed. Gays will live together as married couples and the blue states will enact strict gun control laws and abortion protections reflecting the will of its people. Wherever the Supreme Court's rulings attempt to overrule the will of the people in the blue states it will be seen as an act of war against those people. They will not stand for it. It is one thing to pass rulings that impact people in Florida, but quite another thing to try and override laws that represent the will of the people in places like New York
What Douthat may or may not realize is that legislating a right wing agenda will just increase the resistance exponentially and start a slow march to the breakup of the United States into blue and red countries. This Supreme Court nominee has the potential to rekindle the Civil War. A minority of right wing zealots cannot dominate the majority and expect them to just submit.
1
The most troubling part of this piece to me is Douthat's repetition of the following right-wing propaganda: "[T]he Kavanaugh appointment brings us to a testing moment for the conservative legal movement’s political promise. . .that judges formed by its philosophy and principles would necessarily vote to overturn the post-1973 abortion regime and return the abortion debate to the democratic process."
As a Black woman, I am well aware of this country's horrific track record when it comes to allowing "the democratic process" to determine fundamental constitutional and human rights. This is why I find this argument, repeated early and often by anti-Roe/Casey people, to be so dangerous. Those who make it know that history full well, too. They know that America's "democratic process" cares nothing about fundamental constitutional and human rights, as proven such over and over again throughout American history. I just wish the Douthats and others who are OK with this would just admit that the democratic process as envisioned by the founders was supposed to *protect* against the tyranny of the majority in fundamental human and constitutional rights matters, not enshrine it through the ultimate arbiter of law, the Supreme Court.
4
Republicans and far right political "Christians" have spent years raising money off of promises for repeal of Roe. Well, now it's inevitable. They should be careful what they wish for. Now they will have to defend forcing a 12 year old to bear the child of her rapist, women dying from botched abortions, exploding birth rates among evangelical red state teens, etc.
How will they blame Obama and liberals for it?
2
Worst $COTU$ in more than 130 years. This century has been the worst. Period.
1
If abortion comes off the table in national politics the Republican Party is doomed.
Where's the atheist we so desperately need on the SC?
3
Yet another abortion lecture from a white male. I am so sick and tired of it. I am also disgusted by American women who facilitated the inevitable attack on Roe v. Wade. Make no mistake, republicans, there is a backlash coming.
4
Contrary to the rants of "pro lifers" and certain NYT MEN, Abortion is neither a cause for shame OR pride. It is simply a medical procedure. NOT your body, NOT your business. Your religion does not trump my life, or my freedom. I want freedom FROM religion. Is that too much to ask ???
Seriously.
8
Anti- abortion Ross. Pro life, not so much. Language matters. A lot.
3
Today, our fake president just pardoned two anti-government, arsonists in an attempt to curry favor with white supremacists in advance of their DC hate-rally next month. Plenty of overlap—if not 100%—between the bigoted alt-right and the (so-called) “pro-life” mob.
2
" the politics of abortion ". Spoken like a man that can never be pregnant, or DIE from being pregnant. Enough. Seriously.
3
Putting legislators between the thighs of all women, a great motivating factor of the right, will not happen anytime in the next 10 yrs. How else will Douthat's masters keep peoplle from voting away their healthcare, infrastructure, quality of life? Let's cut Medicaid expansion, and let's make birth control something only rich mistresses can afford, and let's' give billions to the rich. Repealing Roe V Wade? Not likely. Even after the tax give aways, where the richest pay the least percentage, and the poorest have their taxes taken out in advance, there are still deals to be made. IT won't happen for 10 years of more, when we are a third world country that can't support its people.
As long as there are Americans who believe that their views should hold sway over other American’s privacy, you can talk about freedom only in so much as you can talk about slavery not being “that bad.”
If you’re religious enough to think women have a role to play in American society and believe it should be subordinate to your masculine cosmology, god help you. There is nothing in the coming generation that is going to finally and forever settle the American experiment in favor or some pre Roe v Wade atavism. 10 years from now those still holding out for god chosen American exceptionalism are going to wonder what the heck they were ever thinking when they voted Republican.
1
You show your true colors in the first paragraphs. "Trumpism" is ok, it's moral, it's acceptable to your sacred Catholic values...as long as you get your partisan political SCOTUS pick. The means justify the end. This is the Republican model. This is your model and values. This is who you really are, and why our Country is in such upheaval.
1
Astounding hypocrisy! The cruel, ruthless abduction of thousands of refugee children and abject failure to track and return them says everything about this administration's concern for life.
1
Is it time for the women of America to just refuse to have sex at all? Maybe Lysistrata had it right.
The guys who go in for this stuff should be aware that this is the logical result when you've got a bunch of women who have experienced feminism, but who lose reproductive freedom. Most probably won't abandon feminism. They'll abandon men, who are the whole reason for needing birth control and abortion in the first place.
2
Oh, how you gleefully await women losing the right to control their own bodies, their own futures.
1
You should say, "so-called 'pro-life voters'". How is it pro-life to ruin a woman's health and future - and often her family's future as well - on behalf of a fertilized egg?
If you really want to prevent abortions, the best way to do it is to prevent unwanted pregnancy. This means birth control available freely, this means (of course) education about sexual matters, which churches, synagogues, mosques all can participate in. And men should be held responsible for their conduct, a suggestion absent from all the columns I've read by men who are against abortion, against funding abortion, but never critical of health plans paying for Viagra.
2
In my cynicism, I think that over the past 25 years or so, I have heard the same song, that Roe v. Wade was in danger. I can't help but think that this has been a useful political football for high level politicians, lawyers and judges to use in making their mark. (Marc Galanter--why the haves come out ahead).
Abortion has been a hard case, as per Ronald Dworkin's analysis. And I'm not sure that litigation before the courts was the way to go, it has been so polarizing. Yet, after all the litigation over the years, it still comes down to the state legislatures, the extent to which they are supportive of the right.
The abortion right at the federal level is pretty much dead, because of the way it has been litigated into non-existence in certain states. Only those states that support it will find that the right persists if Roe is overturned.
1
Perhaps a long-awaited compromise is in order.
On one hand, a court that topples Roe but keeps Casey has established that a legally-protected life does not begin at conception, and frees us from regulation until at least the second trimester.
On the other hand, protecting rights under Casey requires that the states and the US aggressively prosecute the zealots harassing women and doctors, and states like Texas to stop acting like all abortion is murder. It would also establish the legitimacy of contraception, explicitly.
These measures might embody a 'safe, legal, and rare' standard.
Calling on the court to take a broad view of the social circumstances and design an outcome accordingly, with the breadth of something like the 1993 telecommunications act (which was the resolution to a court case, we seem to forget).
First step: commission a credible, honest study of how many Americans really feel that a legally-protected, autonomous life begins at conception. So far the right to life faction has gotten a lot of mileage out of the assumption that we believe abortion is murder. In truth? Reply here, but I suspect it's maybe 20 percent max.
3
With all of the concern about abortion rights and the SCOTUS, I have yet to see any editorial mention that that Irish just voted overwhelmingly to undo their abortion ban. America is not Europe in many important ways, but every comparison is not one of apples and oranges. The last poll I saw said 70% of Americans prefer to keep the status quo on the issue. These are not facts that either courts or lawmakers can easily ignore.
This is no guarantee, and there are likely to be many battles ahead, but it is not unlikely that those who got elected to by making a pledge to end abortion will ultimately be exposed as having promised the impossible.
1
If Kavanaugh and the Republicans overturn Roe they immediately lose their number one source of funding and engagement. Do Repbulicans think the anti-abortion crowd would apply that anger toward more tax cuts for the wealthy?
Establishment and Chamber of Commerce Republicans have never cared about Roe -- or reproductive rights for women -- except when they can whip up the anti-abortion folks and promise them results in exchange for cash and votes.
If the Kavanaugh court overturns Roe expect anti-abortion groups to look even deeper into women's rights and seek to take away contraception, employment opportunities, movements, etc. And Republicans will have to acquiesce or they lose the last block of support they have. (Except the racists, who we can't really talk about.)
M, if Roe is overturned, then legislation and/or ballot measures to ban abortion in its entirety will be introduced overnight in a large number of states. Don't underestimate the ability of the anti-abortion crowd to organize and fund these efforts; this is exactly what they've been organizing and funding for throughout the lifetimes of the organizers of the anti-abortion movement. I predict that these efforts, following an overturning of Roe, will result in abortion becoming completely outlawed in at least 20 states if not more.
The question then becomes, can the pro-choice crowed mount an effective response? The pro-choice movement will have to organize and fund-raise on a similar level in order to (i) limit the banning of abortion to the fewest number of states possible and (ii) offer opportunities for poor women in the "ban" states to obtain abortions in states where it remains legal (by providing financial and logistical assistance for them to do so). Will they be able to get their act together for a wide-scale effort along these lines?
3
"Let's give all pregnant women the help they need to carry, deliver and, if wanted, keep their baby. That's the caring, humane answer to abortion."
You should make that pitch to conservatives. Their commitment to provide adequate healthcare for the 9-month term is questionable at best, esp. for the less-fortunate. And they appear to have no interest whatsoever in giving the mothers a chance to adequately care for these newborns, judging by their repeated determination to cut or eliminate programs which would provide for this.
3
"Pro-life" is a dishonest slogan; let's get it right and call it what it is--"anti-sex". Possible before cheap and effective birth control, but no longer. So, some of the states will force the poor into back-room attempted abortions; shameful!
6
The term "Pro-life" is the biggest lie of all. These people are not pro life, they are anti-choice. Overturning Roe saves no fetus but it will, for sure, kill women.
3
"Once the sperm hits the egg it is indeed a new human being"
Have you ever bothered to really try to put aside your prejudice and really consider that belief? It's what you've been told,with great sincerity of it's absolute truth, but how do you know? Where does the belief really come from? Once, not too long ago, it was believed that a man put his inanimate seed into the womb and it was quickened to life. In the seed was a humanculus, a miniature baby just waiting for the spark. Then the scientific revolution came and we built concepts of what we can't see, but the old understanding continues to shape how the culture treats conception. The popular concept is that life "starts" and proceeds in a straight line. Only we know it doesn't. Life comes from life. Life is a cycle, not a straight line. The potential for a new human exists in sexual attraction, in a separate sperm and egg, in a zygote, in a fetus. Insisting that it's "obvious" that "life starts" at the "instant" of conception is a false claim. No, the DNA doesn't determine when the Gerber baby has popped into existence. I can show you a tube of quite human DNA that will never be a baby. No, the fact that it's a human life doesn't mean it's a baby. I can show you quite human cells that will out last you, and they'll never be a baby. Well, maybe never. We're actually quite close to taking any human cell and making a baby out of it. Oh dear, did I just kill some babies when I split my cell culture today?
6
Gilead delayed today.
You should truly be careful what you wish for, Mr Douthat. But then again, your vision of equal rights for fetuses won't affect YOU.
1
What bothers me most about these picks is the influence religion in general and the Catholic faith in particular are having on our highest court. If we were to assume an "originalists" stance, our founders, while paying symbolic attention to religion, in their personal lives they were skeptical believers and more importantly, were staunch believers in separation of church and state. I won't go into the obvious contradictions between mythical systems that believe unborn fetuses need protection but without the slightest christian doubt allow states each month to put men and women to death in the most grotesque fashion. Leaving aside making sense out of the twists and turns of these mythical systems, I want justices calling, in Justice Roberts words, balls and strikes. I don't want Justices pointing up to the sky before rendering an opinion.
1
I am as frustrated as anyone by the portion of this country that wants impose it's religious beliefs upon those of us that don't share them. And I also do not agree with Mr. Douthat's belief that the nature of this debate will be altered. It has always hit a primal level that will never change. A Supreme Court that overturns settled and reaffirmed law for nearly 50 years will never be taken lightly. However, if it is possible for states have the right to make laws concerning gun control and abortion that are in accordance with the wishes of it's voters, I would be personally happy to leave it at that for now. What I fear is that if the Court attempts to overturn laws in those states, all hell will break loose.
2
This choice is mainly about abortion. Once the new hyper-conservative Justice is confirmed, the SCOTUS 5 may still not have the guts to directly overturn Roe so they will shuck it to the states. Last I heard, 20 states are prepared to outlaw abortion. If that happens, get ready for a dramatic spike in unwanted children, many of whom will be vulnerable to miserable abuse. A pregnancy that results, for example, from a drunken frat party is NOT a “blessing”. Forcing that co-ed to carry the child to term, when she may not even know who the father is, is an existential disaster. Crushing student debt and class schedules are burden enough for a struggling student. A child should be a wanted and planned event in a stable household. (Any “surprise” pregnancies need stability and resources even more.) Let me be clear, I don’t like abortion! It should be avoided if at all reasonably possible. But the decision belongs to the woman....period. Conservatives have an ongoing war against the very social programs which many unwanted children would need for even a mild shot at a survival existence. So, if abortion is banned, let’s tax the hell out of social conservatives to pay for food, rent, child care, medical care, clothing, furniture, etc etc etc. No?....not your problem or responsibility? Then keep your nose out of a woman’s reproductive decisions....painful as they may be to her.
6
Interesting thoughts. 5 men overturning a woman’s right to choose will probably inflame women like never before. 2020 will be a battle between the sexist racist misogynistic Trump vs an inflamed female electorate. It will be one hell of an election.
3
Surely the most frightening news yesterday (for all Americans) was not the President's nomination of a conservative to serve on the Supreme Court, but rather the video clip of unnamed protesters hounding Mitch McConnell with the thinly-veiled threat: "We know where you live, Mitch, we know where you live." I fear Ross Douthat may be underestimating the scope and intensity of what future "rebellions would look like". With the President denigrating the rule of law on a daily basis, it is no wonder the citizenry, of all political persuasions, are starting to mimic him. A "fight" over a judge's credentials may seem inconsequential if there are tanks in the streets.
2
It's about time we moved on. The fundamentalists got involved in politics after Roe, and this is the culmination of their forty-five year quest. If they succeed, the one, federal fight becomes many state fights-- they may dream of federal legislation but I doubt they can achieve that or sustain it for long. No, there will be places in the US where little girls die of sepsis after self-induced abortions, and where doctors refuse to treat a partial miscarriage for fear of going to jail (and women will die of sepsis-- see the Irish cases in this regard-- these were the reason abortion is now legal in Ireland). The point is, the fundamentalists have sullied themselves badly in this fight (for one,by supporting Trump,who may as well be the anti-christ) and they know it. They will fold their tents and go home if they get what they want. If they don't get what they want, here at the apex of their efforts, they must finally realize that their allies the republicans have always been using them, and that they are being played. In that case, they fold their tents and go home. Either way, politics is in for a sea-change. Historically, the Supremes tilt heavily one way just as the political winds blow the leaky rowboat-of-state in the other direction.
"And here Kavanaugh’s elevation does promise to be a watershed — for the wider culture war if he (and Roberts) join Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and for internal Republican Party politics if he (or Roberts) imitate Kennedy and save abortion rights instead."
"Conservatives," "the alt-right," "the Christian right," "evangelicals," "the neo-cons," "the white nationalists/identitarians/supremacists" (whatever the Republican Party base is calling itself these days) can only win the "legal war." The "culture war" is all but lost, as evidenced ever dwindling recruitment efforts.
In my lifetime, I cannot think of a time when conservatives have had more power over the government and less cultural relevance (except to the extent they have confirmed the worst caricatures of themselves in every sense). A penniless man with no political power whatsoever once used sincerity, kindness and self-sacrifice to establish an underground faith that converted multitudes of non-believers at a time. Now, despite the professed faith of virtually every conservative politician and control of every branch of government, the nation has seen a well-documented precipitous decline.
They are #winning themselves into cultural and social pariahs.
1
Abortion is a wedge issue which has been used to divide us. Let it go back to the states. The left can organize an underground railroad to get poor women to "free" states. We need to start working around our corrupt, increasingly authoritarian government. The most important issue is the power given to corporations and the rich.
Separation of church and state, anybody? I'm pretty sure the founders were serious about that one. Abortion, although practiced at the time, got nary a mention.
3
Women will also obtain pills to produce abortion that didn't exist before Roe. The times they have a-changed.
2
When will the GOP and the Federalist Society accept that life continues after birth ? That concept seems repellent to them.
1
Politics and policy aside, I'm tired of a Supreme Court filled with law school graduates of only two schools: Harvard and Yale (with the exception of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who began at Harvard and finished at Columbia). These are elitist instututions, and certainly not the only decent law schools in the country. I'd feel much better if there were a few law school graduates from state schools of high quality, like the University of Virginia, University of Michigan, etc.
4
IMHO, RvW was one of the best pieces of legislation of the 20th century. However, the appointment of textualists like Gorsuch and now Kavanaugh forebodes that a majority will soon be unable to find either the Court's legislative powers or an abortion clause in the Constitution, and the issue will be back to the state legislatures.
Pro-choicers can therefore no longer hide behind the Court, and should be turning their full attention to electing state legislators who are on board on this issue.
5
Deluge, indeed...more like a "tsunami of rage" will be forthcoming as SCOTUS either drifts toward or plows through the conservative long hoped-for social agenda. I'm not at all sure we will last as a democracy. As a matter of fact it appears that it is already over. All hell is going to break loose.
6
While the left engaged in internal fights over ideological purity and nominated political losers, the right kept its eye on the prize. As Leonhardt and others suggest, the left must learn to sell its ideas rather than preach and get the RAE into the polls.
But let’s keep this in perspective. The righties lost the culture war many years ago and are merely delaying its denouement, sort of like the post Civil War South. LGBT people are not going away, nor is abortion. The rich will continue to quietly get abortions, relationships, and anything else they want; and so a lot of the poor by going underground, as is always the case. Many will get screwed, for sure. And SCOTUS will join the rest of public institutions now held in low regard by the population, as we await a new covenant. The wait can be shortened by salesmanship, solidarity, satire, and perspective.
6
Ohmygod...you can feel Ross squirming in his seat as he writes this.
Like a five-year-old waiting for the signal to rip open Christmas presents he has been fondling, shaking, sniffing, dreaming about, Mr. Douthat abandons outward passion, all signs of excitement to don The Stultifying Cloak of Reasoned Analysis.
This Eddie Haskell decorum is remarkable, given the shivering giddiness now coursing through his Medieval Catholic veins; its a failed effort from the get.
Because SCOTUS is a court no longer, having become the enforcement arm of what we jokingly call the Intellectual Arm of Conservatism, everyone knows what the decisions will be.
There will be no deliberation, because there is no question. Thus, there is no court, no rule of law, and no chance in legal hell opponents will respect any facet of this charade.
The only doubt is if SCOTUS mounts a better pantomime of procedural probity than their President or if, like Ross, they'll hold out as long as they can only to collapse in a rush of ecstasy, paroxysms of self-adoring rationalization, the unseemly victory dance over the body of American jurisprudence that is a trademark of the Right.
In his anticipation, Ross fails to appreciate what they have really done: convinced the plebes there is no justice at court.
Rules and the law apply to those without the wit to avoid them; America, and its riches, belong to the brash and amoral...there are no consequences.
Its gonna be fun.
8
I wish I could recommend this twice.
Douthat may not realize it, but this kind of creepy religious attempt to control our lives is leading many of us to despise religion.
14
Either side will hurt the Republicans -- support Roe v. Wade, and they'll have to give up a phony issue that they've used to manipulate the religious into voting against their own interests, and vote to repeal it, and America's women will tell them what they think at the ballot box.
Their own falsity coming back to bite them. Sadly, in the process, there's a chance that it will bite America's women, and those of us who care about them, as well.
8
Why would the Republicans repeal RvW and give up an issue that draws millions to the polls on their behalf each election day?
2
I have my doubts about a promise from any jurist to interpret the Constitution and the laws as written. The law is all about interpretation. This is at the heart of the problem with the so-called balance on the Supreme Court. Perhaps there are "conservative" interpretations and "liberal " interpretations of the Constitution, but the question is this: What are conservative justices seeking to conserve and what are liberal justices seeking to liberate?
A case in point: So far in his rulings, "conservative" Justice Gorsuch has shown us that he interprets the First Amendment as written to NOT protect citizens from the establishment of a state religion by the government. What exactly is the Justice seeking to conserve?
If confirmed, will Judge Kavanaugh overturn a woman's right to choose control of her own body based on the Constitution as it is written? Or will he shape his interpretation to fit his "conservative" ideology? The answer depends on whether or not he is telling the truth about his respect for legal precedent. This will be the test of what he as a "conservative" justice seeks to conserve.
6
Roe is a huge issue, but Douthat arguably misses an even bigger one. Kavanaugh is an advocate of a maximal view of Presidential power. Trump's appetite for power is clear. Mueller is likely to show that Trump has committed numerous crimes and/or impeachable offenses in the conduct of his campaign and Presidency. Trump will contest the legitimacy of those charges, as he has already begun to do, all the way up to the Supreme Court, where he will have picked the judges, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, who will be deciding in his case. If Trump and the now openly authoritarian Republican party prevail, the Constitution itself will be hollowed out. It will be a veil of legality draped over the substance of one-party authoritarian rule. A lot more than the right to abortion will disappear. I find it interesting that this scenario seems not to show up on Mr. Douthat's radar.
Hard not to see the November election as a last chance.
11
When Ross calls a fetus an “unborn child”, he reveals that his views are religious rather than constitutional. He wants to use the courts to enforce his religious doctrine and let government into the sexual organs of our citizens. And otherwise, he’s such a thoughtful fellow.
12
"Unborn human life" ? Not embryo? Not fetus? No mention of the real human lives that you wish to control? Like our real mothers, sisters, daughters... real women, Ross, whose bodies you talk about like they are somehow unrealized and less real than yours? There are a multitude of sons, brothers and fathers ready to fight a real civil "war" on this one Ross. Be careful what you wish for.
9
The “politics of abortion will never be the same” only if real men have a say. Does a man have a right to procreate that is greater than an abortionist’s right to destroy his unborn child? Why?
3
Real men don't try to control the women in their lives.
5
How far does a man's alleged right to procreate extend? If he can force me to gestate to exercise this right, can he also force me to have sex with him? Why or why not? I look forward to your well-reasoned response.
1
There it is again! “Originalist and textualist”! If one teases that apart, it means “text, word for word as it stands” and “what that text *meant* to the Founders.” Am I the only one who thinks this is a Scalia, heads I win tails you lose set up?
2
What "legal establishment promises" to overturn Roe are you talking about? Those promises were certainly not in evidence during every post-Bork confirmation process for conservative Republican appointees. They all said they'd respect precedent, they hadn't pre decided any issue, etc., etc. Republicans have been intentionally downplaying Roe because they know they're in the minority on it. A true "promise" about Roe would require honesty, rather than the winks and lies we have been served by GOP nominees and their backers.
3
Keep the troops riled up around the "culture war" while pillaging, pillaging, and more pillaging. The SC is just another tool for our oligarch overlords.
Not a chance Roe v Wade is overturned. The finely tuned electoral calculus for Republicans gets exploded without it. A quick search of polling via Google suggests 15-20% of Republicans are single issue voters vis a vis abortion. It's a lot easier to mobilize the troops to change a current situation than it is to defend something existent (this is why control of the federal government pendulums).
3
This tyranny of the minority must end or our democracy will. On guns, choice, campaign finance, medicare, social security, taxes, gerrymandering, military adventurism...and on and on, the majority of Americans are aligned and so are our representatives - but they are aligned against us. ENOUGH!
9
For at least the last 40 years, Democrats and their media supporters have used the overturning of Roe V Wade to describe every Republican nominee to the SCOTUS. Needless to say it has NEVER come to pass and will not come to pass with the nomination of "Coach K". Perhaps this tactic makes for good fundraising but it does little for relevant credibility.
I am a conservative/libertarian and I am all for abortion rights and Medicaid funding them.
I do think that the Supreme Court simply made up the right to abortion and homosexual marriage. I don't oppose either but it should have been done through the legislative process.
What hypocrits. Anti-abortionists are "for the children." After birth, not so much. Look at all the Republican anti-children legislation both in states and Congress.
7
The more astute of the Republican leaders will understand that they are actually protected by Roe, i.e. with Roe, they do not have to implement their promises against women. If Roe is lifted, then they will have to implement them, and if they try, it will lead them into a major string of political disasters, why many women, independent or moderate Republicans siding with the Democrats in many elections to come.
3
If a woman's right to choose—or a fetus's right to life—are fundamental human rights does it make sense to have states protect or deny those rights differently? Do we really think throwing fundamental rights to the states to protect or deny as they see fit makes sense? Is it consistent with the 14th Amendment?
I'm afraid Douthat's desire to see abortion limited obscures his understanding of what a fundamental human right really is.
6
This really isn't about abortion. It's all about Donald Trump's promotional practices as executive producer of the White House.
Why, when the issue of presidential accountability may well come before the Court, did Donald make it a big reveal? Why not appoint the guy from afar and not try to endear the nation to the judge and his family? He is not Donald's justice; he is ours.
It looks a bit too much like Donald is trying to influence the judge. I wonder if Robert Mueller is paying attention.
2
The whole pro life movement rests on the silly idea that life begins at conception. Can a fetus inherit? If not, why not. The pro life movement is just like the “repeal Obamacare” movement, great fodder for an opposition party until you have to actually do it. That said, an awful lot of what it means to be an American is being staked on an issue that even pro lifers admit would be different depending on which side of a state line you were standing on. If transportation were available from anywhere in the U.S. to any state where abortion was legal, the whole problem would become a tempest in a teapot. What is not a tempest in teapot is a president whose almost every action on foreign policy cannot be explained by anything except by his being in thrall to Russia and Vladimir Putin. Do we really need to have the evidence for why that is the case if it is obvious that it is the case? Even this latest outrage, the tariff war, benefits no one but Vladimir Putin by setting one formerly close ally against another and disrupting the entire U.S. economy. Overturning Roe would be wrong and unfortunate but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Putting a person on the Supreme Court who would protect the power of a Russian stooge would.
3
No conservative activist and strategist wants Roe overturned. It motivates the minority of American voters that also happens to be the majority base of the GOP, more than any other issue. Hypocrisy and Roe are both well and alive and will stay.
2
Advances in drug-induced, remotely (internet) supervised abortion will make the issue mute. And a war against using drugs for abortion will be as unsuccessful as the War Against Drugs.
6
I agree with the point made in the second to last paragraph. Anything short of a complete repeal of abortion rights will be viewed by the base as high treason. Given how the Right loves to stick it to their own as much as they like sticking it to the left, I wouldn't be surprised to see this become a reality.
6
The deluge will be the narrow assertion of Democratic control over the branches of government currently being ravaged by the GOP. The American people are trying to set things right after the Trump devastation, but they want to see division continue. So the tradeoff is an antedeluvian court system and two hapless Dem charades. We will continue our stumbling neoliberalism. And let things run out as they will, led by oil. Sane heads are either bonkers or buried in the sand and have lost influence accordingly.
Thanks Ross for this dose of reality.
You claim to be for freedom and The Constitution yet you show your true colors when it comes to abortion. Never mind religious liberty, precedent, The Constitution, ethics: rather than engage in changing people's minds, or in Republican party parlance being a 'party of ideas', you'd rather take a minority religious position, and an extreme one at that, then embrace the qualities you profess to adhere to.
No one is forcing anyone to have an abortion, though the policies you promote certainly can nudge people in that direction.
If you think it wrong, convince people abortion is wrong.
4
The vast human tragedy involved in overturning Roe is going to be depressing to watch. Making abortion illegal again -- particularly in our nation's poorest states -- would be much like making alcohol illegal again -- it would create a violent, horrific underground market for it, and the poor will suffer, and people will die, and the wealthy will fly to Europe. Ross likes that scenario, clearly.
The Gorsuch seat was stolen. The Republicans stole it, and they broke the Constitution and every standard of history and government to do it. The Democrats better be ready to crawl across glass to do something to rectify that. This is their time. They must not let this man be seated.
8
We don't know for sure just how Kavanaugh would rule Mr. Douthat - but we do know how the people who groomed him and put him up for nomination want him to rule.
We also know Trump is looking for a court that will give him a get out of jail free card.
So much winning. Mandatory child-bearing will just be one more thread in the authoritarian blanket being woven over America.
4
No matter what happens, the pro-life movement will die out.
Either Roe will be overturned, and the in-real-life consequences of illegal abortion in some states will be so intolerable (as they are in literally EVERY COUNTRY that bans abortion) that the people will eventually demand a legislative or popularly voted upon solution (like the Irish did).
Or Roe won't be over turned, and the steam will be run out of pro-lifers.
Meanwhile, the Religious Right ages into irrelevance.
11
The anti-abortion coalition is not "pro-life" and describing it as such is inaccurate at best and propaganda at worst. Time and time again, this group of voters has proven to be only pro-fetus and not pro-life at all. They support politicians who cut funding for SNAP, who repeatedly voted to gut the ACA, who favor zero tolerance policies that imprison people who come to the US to seek asylum. These pro-fetus voters denounce policies to expand family planning and contraception access to the poor. They only care about the unborn. One issue voters are always dangerous- but couching this one issue as somehow "holy" is treacherous and nauseating.
9
Exactly! The anti-abortionists are not "pro-life"....if they were they would be at the border and detention centers protesting the inhuman treatment of immigrants! They are hypocrites each of them, including Ross Douthat!
To paraphrase Leona Helmsley, only the poor and disadvantaged will now be without the abortion option. For the more affluent nothing is changed.
2
Rather than arguing about the Constitution, maybe it’s time for a rewrite that fits the document to the modern world. Eliminating the unnecessary Electoral College and lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices should be numbers one and two on the list of revisions. Both of these abominations have caused our democracy enough trouble already.
4
This column skipped over one of the likely results if Roe v Wade is overturned. In red states, women will die due to attempts at self-abortion, if they cannot get to a different state where abortion is still available. Women will die, other women will have children they don't feel able to take care of, but some fetuses will be saved. This somehow makes sense to the GOP as public policy.
3
Brett Kavanaugh has two daughters. I would think he would want them to have freedom to control their own bodies, not the state. He also seems a little less Catholic than Barrett. Barrett is involved in some Catholic group that made her pledge loyalty and allegiance -- not cool for a potential Supreme Court justice. In his speech yesterday, Kavanaugh spoke of coaching his girls in basketball, being influenced by Kagan, his good relationship with his hard working parents -- he put on a good show. He seemed normal, not some creepy Catholic monster. But that concerned me, the show. What does he really think about unchecked presidential power, abortion, Citizen United, unions? And will he answer direct questions about those legal issues during the vetting process? Is he really an independent thinker or is he a tool for the hard right groups that really nominated him? How beholden is he to his Catholic beliefs on abortion, and will that affect his vote on the issue? And can we consider him a legitimate nominee when Garland was denied for almost a year?
1
Kavanaugh may have two daughters, but I'm not sure if that will change anything: the executives of companies that pollute the planet and politicians who oppose or undo regulation protecting the environment also have children...
3
So if some state decides, even with a majority of votes, to ban abortions, it must be based on the premise that the fertilizer egg is a person. It follows necessarily that abortion is first degree murder. We want this?
1
Where is RU486? It was supposed to have made all this moot.
"a constitutional right to terminate unborn human lives"
I think you are religiously prejudiced Mr Douthat.
One's religious proclivities must be respected, but too often, especially when expressed in terms such as this, essentially calling a woman's right to choose tantamount to murder under the guise of political comment, a line is crossed. One which you know exists.
None of us live in a perfect world where all our dreams come true and too often in this world which is and has been dominated by men, women become chattel, used as objects of sexual pleasure with no concern for the consequence which women alone often bear.
No man knows or will ever know what goes on inside a woman's body let alone her mind. No man will ever carry a fetus wanted or not, a danger to his health or not, a lifelong responsibility if the fetus is in some way chromosonally damaged. Simple open minded observation shows any person with open eyes that too often complete responsibility for the child born becomes the woman's alone.
Too often men with no possibility of knowledge dictate what a woman must do with her body
Women and only women, those who are faced with the joy or misery of childbirth and raising that child are forced by men, with no possibility of understanding, to carry, bear and raise that child to adulthood, often with minimal support
What about this do men who can only believe the fictions they alone invented to aid their rule not understand?
What don't you understand Mr Douthat?
8
"pro-lifers"....except when it comes to feeding the poor babies, educating them, providing basic medical and dental care, ensuring safety in their communities, or pesky necessities such as non-leaded water. And don't even get started on the unending foreign wars and stripping babies from their parents at the border while trying to gain asylum.
Oh, to value human life above all else.
5
50 women+ per day are killed in domestic gun violence. Often these are mass shootings as well as children are killed also (plus the angry white male shooter). Real women. Real lives. A real problem that needs to be solved. Where is the conservative concern for life?
2
"... preserves the constitutional right to terminate unborn human lives..." Wow, words dripping with intent! OK, I get it, as a columnist, Douthat has the freedom to frame his arguments any which way he pleases. But readers, here's the thing: Douthat obfuscates by bon mots, ones that give the illusion of thoughtful deliberation. However, as we strain our eyes through his prose fog about liberals, supreme court nominees, conservatives, "democratic processes" and whatnot, we eventually bump into the same old saw, his visceral anti-abortion hobby horse. Give me a Bible thumping preacher's admonition on the subject any day. I will not agree with him but at least he will get to the point honestly. And lest you forget Mr. Douthat, freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion: As the bumper sticker so aptly says:"If you don't believe in abortion, don't get one."
4
I am finding some peace in the fact that the culture wars have already been lost by the conservative Christian right. No matter what happens in the courts, the tide has turned and the horse is out of the barn (love the double metaphor) in terms of public opinion on same sex relationships and gay rights. While public opinion on abortion may be a closer call, it is nonetheless clear where the American people stand on women's rights in general (and it's not barefoot in the kitchen or 1960). And it's also clear that there are many ways to obtain an abortion. With new technologies and the internet as ways to solve our problems, and the general leftward drift of public opinion on social issues, perhaps the Supreme Court will look more and more like a hidebound institution that can't really control the things that we do with their personal lives. Yes, legal rights are important, but when popular opinion is the opposite of what the court may rule, what then?
9
Well said! The other thing that helps me to feel a bit at ease, is that while Kavanaugh is Catholic, he has two children. A conservative Catholic would have a household full of kids! Like Scalia. This small thing, may be a sign that he is more moderate than we think.
The biggest misapprehension of the "pro life" movement has to do with the word, choice, which they portray as activist, which is projection. They actively oppose abortion; pro-choicers advocate for a woman's right to choose how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy and beyond that, because it will most certainly be affected if Roe is overturned, plan her life in relation to her reproductive rights, both of which come under the heading, privacy.
In that context, I defy any serious person who happens to be anti-abortion to come up with any evidence that those who are pro choice have ever encouraged, rather than facilitated under the law, abortion in the face of opposition. The right to choose includes the right to choose never to have or even consider having an abortion. No such luck for those who have made the often painful decision to terminate a pregnancy only to met by hyperbolic rhetoric and signs when they enter a clinic. Scalia even went so far as to argue that the protesters should be as close as possible to patients, some of whom are merely there to be tested for std's or for birth control, so that these busybodies can "persuade" them ... by holding up doctored pictures of fetuses under duress?
You may be right, Mr. Douthat, but buckle your seat belt. People don't take kindly to having their hard earned rights snatched away, which will also be the case with overturning the law that ensures coverage for people with pre-existing conditions (being a woman is one).
6
I am finding some peace in the fact that the culture wars have already been lost by the conservative Christian right. No matter what happens in the courts, the tide has turned and the horse is out of the barn (love the double metaphor) in terms of public opinion on same sex relationships and gay rights. While public opinion stands on abortion may be a closer call, it is nonetheless clear where the American people stand on women's rights in general (and it's not barefoot in the kitchen or 1960). And it's also clear that there are many ways to obtain an abortion. With new technologies and the internet as ways to solve our problems, and the general leftward drift of public opinion on social issues, perhaps the Supreme Court will look more and more like a hidebound institution that can't really control the things that we do with their personal lives. Yes, legal rights are important, but when popular opinion is the opposite of what the court may rule, what then?
"a constitutional right to terminate unborn human lives," Ross, you can bet your life that if men carried fetuses, not only would there be a constitutional right to terminate pregnancies, there would be great health insurance and childcare benefits.
22
It might also galvanize people (men and women) who don’t want their personal lives ordered by the religious views of people like Ross. If he is personally opposed to terminating a pregnancy, let him take that up with the women in his life, leave the rest of us free to make to choose the best path of us and our families.
3
Absolutely!
It’s a matter of personal choice and if the choice is to terminate a pregnancy, it’s a fetus being aborted. There is no baby until the moment of birth. I say that as a mother (three children) and a woman who terminated a pregnancy, none of which Mr Douthat has any experience.
2
There is a regular confusion between what Republicans say they want, judicial restrain, and what they really do judges who are conservative activists. If they really want Justices who believed in judicial restraint there would be no doubt that Roe, Griswold, and a myriad of other decided cases would remain the law.
6
The best thing that can happen to Democrats is Roe to be overturned. This will force them to focus on state races, which could make abortion legal in more states but also affect a whole set of laws that affect Americans of all type.
6
Glaringly obvious - and unsurprising - is Douthot's failure to mention either "women" or "the right to privacy" in this piece.
30
That may be because the "right to privacy" as expressed in Griswold v Connecticut (1965) exists nowhere in the Constitution nor in any of the amendments, but was invented out of whole cloth by the Warren court, with its talk of penumbral rights.
Griswold needs to be reversed, which removes the basis for Row and places medical restrictions back where they belong, in the laps of the several states.
As to mentioning women, as a firm believer in equality I state that any mention of people includes men, women, and any non-binary individuals as well. None of these groups deserve any special restrictions or privileges, which means they do not need specific mention.
@Jon Harrison: You say, "Equally obvious is that the advocates of 'choice' will be enraged by the fact that women in some states won't be able to obtain an abortion without traveling to do so." I won't be enraged. I'll feel sorry for those women who live the Red States, which are becoming more and more like Third World countries every day.
@Jon Harrison: You say, "Equally obvious is that the advocates of 'choice' will be enraged by the fact that women in some states won't be able to obtain an abortion without traveling to do so." I won't be enraged. I'll feel sorry for those women who live the Red States, which are becoming more and more like Third World countries every day.
What is it that drives these "pro-lifers" to overturn Roe v. Wade when they will smilingly send their own children off to war to die in the name of patriotism, tout their pride in receiving their child home in a box with a folded up flag to mark the years of life lost? Refuse to look at the epidemic of violence, racism and classism that the US has become? Drives them to deny dying with dignity when your life has become pain and grief with illness and rotting flesh? Do they really think they can put down humanity, not caring for the poor and helpless, live a corrupt and money seeking life and still buy a stairway to heaven on these issues?
8
Not only your stated examples, but the ugly irony of pro-lifers touting their Christian values while indulging in ethnic hatred and gleefully cheering on the punitive separation of children from immigrant parents, with virtually no pre-planned tracking mechanism in place to reunite them (already there is an inability to do so), causing untold misery for both parents and children. This will also cause lasting psychological damage, especially in very young children who cannot grasp what is occurring.
The question of human slavery dominated American politics for fifty years before the institution was finally put down and the slaves freed. Human abortion is our era-defining political and ethical question.
Whether Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts choose to be the means of justice or not, justice will come. We cannot press so hard against reality for so long--our unborn offspring are living humans, and we owe them protection from violence. A peaceful society cannot indefinitely tolerate the intentional killing, by the hundreds of thousands every year, of its own children.
2
And who is going to care for, house, feed, educate all these unwanted babies? The anti-abortion churches? The GOP Congress? Our Dear Leader?
1
You simply cannot and should not expect a conservative Catholic ever to vote for abortion rights.
A male court will decide what pregnant women can and cannot do with their own bodies.
9
Repealing Roe will be a disaster for the GOP.
Suburban Republican moms voted Republican because Roe v Wade protected them from the consequences of their vote. They may have had an abortion of their own back in the day and now nervously watch over their own young daughters.
Take away Roe, and women's votes now have Consequences. Every purple state becomes blue. Make it a "state's rights" issue, and all those purple state legislatures become blue too. Who's hurt? Poor women in red states who will also be radicalized, shifting red states towards purple, maybe.
Repubs have been ginning up their base with abortion propaganda, and when Roe is overturned, that abortion glue that holds their collation together comes unstuck. The dog will have caught the car.
I can't wait for republican glee to blow up in their faces.
12
Yep. That's my only consolation. They will no longer be able to hide behind Roe while demagoguing shamelessly.
In a nation built upon denying the humanity of enslaved black Africans and defying the equality of blsck African persons calling any member of the Supreme Court of the United States, by the honorific of Justice is callous cruel cynical hypocrisy.
Calling those persons who are against women deciding and making their own personal health reproductive and sexual choices "pro-life" is also callous cruel cynical hypocrisy.
Allowing the American Presidential choice of Julian Assange, James Comey, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin to nominate any one to the Supreme Court of the United States is callous cruel cynical hypocrisy.
9
"....return the abortion debate to the democratic process". Dear god.
Enough. Enough with the overtures and the hyperboles and the slimy, tricky rhetoric. We see through it. We see, and we have always seen through your columns (nearly every single one of them peppered with something about abortion). Admit that all you care about it whether the government controls what women do with their bodies. It's not about life. If you cared about lives, you'd work to make life for the ALL living as good as it can be, and you'd write columns that reflect THAT.
Instead, you suggest we push through a judge that will ostensibly work hard to undo nearly everything truly democratic that our country holds sacred: privacy, labor laws, equal rights, a living wage. And who will keep the push for a widening class disparity, who will continue to ignore climate change. Millions of people will continue to suffer with these pro-corporate establishment conservatives... But hey, as long as the uterus can be controlled forever, it'll all be worth it.
That's what Douthat is saying, and it's a grim reflection of the conservative mind. State Control at the Expense of the People.
26
Ok we know how you & he stand on overturning Roe. What we do not know is where he stands on 3 separate & equal independent branches of government. Will he vote to uphold the independent judiciary or allow the executive branch to get away with major crimes. How much do he & Kennedy owe to POTUS.
And now that Roman Catholics dominate on the Supreme Court, what of protections for those of us who do not share their extremely held deep religious beliefs? Do we have protections or should we except a stronger turn to theocracy?
6
Then let’s return Citizens United to the states, too. The Supreme Court totally lost its legitimacy with that corporate gaffe.
And gun control. The NRA can stop pushing for CCW reciprocity. Marijuana, I guess we’re now free from the machinations of the impish Sessions? States rights for ALL issues, not just the babies of the religious fantasists.
15
Stop calling them "Pro-life"! They are anti-choice. It is offensive to me, as one who is pro-choice, to have it implied that I and others are "Anti-Life" because we support a woman's right to control her own body and reproductive decisions w/o the government imposing itself on them. And many in the anti-choice movement energetically support the death penalty; were in the Bush crowds cheering when someone suggested 30 year olds with no health insurance could just die should they be afflicted by injury or disease; support and defend rolling back regulations which protect our air and water from poisons; and defend corporate largesse and keeping the government out of private business, even when corporate sleaze costs people even their lives - unless it's the president saying football players should be fired and even leave the country for exercising their First Amendment rights.
End the label "Pro-life" to describe people who oppose keeping abortion legal. These same people who call themselves pro-life obviously would have no problem with women dying from hacked abortions. They aren't pro-life. They are anti-choice and in many cases, religious zealots a la the Taliban and other like groups, a hallmark trait of which is oppression and control of women, which in the case of Christianity is rather ironic considering Christ's overt respect for women.
14
So, what will become of all the women who want abortions in Red states? They will get them somehow. People have always been able to get their abortions. They just will have to travel further or risk their own health. And what of the children born into this world by parents who did not want them. What will the Republicans offer them? It is not hard to foresee two Americas: one that is healthy, prosperous, and liberal, and another that is unhealthy, drug addicted, impoverished, and conservative. It is obvious which one is red. That will be one of the defining legacies of Trump, Putin, McConnell, Ryan, and the foolish masses who bought what the con man was selling.
11
I am so thoroughly sick of the so-called Pro Life movement. It supports Republican after a Republican who promise to make abortion illegal again, “to protect the unborn child.” The very same people who do nothing, or worse, to make that child's life difficult once it's born. They are against universal access to health care, they won’t raise the minimum wage, they are against subsidized day care, they defund public schools. If the pro-lifers really cared about children, they’d elect Democrats.
16
One can only hope that the "deluge" to be stopped on Kavanaugh's joining the Court is the blood and body parts of humankind. We don't need a "return of the abortion debate to the democratic process." We need a revisit of abortion to the neonatal fact that the fetus is human. If you think it isn't, then tell us when it is. It's never or always. The fetus is NOT the mother's body....it is OF the mother's body. Since commonsense seems to reside only in some states these days, returning jurisdiction there is redolent of a new Mason-Dixon line. No, we will not go to war over it, but the battlefield will still remain horrifically bloody with the discarded bodies of the innocent.
2
"We need a revisit of abortion to the neonatal fact that the fetus is human. If you think it isn't, then tell us when it is. It's never or always."
There's actually a simple answer to this; the fetus becomes human at the point of viability, that is, when it can survive outside of the womb. This is generally thought to occur at the 24-week mark, or at roughly the 6-month mark, i.e. the start of the last trimester. That's why the Supreme Court decided in both Roe and in Casey that states could intervene in the last trimester, but generally not before then. I for one think that the Court got it right both times.
4
Women are not slaves. If the fetus is independent then it can take its chances outside the uterus like everyone else. If one wants to speak of blood, they ought to include the women that anti-choice policies will kill.
4
Rick, by that logic then, an adult patient on a ventilator isn't human. We all need to re-read our Biology 101 books. Being humankind begins with our conception and lasts till our death. The Court decided in favor of feminism and ignored the life of the human fetus. Lets give all pregnant women the help they need to carry, deliver and, if wanted, keep their baby. That's the caring, humane answer to abortion.
I would argue that race based issues such as affirmative action etc... are in much more danger of being overturned as opposed to gay marriage and abortion.
3
Conservatives like Douthat are strong supporters of embryos and fetuses. Among the poor, who often are unable to terminate unwanted pregnancies, these disadvantaged children are then scorned by conservatives like Douthat. A permanent underclass is created, which feeds the private prison system. It all works out then, doesn’t it?
9
Mr Douthat is disgracefully gleeful as he throws out catty barbs about "panicked" liberals - as if we are distraught that we've dropped a stitch in our knitting, instead of being deeply concerned about:
- children, rape victims, and women in poverty being forced to carry fertilized eggs to term in a country that refuses them healthcare, childcare and basic food
- weapons of war killing children, seniors and anyone else in their path, in our schools, streets, and shopping malls
- the theft of wages and opportunity from the poor and middle class by a burgeoning cohort of billionaires
- cancer-causing poisons dumped in our waterways, land and air
- criminalization of walking, BBQing, driving, sitting, and sleeping while being black
- ignorance, denial and acceleration of climate change
These are real worries for responsible, concerned people who care about our people, our democracy and our planet. And we're not going to get "panicked", Mr Douthat, we're going to VOTE DEMOCRATIC and work to restore our democracy.
16
Mitch McConnell pulled off a coup of the Supreme Court without a peep from Obama , Pelosi or Schumer.
Imagine that, the leaders of the Democrats laying down like cowards when the fate of our family's lives are at stake. Tell we why are we not tarring and feathering these "leaders"?
1
The obsession that Ross and others like him have with abortion is a sickness that has blinded them to everything else including the evidentiary world. Look at everything this inept crazy corrupt president is doing! My goodness. He might have committed treason. Yet all they can think about is foisting this disturbing religious dogma on the rest of us. Do the civil rights of women count for so little? Abortion will not go away because they have made it illegal. Women will once again die in botched amateur abortions. Many more children will be born into poverty, though the Trump Republicans are decimating the programs including the ACA that the poor rely on. Many more children who are severely disabled will be born, though the Trump Republicans are dismantling Medicaid which the disabled cannot do without.
12
It's not a distraction. It's completely consistent with a worldview that welcomes suffering for anyone who is unlucky or otherwise less fortunate.
3
GOP policy is to impose suffering on anyone who isn't a Koch.
1
I think it's clear how a Justice Kavanaugh would approach a woman's right to choose. He has already a ruled that you can deny a woman's right to choose when he ruled a woman can't be allowed an abortion because she was a detained illegal immigrant.
He has made it clear he can rule that woman are not equal and some are not qualified to receive their rights as defined by settled law. If confirmed he can be part of a court that brings us back to when woman were considered chattel.
4
Interesting how Ross ploughes throungh hundreds of words without ever mentioning the stolen seat or Kavanaugh’s belief that a sitting President cannot be investigated, much less prosecuted, for a crime?
10
The right to have an abortion is an economic decision. The paternalistic right is trying mightily to end it. They do not want women to be equal. Having a forced pregnancy is a good way. Check out the Christian fundamentalists in Pence country. The women wear no make-up, long dresses( no pants!) long hair, and home school. The men have NO restrictions. Would anyone like to wager all the marchers in Charlottesville last summer were “ pro life” ?
9
Conservatism, oh such a sacred philosophy. It's just the old desperately trying to hold onto the past and tradition. While all the time the world changes every day.
Your old dead ideas of some kind of perfect birth of a Great America based on the sacred words of the Founders, those holy slave owners.
The future is artificial intelligence, climate disaster, desperate migrations of huge populations, and China calling the shots. What will you Conservatives have to say about your holy ideas when the entire world is in despair? The pitiful poliltics of this era will be swept away, utterly irrelevant.
6
A moment of silence for all those kids and adults whose access to affordable health care will be terminated by any Trump SCOTUS nominee. Another thought and prayer for the school kids gunned down by assault rifles, any guns, in the hands of the unstable, the mean, the just plan evil whom any Trump SCOTUS nominee will allow to pack, conceal, and carry.
Black crepe draped over the Supreme Court to mourn the death of rule of law regarding presidential responsibility for crimes committed against the American people. Treason. Bribery. Financial, ethical, moral lapses big and small.
Collusion.
A requiem Mass, Ross, for the lost chance to turn back climate change, to protect what breathable air and potable water we still possess. Because that's what any SCOTUS picked by Trump will bequeath this nation.
20
Abortion isn't mentioned anywhere in the Bible because it was accepted practice in ancient times when there was no birth control available except following the cycles of the moon. It was understood that it could be a disaster for a woman to have another mouth to feed when she could barely feed the children she had. The midwives who assisted in the birth of babies also knew how to prevent that baby being born. The rule was that a fetus could be removed at any time, and if no one was available to perform an abortion the baby could be killed up to three months old. Essentially the rule was that a mother could be get rid of a child she couldn't care for up to one year after conception. I'm certainly not suggesting that we allow infanticide after a baby is born, but aborting a fetus is not killing a baby. The Bible-believing religions don't have a leg to stand on making abortion a religious issue. So many fundamentalists don't follow the dictates of their savior, so why do they show such fervor against something that was never a rule handed down by their god?
12
Pro-life is a misnomer par excellence.
Once a child is born into a poor family that is not able to feed another mouth or cloth them, give them a good education, etc., the pro-lifers want to cut Medicaid and other safety nets and don't give a darn about that new life.
These very same pro-lifers are also pro-death penalty and unfettered access to guns.
Even in overwhelmingly catholic countries in Europe, abortion is not longer a crime
The latest majority catholic country that overthrew one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe was Ireland. That was not decided by some white men in black robes, but by referendum of Irelands citizens.
Now that is democracy.
Yet here in the land of "We the People", where a majority of all supports Roe v. Wade, five unelected men have the power to change a women's life forever.
That is called dictatorship in my lexicon.
20
Again, ranks of men will pontificate on what American women may or may not do with their bodies. Poorer women that is - those with any resources will travel to Europe or Canada or another civilized country, for their terminations.
14
Such irony,the right wing all about keeping government out personal choices.I guess when there is profit involved.Mandating that women have ultra sounds,and looking at them, before an abortion,is OK.Who are these people?We have a criminal,money laundering,con man as president,under investigation for what will likely be treason.But doing the bidding of the wealthy people, who just want more wealth.The rest of us, need to get out the vote this November.We also need to do all we can to change the leadership of the Democratic party.Our rights,our country is at stake.
14
Now that reversal of Roe v Wade is in sight, Douthat has stopped criticizing Trump. Such is the soul of a conservative.
18
There is no rational argument to ban abortions, because scientifically, a fetus is most certainly not a person. So unless religious fundamentalists are sent to the bench, abortion rights should be safe. Should...
5
Why do people like Douthat believe that they can impose their religion, their interpretation of their religion, their religious beliefs on someone else via the power of the state? If Douthat wants to believe that abortion is termination of “unborn human lives” and can impose that belief on his wife and his daughter if he has one, that’s his business (though his adult wife and daughter once an adult should make their own independent moral judgement), but why do I have to accept that definition if I happen to live in a backwards Red State after Douthat and company celebrate that the most immoral President in our history has created a right-wing SCOTUS - including the blatant McConnell theft (was that moral?) of Garland seat with the imposter/fake Gorsuch, the “great” Kennedy not saying that he would retire after the election (that would have supercharged the midterms) - to finally overturn Roe v. Wade.
Abortion is complicated. If it’s terminating human life, then it’s murder - should we execute the abortion provider and mother and father - all murderers by that definition? Does that human life begin at the moment of conception? Is contraception a form of murder? At the other end, the viability of the fetus (which science keeps moving) matters. No one supports aborting a fetus the day before birth. There are excruciating moral choices to be made - best left to the individual, to the woman.
Douthat can keep his beliefs on abortion, talking snakes and zombie God to himself.
16
If social conservatives had as much care for the two year old child as they do for the unborn fetus then this country would be a very different place. As soon as a child is born and the parents require food stamps to feed the child then that child is a burden on society. A taker.
11
With Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court, it is a very good time to take a close look at the role beliefs play in our lives. Most of the unnecessary suffering and deaths of humans can be traced back to beliefs of one form or another, and yet beliefs are still considered necessary and good. They are neither. With Kavanaugh on the court, we will have the opportunity to witness first hand the devastating effects of beliefs in our political system. When we finally program the human mind in a computer, we will have proof of the negative influence of beliefs on a brain programmed to survive and then tricked about what is supposed to survive.
See: RevolutionOfReason.com
4
This column argues that if the Supreme Court does not greatly restrict abortion, single-issue pro-life voters will stop reliably voting for whoever has "R" next to their name in all elections.
Ross are you making a joke? Are you being serious? Who exactly would the pro-life voters vote for -- a D?! A non-R, non-D?!?
The single issue pro-life voters know full well that the only viable option for abortion restrictions is voting R. They know full well that many cynical R politicians will never seriously restrict abortion (it would create a huge backlash and they would get kicked out of office). But they also know full well that R is their best option out of a few sad choices.
Politicians can do whatever they want to single issue anti abortion voters and those people will sit there and take it and keep pulling the R lever. From the voters' point of view this is totally logical -- there are millions of unborn lives at stake, what they see as real human lives, vastly outweighing any personal or policy objections they have. Roy Moore was good enough for them; anyone is.
7
Roe v. Wade? Dead! Union protections? Dead! Universal health care? Well, that might not be dead. But it's another nail in the coffin.
2
The GOP favors all actions that degrade democracy because, in their view, the”great unwashed” have no place in government. So increasing crime and misery by adding to conditions that feed it advances the cause of an Oligarchy of know-it-alls. And religion provides a beautiful veneer of holier-than-thou to salve the dim conscience, should that glimmer fitfully.
6
Roe v. Wade is toast and we all know it. Kavanaugh will give the right answers in his hearings, Murkowski and Collins (the fake moderate) will fall in line like Republicans always do, and a few Democrats will fold like lawn chairs. And Roe v. Wade will go the way of the dodo bird.
Thank a Bernie Sanders supporter.
9
I prefer to thank the feckless Democratic Party, which has stood by idly for 40 years trying to figure out what, if anything, it stood for. Meanwhile, the nation became steadily more unequal, until voters were so boiling angry that they went wacko and elected Donald Trump. I would also like to thank Hillary Clinton, who was unable to beat the worst presidential nominee in American history. And now, we have to live with the consequences for decades. So, thanks to all!
2
I guess in some morbid way I feel like it's time to give anti-abortion zealots (I'm sorry, "pro-life" just sticks in my throat) what they have been asking for since the 1980's. All but the poorest women will undoubtedly be able to get an abortion through prescription (either legal or through back channels — if one can get synthetic heroin and the like via USPS, then I can't imagine why one can't get abortion pills delivered to one's doorstep) or by traveling to the states that will undoubtedly maintain a woman's right to choose — hello California! The end result is that we will end up with even more unwanted children whose mothers are ill-equipped to raise a child and thus will end up on public assistance. I can't wait to see the impact on my adopted state of Alabama that already can't afford to take care of the poor and uncared for children that it already has. And I personally can't wait to hear my evangelical in-laws complain about how many more children are suckling at the public teat because this will be my answer: you reap what you sow.
8
So much glee that women will soon again be having babies they don't want and have zero ability to raise. Come to Texas, Ross, and see the consequences...it's already happening here with most abortion clinics shut down, sex ed outlawed and birth control available only to the rich. And bring Kavanaugh with you. Stop by any courthouse and listen in on the Child Protective Services cases to hear about what happens to these kids. Actually, you might just wait for the case heading to the Supreme Court over Texas' inability to care for these kids..from the Dallas Morning News:
Appeals Court Judge Patrick Higginbotham of Austin, formerly of Dallas, zeroed in early and often on the state's failings.
"Kids that come out of here have a five times greater chance of having post traumatic stress disorder than combat veterans," he said.
9
Once again the author focuses on the unborn but not on providing for new born children that live in poverty. The easy answer for the author is to overturn Roe and in his view protecting the rights of the unborn. But once again Mr. Douthat skirts the more difficult question of providing for the newly born.
6
My closely held religious beliefs include bodily autonomy, and the right to a doctor patient relationship without government interference. Unless of course I am not longer considered an autonomous person without the right to vote, own property, or enter into any other kind of contractual agreement.
13
If a small group of people can tell a total stranger what they can or can't do with their own body -- as intrusive and personal a matter that is -- they can also tell a US president that for him or her, there's nothing they can do that breaks any US law every other US citizen is accountable for. We're either a democracy -- where we're all equally accountable -- or we're not a democracy and one or more can break any law without accountability. Donald Trump hopes the US Senate votes a man to the Supreme Court who can be the ONE man in that small group who can turn the nation into from a democracy (what's left of it) to an American Autocracy (or oligarchy). I'm praying democracy prevails.
11
Regardless of how this nominee ends up voting, the arch-social conservative Douthat shows his hand in his latest piece. Ross says that we should "return the abortion debate to the democratic process." Two ways that this statement is disingenuous.
Number 1: the Constitution and the Supreme Court in particular were set up to prevent a tyranny of the majority. If the majority in each state is allowed to vote on abortion, even through their state legislatures, then the poorest, most vulnerable women will again be hurt the most without access to abortion services and subsidized contraception (make no mistake: that is also what social conservative ideology demands). This is the definition of majority tyranny. Of course he fails to state that the majority of Americans nationwide support the right for women to choose to end a pregnancy.
Number 2: Douthat only wants those debates which social conservatives can win at the ballot box returned to the democratic process. All others, he believes, should be decided by a conservative Supreme Court or by socially conservative representatives, both at the state and federal level, that have been elected from gerrymandered districts.
9
I think blowing up Roe is the surest and most direct way for the court to become deligitimized in the eyes of the American people. The only time Americans care about a process is if two conditions are met. First, if the process is demonstrably corrupt (and in this case Mitch McConnell clearly and openly corrupted it)... and second, if the subsequent outcome is demonstrably unfair, as overturning Roe would be. If the conservative majority succeeds, they should clearly expect a significant backlash. A court that is blatantly political (McConnell eliminated the filibuster to easily push through judges and stole a seat from Obama), partisan (the justices vote predictably), self-perpetuating (Justices are allowed to choose when to retire), and fundamentally non-democratic (Trump got fewer votes) than that institution is in desperate need of reform.
If the Justices don't uphold Roe, the court will be changed. It is that simple. What form that change takes is a little unclear. The Democrats, once they inevitably regain power, will probably be compelled to pack the court, or expel justices, or maybe even legislatively overturn Marbury v. Madison causing a constitutional crisis. The easiest way for that to not happen is if the justices simply put the country first and don't vote in a predictably partisan manner on the most animating and important issue of our time. If there are any institutionalists on the court the choice is stark and reasonably easy.
7
Most of my life I have observed big-money Republicans clench their jaw at the microphone and profess to hate abortion. And yet, I knew and they knew, and all their rich friends knew, that they did not in fact oppose abortion, and found the anti-choice zealotry distasteful. Given their own preferences, all those rich guys in suits would have let their wives and girlfriends handle the abortion issue privately and quietly in a world in which abortions were legal and available.
For years, lip service sufficed to keep the evangelicals in the Republican tent. But I agree with Mr. Douthat; now it is payoff time. Lots of women will be hurt by what it going to happen next, and it will further brand the New America as a religious backwater, but hey. It is a good thing Republicans don't let their consciences get in the way of making a profit.
7
Take heart, rational Americans. The religious right has a real "dog that caught the car" problem here. It appears that their wildest dreams have come true and they can now overturn Roe v. Wade and perhaps a host of other humanistic Supreme Court decisions. But then they are stuck with 70 percent of the American population hating all Republican elected representatives. Basically they will have a dog trying to drive the car he's been chasing for 50 years- not such a good outcome for the Ross Douthats of the world.
8
Quit using the term "pro-life" for opponents of a woman's right to choose what happens in her own body. They are anything but. Say anti-abortion, anti-choice, anti-woman, but not pro-life.
22
A rather sanguine, if not foolish, view that fails to consider the political fallout of overruling Roe, especially given a broad majority of citizens in the US still supports it. Sure, no doubt it will be over-ruled, but Trump had better hope not to be in office when it is because the morning after, there will 10 million angry women at the White House gate, deeply perturbed that a hedonistic playboy with an extensive history of sexual harassing women had a hand in rolling back their rights and re-imposing a 2nd class citizenship on them. It is an insult they will not accept. As for the conservatives, they seem to to have no idea what sort of Padora's box they're opening.
5
Conservatives should be pleased with Brett Kavanaugh as the Supreme Court justice pick because if Hillary Clinton was our president now we would not have any new conservative justices added to the bench. There definitely would have been two progressive justices appointed and the chances of rolling back abortions and reducing their numbers would not even be in this discussion. Mrs. Clinton was a supporter of Planned Parenthood and a very good friend of Cecile Richards, their past president. More money would have been directed towards performing abortions which would have added to the already 60 million innocent lives that have been ended by this cruel and inhumane procedure.
We now at least have a very good chance that the pro life debate will be continued and there is an excellent chance that this newly formed conservative court will be on the side of life issues and anti abortion advocates. This is a good time to be conservative and there is much hope that pro lifers will have their voices heard and that their cause will be taken seriously. Under a liberal Supreme Court, pro lifers were not respected and the Supreme Court wanted abortion on demand. They were more concerned with the rights of the woman and her being able to control her own body than the rights of the unborn in the womb. With this pick, this is good news for pro life people and fetuses/babies in the womb. Hopefully now there will be fewer victims of abortion and life will be respected once again.
2
There is nothing pro life in the anti-choice stance. Why women need to be injured and die so that others can feel "moral," I will never understand.
2
Name a few of the victims. Thanks in advance.
1
WPLMMT--
That won't be the result. Abortion will still be practiced, as it was practiced in biblical times and when our Constitution was written. You will have some poor women with babies they didn't want (a major risk factor for child abuse, by the way) but the pharmaceutical companies will rise to the capitalist occasion and make better abortifacients. Women will help one another. The internet will provide instructions on what to do. If it goes back to the states, plenty will craft sensible laws and women from red states can go to blue states. People don't give up their rights without a fight.
4
If corporations under citizens United are persons, can I abort them too? Never sure how a fetus will vote either. Or why scientific facts with cause and effect are not given more value than an unverified opinion by someone who refuses to learn or cannot understand the facts. Nor can I understand why Garland's nomination was not allowed to be voted on. Democracies depend on reality Douthat. I also do not see why my state together with many others cannot ultimately declare we not the GOP Red States are the United States and those small populations destroying the democracy cannot be left behind and excluded going forward. Quite simply the world cannot afford the GOP machinations or Trump's incompetent leadership.
Calling such people "pro life" is a misnomer, and does a disservice to women that choose abortion. These pro life people are actually just "anti-choice."
They are anti choice because they want to punish women who don't want a baby by forcing them to have a baby, because they think women shouldn't have sex for enjoyment, and if they do and get pregnant, they should be punished with the baby.
If they were pro life, they would care about the concerns and needs and situation of the mother, who is indeed "alive." If they were pro life, they would make sure birth control is available far and wide to reduce abortions.
But the reality is that their goal is to control women so they don't have sex for enjoyment, which is why they want to eliminate access to legal abortion, and also to eliminate access to contraceptives.
Religion poisons everything, and it has manipulated these people into being more concerned about a clump of lifeless cells, than they are about the mother's situation. It also deceives them into thinking most abortions are late stage, where nothing could be further from the truth.
But thats religion. Nothing is further from the truth.
10
States where women loose control over their own bodies will be ripe
for consumer boycotts because woman make most of the purchase decisions. Men in any position to control a woman’s body without her expressed permission
need to recluse themselves.
4
Ah, the big reveal at last.
I wonder if you meant to be quite so blatant in your enunciation of the hard right movement's objective at work for decades, to pack the Supreme Court with ideolgues, replete with their trumped up "originalist, textualist" sham of a judicial philosophy designed for only one purpose - to create the illusion that their agenda to strip women of their rights to privacy, to autonomy, to choice, to eviscerate the separation of church and state, to install their dogma as the law of the land, had any legitimacy under the Constitution.
As the hard right movement stands on the pinnacle of its ambition, it feels no need to hide the blatantly anti-Constitutional, "conservative legal movement's political promise" to overturn Roe v. Wade and make it safe to use the courts to ram their beliefs down the country's throat, never minding that they are corrupting America's judiciary to do it.
Like all zealots they hold nothing dear but their cause, and will trample anything that they consider an obstacle to their goal, be it principle, person, or institution.
So sure are they of the outcome that there is nothing left for them to fight over, except whether they will get to repeal Roe v Wade and separate church and state slowly or quickly.
In the advent of their triumph, the mask is finally removed and the cynical truth about the "conservative legal movement" is revealed.
Will it matter?
You are forgetting the one thing nearer and dearer to every conservative than the unborn fetus: MONEY. Do you imagine that any red state that enacted strict abortion bans would attract a single business other than Hobby Lobby and Chik-Fil-A? One big difference between 1973 when Roe was decided and now, is the percentage of women in the work force. Virtually every young woman grows up expecting to work now. What company is going to risk alienating so many potential employees by setting up shop in a state with severe abortion restrictions? If you think the transgender bathroom ban was bad for business, try telling women they can’t control their own bodies.
9
This word has been stretched to its limits, imploding from a never ending spew of instances where no other word will do: HYPOCRISY.
Those who have fought abortion for forty years include many who have secretly taken advantage of this option for their own loved ones and mistresses. This includes conservative GOP politicians, Evangelicals, lawyers and the wealthy. They loudly proclaim their pro-life ethic, campaign on it, fundraise on it, but if an inconvenient, difficult, unplanned, unsafe, disastrous pregnancy should arise, they sneak away to take care of it, with some head spinning rationalization why theirs is "different."
NYT recently reported on a poll regarding the declining birth rate in our country. There were many reasons given for couples choosing to limit the number of children in their family, but a resounding financial pattern emerged. The conservative ethic in this country is clearly anti-child and anti-family in its priorities. Housing, daycare, healthcare, college costs and our tax system put soul-sapping strain on young families, yet the conservatives' priorities are to maim the ACA they could not kill, crack down on birth control for religious liberty reasons, cut taxes for rich people, and allow chemical companies to spew pollutants previously regulated for good reason.
Kavanaugh will continue this anti-family onslaught, killing unions, hampering reproductive rights and voting rights, tolerating gerrymandering and most assuredly protecting gun rights.
1
Roe vs. Wade and a woman's right to choose are just the tippy-top of a slippery slope. Once that right has been taken away, what's next?
1
It’s interesting how conservatives cherry pick when being true to the original words of the Constitution are important to them. It’s kind of like how they choose when the original words of the bible are important to them, which is: whenever it suits their current political mood.
For example they say that the Constitution does not explicitly protect grown women’s lives and right to privacy, and so it’s ok for states to prioritize a fertilized egg or thumbnail-size bunch of cells over a woman’s (or 10 year old girl’s as it often happens with incest) life.
Conservatives keen reading skills don’t seem to extend to the words of the Constitution limiting the use of guns to taking place within a “well-regulated militia.” It would be interesting to see who still owned guns if they had to get up at 5 am every Saturday to train with their “well regulated militia”
Similarly conservative reading skills falter when they fail to notice that the bible says in Numbers that men may force their wives to have abortions if the husband suspects the fetus was fathered by another man. That the bible advocates abortion is also conveniently ignored by the bible lovers who push the rights of fertilized eggs — or even theoretically fertilized eggs in the case of abortion drug access or IUD limitations—over the rights of living breathing women and girls.
Maybe Constitutionalosts are poor readers. Sort of how my spouse is mighty deaf when I mention cleaning out the gutters.
11
That Douthat is a catholic, and a religious conservative, is something he has proven beyond doubt today. Good for him, but I also think he proves his detractors right - that there is no trusting folks like him. That they are bound to their religion in a way that they cannot see anything else. He cannot hide his disappointment at the fact that even Trump (yes, the ultimate maverick Trump) would not nominate Amy Coney Barett. Would most Americans be ok with the decision to nominate an overtly buddhist Judge (who really believed in Buddhism and considers following the tenants of buddhism as extremely important)? Or to nominate a muslim who truly believed in the Islamic sharia, or a jew who was a true believer? We know that we humans have a vulnerability here: we need to be stopped from our own excess. It is also ironic that he is sad that Kavnaugh is the nominee. I mean, it could have been worse!
8
Sensible states are already grappling with the influx of guns from other not-so-sensible states. Gradual or otherwise, overturning Roe v. Wade would result in an influx of destitute, discarded, raped and abused women from those very same states.
The Statue of Liberty faces outward to the Atlantic, stamped with words that give solace to those seeking seeking entry from overseas. Perhaps those same words will soon be seen on Welcome to _____ (Sensible State) signs on interstate highways.
You know the words.
Interstate Highways: The Under (Above) ground Railway of 21st Century America?
2
Let the Supreme Court clone Antonine Scalia and pack the court for the next 100 years. Let them give corporations more power than ever. Individuals still are powerful in society and in the workplace. Revolt. Not in raising barricades and burning buildings. No, revolt in small ways, everyday. At work, give your employer the bare minimum. Ignore work rules in small ways that go undetected and do it over and over, everyday. Do the same thing with government. Get away with what you can get away with. You'll be surprised how satisfying it can be and how aggravating it can be for your employer and the government. They can't win.
2
Sad, but that's all so many of us have left.
Well, will Religion begin to make all of the decisions? Religion makes many of today's decisions, not all but close.
Please register and vote in November...
2
The so-called Constitutonal “right to privacy” under Griswold and Roe v. Wade always seemed a bit tortured and unsatisfying to me. I would like to see abortion legalized under the free exercise of religion clause of the First amendment, an argument that says one’s religious views guarantee a right to terminate a pregnancy. Republicans seem to believe that freedom of religion justifies everything including defiance of almost any law- why can’t it be invoked to uphold abortion?
"and pro-life voters will never trust the legal establishment’s promises again."
This, right there, Ross, shows how badly you (and your fellow Republicans) misunderstand the Constitution, and our democracy. The only "promise" the legal establishment has is to upholding our nation's laws. Our justice system does not make political deals or "promises" to ideological factions--at least not when it's operating constitutionally, which is hardly a safe assumption these days.
The divide couldn't be starker: Democrats want a justice system that protects the civil liberties of all Americans, and protects the basic constitutional rights of our most vulnerable members. Republicans--like you--want a system that caters to their religious and ideological preferences, and which favors corporate interests, regardless of whether these preferences and interests are just or constitutional. You're so beholden to these interests that you are willing to sacrifice basic principles of democracy and decency, just so long as you can tell women what to do with their bodies and black, brown, and queer people who's really boss in this country.
And to think that you once called yourselves the "moral majority."
27
Conservative Judges tend to uphold law as written, as well as precedent. he won't have any interest in wasting courty time with a settled issue, but rather focus on other issues where law is unclear. Lots of fear mongering, but no meat in this mob frenzy.
3
"Judge Kavanaugh would shift the balance of constitutional jurisprudence to the right, creating a solid right-wing majority on the court possibly until the second half the 21st century." (NYTimes, 9July2018) Indeed. "Kennedy often bridged the gap between the court’s liberals and conservatives ... Trump's nominee ... will be backed by conservative legal organizations." (USA Today) Approximately a third of Americans consider themselves conservative, the rest moderates and liberals. This nomination appears to appeal to a minority of Americans, as did the last one. "Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together ... Mr. Trump has made himself America’s apostle of anger, its deacon of divisiveness." (Peter Baker, NYTimes)
1
So, Ross -- how much of your income are you setting aside for the care of poor and unwanted children, thanks to the coming steady stealth repeal of Roe and contraception?
Of course, doctrine does teach that babies cease to be innocent once they exit the womb, so maybe it's not a right-wing concern after all?
Or perhaps there's an institutional solution to child poverty and lousy social services: the Trump Foundation could send a portrait of Donald and a copy of The Art of the Deal to every unwanted new-born. In 20 years, all these poor kids will be running bankrupt casinos.
10
If the SC gives states the right to establish their own laws regarding abortion, I want to know what those laws say. What will women convicted of having an abortion that is outside the parameters of the state law face? Will they be imprisoned for 20 or 30 years for killing a human life as defined by the state? Will they face execution for a premeditated act of killing a human life? Will doctors and nurses face similar legal consequences? And how are all these potential laws against abortion any different than sharia laws?
6
That'll last until some sweet young blond girl is jailed. Evangelicals have very high abortion rates compared to other women. Should be interesting.
The statistical difference in the number of abortions three years from now will be very disappointing to those who crucified their testimonies for Trump.
3
There is nothing "pro-life" in the positions of those opposed to abortions, since they also oppose reasonable alternatives, such as universal sex education and access to contraception. The real issue is that if the US does not replace itself and even grow, then it has to admit (horrors) people from other countries to make up the lack. This ain't Germany, so we can't force people to have kids, like the uncels seem to want. Our "conservatives" have devolved into millions of "whackos" fixated only on fetuses and not the person carrying them or any other consideration. There is nothing more frightening than this sort of religious based fanaticism, so common with Catholics and generic Christians.
6
Abortion must not be at the woman's choice alone after she allowed a man to use her body to create a human life. Interests of the man, the baby and larger society must also be considered. Abortion of a million babies a year is a tragedy and allowing it just based on woman's choice is cruel and extreme. Most of the Americans do not support partial birth abortion, abortion for sex selection, for inconvenience, etc. That means, the way to forward probably is abortion with restrictions that society can bear through democratic process.
1
The fact that you see sex as a woman "allowing a man to use her body" says so much about how anti-abortion people see women (not as humans but as vessels for a man and a baby) that your comment speaks for itself.
6
Allowed a man to use her body to create life? Is that how you see sex? Really disturbing comment here.
4
Most Americans support legal abortion, period.
“Use her body?” Isn’t that what you want to do? As an incubator?
2
People are swayed by emotional arguments. That's why the "pro-life" argument appeals to so many. If you believe that life begins at conception, it's logical, and even admirable, to defend the right of an embryo or a fetus to develop.
The same emotional arguments can be used to make people approve of abortions. One of the reasons the Irish voted again their nation's ban on abortions was the story of a young woman who died because she was not able to obtain an abortion. There are thousands of similar stories. They appeal very strongly to the emotions, perhaps more strongly because the women who suffer are unquestionably living.
There have been a lot of lies and distortions from those who will do anything to oppose abortion. So far, they have not been answered with anything like enough vehemence to discredit the movement. If Roe v Wade is overturned, I expect that will change.
2
I am a very bigly President Trump supporter. I am also a huge supporter of Pro Choice. I can not see my state being able to politically legislate banning abortion. As a nation we have learned a lot about the issue since the 70's. There are many more medical options now. Women need to be provided choices,
especially during the first two trimesters. 2/3 of americans favor woman choice so abortion is here to stay. That also means there a lot more President Trump supporters than me that fell this way
Its become an act of faith among abortion partisans on both sides of the argument that overturning Roe v Wade will make abortion illegal again. I don’t know about that, the law of unintended consequences may prove otherwise. It will on the other hand make control of state government important in a way it hasn’t been for people who believe in reproductive rights and who will no longer have federal protection of that right. I believe focusing on federal government exclusively has been a mistake on the part of liberals and the Democratic Party (no their not one and the same). The republicans and their donors have better understood the underlying need to dominate state and local governments. Now with conservative dominance of the federal judiciary its time to undo that error, reverse the decline of liberals and moderates in state and local governments and balance the scales of justice throughout the country, not just in Washington DC. We’re a representative democracy not a democracy of political enclaves, its time to remember that and act accordingly.
5
Democrats continue to confuse qualifications with viewpoints. Kavanaugh seems eminently qualified in terms of experience, but his views are conservative, and will not conform to Liberal dogma. This does not make him unfit, just not a Liberal.
If he believes that he should overturn existing law because of his religion, that is dogma at its worst and he is not qualified.
1
“Liberal dogma” is an oxymoron.
The unintended consequences to far right views are unacceptable. The Catholic Church asserts the primacy of conscience above all else. Conscience means that an individual is responsible for his/her own immortal soul. In the context of church teaching, one must engage in daily lifelong conscience formation: how did I do today? I will do better tomorrow. This does not mean "Did I follow all church rules to the letter?," but a deep reflection on choices made. In this context, there are times when having an abortion may be the preferred choice. For example, my mom had early onset breast cancer in the early 70's. She had chemo and radiation. Subsequently, she thought she was pregnant. This was before instant pregnancy tests, so for three days she did not know for sure. Those three days were truly "the dark night of the soul" for my mom, a devout Catholic. He doctor said there was "no way" the baby would be normal. She was not pregnant. But in those three days it became clear to me that it is the WOMAN, not Pence, Trump, bishops, or any group of MEN, who should make this most personal and traumatic decision. I stopped marching in Right to Life events. Thinking that the woman must decide does not mean I am not pro-life. It means that women are adults, capable of making their own medical and moral choices.
25
Pro-life voters aren't going to become disillusioned over a narrow ruling on Casey-Roe. They'll feel betrayed by the dissenting judge. However, there's no reason to expect any massive fracture in the conservative coalition. Pro-lifers will simply elect more extreme pro-life candidates advocating for more extreme pro-life judges at the expense of everything else. That's been the pattern for the past three decades at least.
Personally, I'm not particularly concerned about the "hot-button" issues and social liberalism. I don't particularly care about the cultural wars. I'll dip my toe into the water every once in a while but they aren't the issues deciding my vote.
My real fear with Kavanaugh is that the rightward drift in the court has successfully, systematically, and consistently empowered corporations over people for the past forty years. The US middle class has been absolutely decimated by conservative legal policies and judicial interpretations. A Kavanaugh court means things are going to get worse before they get better. Social concerns take a back seat when America's economic and political opportunity are under organized assault from the right.
14
Even when it had legislative majorities, the Democratic Party never tried to pass legislation that would confirm the principles embodied in Roe v. Wade nor did they ever seriously attempt to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. As a result, the Republican judges are now able to dismantle fundamental rights of women and working people. After the stolen election of 2000, Democrats made no serious effort to amend the electoral college out of existence, with the result that Trump came to power despite losing by 3 million votes. The cowardice of the traditional leaders of the Democratic Party in the present crisis has paved the way for their replacement by a new and far more aggressive generation of political leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
22
Another person posted a response to Douthat that mentions Jim Crow..
that is instructive if the court tinkers with Roe, the Reconstruction amendments established the 'right' of men of color to participate in the democratic process..
the Jim Crow laws frustrated the carrying out of that 'right, essentially making it mute through poll taxes, literary tests, peonage and when all else failed extrajudicial murder sanctioned by popular consent of institutional elites,
Douthat may believe, I think naively, that the state can protect that 'unborn human life' by applying echoes of Jim Crow's restrictions against women seeking to terminate pregnancy, but how far is Douthat willing to take this logic?
If a pregnant woman refuses to abide by the wisdom of for example 'Mississippi', is it not inevitable that Mississippi will, like in the Jim Crow Postbellum South, attempt to impose its will upon her through machinations echoing Jim Crow and its associated violence against a recalcitrant individual who refuses to allow the state to block her from carrying out her constitutionally granted rights?
If this new order is imposed or should I say old order is reimposed, isn't it also likely to be extended to frustrate the other constitutionally enshrined rights of other groups and classes?
7
The real deluge is if Judge Kavanaugh acts on his opinion that a sitting president is above the law and cannot be bothered by subpoenas and indictments. Originalism? Let's roll back that pesky two term limit. A president for life then is forever beyond the law as long as he has a congressional edge..
11
Make is simple for us, Ross. Explain why a person should be forced to carry a fetus she does not want. I realize that Trump’s term has only started, but are we in Handmaiden’s territory already? I’m sure this new Supreme Court will not approve assisted suicide either, but will they impose post-morten penalties on those who decide to end their life? Could there be any more obvious example of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness than control over one’s own body?
There’s a good reason why the Founding Father’s separated religion from government. It’s because the two are not compatible, unless you want to start the journey back to the intellectual Dark Ages.
46
This is such a difficult subject. I am a Democrat and advocate for most progressive social and economic policies - with the exception of abortion. In the case of pregnancy there are actually two bodies. A woman is no longer in control of her body alone. There is another one to consider. Another with completely separate DNA, perhaps a different blood type, different sex. This absolutely human being is vulnerable and dependent and innocent and not deserving of death.
Even corpses cannot have their body parts used for the survival of another without previous written consent, AB. Forced childbirth dehumanizes women to a status even lower than cadavers.
This “person” is an embryo, a collection of cells, a neural tube. Lots of things, but not a person.
3
If Roe isn't overturned, the Republican Party evaporates and a new party will replace it. Overturning Roe has been the promise, the goal, the prize. How many of us voted for Trump for this single moral reason? Most of the Trump voters I know.
1
Moral reasoning ken?
Can you please explain the detained children ken? What about the Russian involvement in our last election? Are you also ok with telling an impregnated woman what she can or cannot do with HER body? Moral reasoning on the trump side? Probably the biggest oxymoron since "naval intelligence." Good news, trump's "moral reasoning" won't last long due to the blue wave coming.
1
Regardless of the law, women will continue to exercise their rights to control their own bodies. They will have abortions, as they did before Roe Vs. .Wade. It will be poor women, black and white, who will birth children that they cannot afford to care for. Some of these children will become wards of the state, others eventually winding up in the criminal justice system. Check the stats.
2
As a moderate Republican who did not vote for Trump but doesn't care for Socialism either, I am looking forward to having my party back.
When we reach the point where the same half of the public is always unhappy with Supreme Court Decisions our legal system will be treading on dangerous ground.
It appears we are heading in that direction. Let's get back to a 60 vote majority to confirm any Supreme Court nominee and keep the court somewhere near the political center.
5
If Roe is overturned, the repercussions won’t be simply prohibition on abortions. The devastating impact will be felt in science, fertility and reproductive technologies, and ultimately, in women's rights and social attitudes to motherhood. The only way to argue against abortion is to do exactly what Mr. Douthat does in this singularly dishonest column: pretend that everybody shares his weird religious belief that an embryo is a person. It is a minority view anywhere in the world but the conservative movement in the US has already succeeded in implanting it in the collective consciousness here. Imagine how in the future when Roe is overturned we will have fertility clinics policed, embryo culling outlawed, genetic research curtailed, and even more pregnant women jailed for supposedly injuring their precious bunch of cells. Even in blue states, I foresee more pressure on women to abandon their careers in favor of motherhood and fewer rational attempts to improve reproductive technologies. I know of a company that works on a methodology to select the best embryos for IVF implantation. How would it square with the judicially propmoted belief that a zygote is a person? Prepare to have more sick children born and more women die of illegal abortion, trying to get rid of a damaged or unwanted fetus.
25
If Roe v Wade is overturned by this court, women will take to the streets. Why not demand that life starts with sperm and that boys and men who waste it are the real
criminals and need to be controlled as well. Or does that defeat the purpose?
2
“Democratization”, hmmm. If Douthat and other anti-choicers believe that the decision to abort is not within the purview of the federal government, why then claim it’s within the scope of states’ rights? Why not go all the way, democratically, and leave it up to each person? Why is ANY government, to conservatives/individualists, appropriate to dictate in matters such as this? No, Russ, it’s indefensible. It’s a need to control women’s sexuality and reproduction. Period.
25
Welcome back to coat hanger nation.
The thing that is so sinister about the support of a judge who would overturn Roe is that the one percenters who support "politics" like this would hop on a jet or obtain an off the books physician without any hesitation to take care of a "problem" for a daughter.
This isn't about morality or ideology for them, it's all about control, psychological, physical and political. But why should this issue be different than all the others, after all?
Ultimately, they needed to keep the pro-life extremists in the GOP tent, and as long as they can continue to have access to abortion, they don't mind denying it at all to everybody else who can't afford to hop on a plane to France or coerce a private concierge physician with enough money.
34
This should be introduced as expert opinion to the confirmation hearings, especially for Senators Murkowski and Collins.
5
this is the IF MANIFESTO
not a bad rhetorical act. Regardless of the politics.
Ross,
I am a 70 year old Canadian and my Prime Minister is a devout Catholic. When asked about making abortion illegal he responded as would any leader who believed in separation of church and state.
A jurist who takes an oath to uphold the constitution and believes Roe v Wade should be struck down is in violation of their oath of office and has no business on the Supreme Court. That is the Alpha and Omega all other arguments are moot.
There is a guarantee of separation of church and state but regardless of whether you believe abortion is murder, or you believe a woman has a right to choose it is the responsibility of Americans to make their own moral choices.
Ross your once great nation is failing and the final blow may be a decision that is beyond the understanding of mere mortals and that is a crime against humanity.
28
We're funny things, humans. We can make ourselves believe all sorts of things are objective reality when later we come to understand that they're not. Kavanaugh and about half the country believe they hold the absolute objective knowledge that life "starts" at the "instant" of conception. They have buckets of arguments that make them believe this is not a religious belief and all the rest of us have to do is "open our hearts" and we'd believe it to.
This is nearly hopeless, not completely hopeless. Concerted effort to explain to them that it's all more complicated than that could have an effect, at least enough that they don't force their beliefs on the rest of us, but no one is really trying.
4
The problem with the pro-choice argument is that it fails to define when life actually starts. Is it ethical to abort a child 89 days into a pregnancy? At what point does the child become its own person and gains its own rights?
That's because, in reality, there's no objective way of doing that. In reality, life doesn't "start". Life comes from life. Our problem is that the majority doesn't understand what they're arguing about. Read the RvW opinion. The question is "When does the state recognize a new human with rights?". That would, of course, be simple if there was an objective way of stating when life "starts", but there isn't. For now, viability seems to be the workable compromise in balancing the state's interest in the mother's rights vs a potential new citizen's rights.
It is not necessary, or a good idea, for the "pro-choice side" to try to define when "life starts".
1
forecasting how conservative the supreme ct will be is simple:
extremely, followed by more trump picks: extremist.
anyone talking abt cases on presidential power? court's going to aggrandize our fake president too.
a disaster for democracy, a catastrophe.
10
Roe v Wade is on shaky ground because the Constitution is mute on abortion, as it is moot on most issues. Abortion was an issue when the Bill of Rights was drafted; it was legal in some states but illegal in others. Since it was prohibited in some states, it obviously does not qualify as one of the “implicit” rights referenced in the Ninth Amendment. The delegates who crafted the Bill of Rights were aware of the abortion issue and opted to leave the matter to the states.
Roe v Wade’s assertion that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment provides a right to privacy that gives women an unfettered right to abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy but not the third trimester of pregnancy is absurd. We don’t have to pretend the Constitution says things it doesn’t say. The authors of the Constitution recognized that subsequent generations would need to revise the Constitution to align it with changing circumstances and attitudes. Article V of the Constitution describes the amendment process whereby the Constitution may be altered.
Why continue to argue about it? Pro-choice advocates should end the argument by proposing an amendment that says: “A woman’s right to an abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy shall not be infringed.”
4
"Why continue to argue about it? Pro-choice advocates should end the argument by proposing an amendment..."
Why? Because constitutional amendments are incredibly difficult to approve. In today's fractious environment, politically controversial amendments face a steep path to approval. The last overtly political amendment that was approved was the 24th, prohibiting poll taxes (1964). It took 17 months to approve and even today eight state legislatures have not ratified it. (The Texas legislature finally ratified it in 2009, 45 years after it was already approved.)
The most recent amendment ruling on a comparable social issue was approved a hundred years ago--- #19, Women's Suffrage, 1920--- and it took almost a century of agitation and argument before that. Mississippi did not ratify until 1984.
The Equal Rights Amendment got ratifications from only 35 out of 38 states needed in the 10 year period allotted by Congress, in no small part because conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly worked tirelessly to kill it.
With a vocal and well funded minority of Americans backed by powerful institutions (i.e., the Catholic church and evangelical Christian churches), there's zero chance that a pro-choice constitutional amendment could be passed in the US.
This suggestion is a red herring.
2
The Constitution has been amended six times in my lifetime. It is only hard if there is significant disagreement.
Last 6 amendments:
22: Limits presidency to 2 terms (approved after the death of FDR)
23: District of Columbia gets electors in the Electoral College
24: Poll Tax prohibition
25: Succession rules for presidency
26: Makes 18 the voting age in all states (ratified in 3 months)
27: Prevents Congress from voting raises for itself in same term.
With the exception of the poll tax (amendment 24) in southern states, none of these had significant disagreement because they were entirely uncontroversial. It is disingenuous to compare these amendments with an amendment to legalize abortion.
Kindly refrain from referring to the Evangelical Right as "pro-life," Mr. Douthat — for they manifestly are not, BY DEFINITION: the overwhelming majority of them are staunch supporters of capital punishment. Q.E.D.
42
How striking, is the reality behind this "conservative revolution", that given the drop in births, recently reported, due to the lack of provision and supports for young mothers(and young fathers)in American society, across the board. And the lack of respect for those who actually achieve "humanity" when surviving birth in the US, in the area of healthcare, nutrition, education, social supports, adequate housing and parental income. And the enormous financial resources required to nurture large, "unplanned" or put another way, "rhythm method", families to adulthood today with the intrinsic requirement that a mothers potential to run a successful career alongside not be derailed, or destroyed by misogyny on the way up, allowing her to reach her full potential. And the absolute requirement for house keepers, nannies, cooks, cleaners, babysitters, drivers, as necessary support systems to underpin all this. And this army of supports required to meet this utopian dream of religious womanhood, motherhood, marital happiness, religious fidelity, professional success, in a chosen career, pitches her income, of necessity, in the very highest echelons of incomes in the very highest echelons of careers in the very highest echelons of the elite. Wow! Come all ye women, from all walks of life. You too can be an Amy Coney Barrett, and dance on a pinhead!
27
the imaginations of journalists are stirring up fear and dreadful scenarios. things can be overturned so easily? It's actually quite difficult to change precedent set by the Supreme Court and it's extremely rare. Conservative Judges don't typically wish to alter precedent.
Please continue the audacity of hope, and the equanimity of rational minds.
3
I guess you missed Janus.
Alito, Thomas, and his ilk are not “conservative” judges. They are radical right-wingers, a considerable difference. Stare decisis is of little import to them.
1
Pro-life? That’s what they call themselves, but not who they are. They are anti-choice! They are people who believe that the the state has the right to control women’s bodies and that the rights of a fetus supersedes the rights of the woman carrying that fetus.
Of course once the fetus comes to term and is born, these same self righteous “pro-lifers” are unwilling to pay the taxes that would assist the mother by providing health care, quality day care, decent affordable housing, quality education, access to a nutricious diet. The basic needs that any fetus needs after coming to term.
34
Repeat comment I wrote:
I would like to state that I hope with all my heart that the right to same-sex marriage, established by an opinion of Anthony Kennedy, would not be imperiled by someone who had clerked for him and seems to share many core values that Kennedy espoused. That is my hope because that decision changed my life more than any other in my life and the thought of putting it at risk is more than I could bear. Am I naive in my hope that Obergefell will remain safe with the addition of this jurist?
3
So Douthat wants to kill what remains of Roe v Wade and "return the abortion debate to the democratic process" ?
I have to assume the author doesn't pay attention to opinion polls or care that the "democratic process"-- if followed here--- would result in Roe's being overwhelmingly upheld. Over 2/3 of the country don't want it overturned. Apparently his idea of a "democratic process" would be one in which only conservatives would have a voice or a vote.
Look at what just happened in that most Catholic of Catholic countries, Ireland. Women and other citizens rose up and overwhelmingly demanded that draconian Irish anti-abortion laws be repealed.
All you social conservatives and not just Mr. Ross Douthat are on the wrong side of history on this one.
11
If the anti-choice people really wanted to lower the rate of terminations, long-term effective birth control for women would ubiquitous, accessible and free.
14
Be careful what you wish for. The tilt toward religious fervor was born of the communist bloom after WWII. The assault on religions led to the addition of "Under God" and In God We Trust in the Pledge of Allegiance and US money.
Women will be the victims here and the President is dancing in the dark with Communist Putin. Odd how birth control is more important than democracy to the Evangelical. What religion is that, other than the male supreme, women are cows for breeding and feeding type?
Mr. Douthat, your christian autocracy is no better, or different, than the communist autocracy that Russia holds dear. We really haven't made it far from Feudalism, apparently.
25
Once a common sense right is established, backed by strong public consensus, and defended by a powerfully motivated cohort of activists, it can't be withdrawn, weakened, or shunted off to a different political jurisdiction.
There's no way to square passing the buck to each state to decide this when it's patently absurd to suggest the same about slavery, gun rights, voting rights, marriage, border control, immigration and customs, etc.
They can try but risk tripping the wire that sets off a 100 megaton political nuclear bomb. This will be their bridge too far. Occupy will seem like a troop of scouts selling cookies compared to the likely response of an American majority sick and tired of being pushed around by fringe religious fanatics and hypocrites who demand their Constitutional rights while systematically -- sanctimoniously -- denying the same rights to everyone else.
There are no deep issues of conscience and faith troubling those who would outlaw abortion; With broken windows in every one of their houses, they've got no business casting stones or mandating their alternative morality.
America didn't welcome and provide safe shelter for those persecuted for their religious beliefs only to have them become persecutors of others who don't share their beliefs.
Foolhardy for a skewed court to add kindling to the raging fire that threatens America.
If these people really want to save unborn life, they should stop denying climate change.
8
Whether or not established abortion law changes, the real questions are going to fall to the medical ethicists and specialists in prenatal medicine.
A whole new set of ethical questions has emerged since the 1970s, based on new abilities to evaluate and treat diseases in the fetus prior to birth.
Reality hasn't sat still waiting for the public debate to accommodate it. It has left it chasing its tail and disappeared over the horizon.
2
What are liberals worried about? Polls show a majority of Americans in favor of legalized abortion. The Court won't outlaw abortion, they will merely say it's not mentioned in the Constitution. Thus, the legality of abortion (along with insider trading, burglary, and lots of other issues) is something to be decided by the people through their legislatures. Abortion was legal in many states before Roe, and I would expect it would continue to be legal even if Roe is overturned. Can anyone imagine the New York or California legislatures voting to make abortion a crime?
4
Why should a woman's right to determine whether or not to have an abortion depend on the state in which she happens to be living?
1
"Can anyone imagine the New York or California legislatures voting to make abortion a crime?"
No, but can you imagine Oklahoma making a law preventing a resident from traveling to NY to obtain an abortion?
Would such a law be ruled "unconstitutional" if passed?
Answer key: Yes, who knows with the current yahoos on the court.
Oh Ross, you have such high opinions, such great hopes, for the intellectual analytical chops of the Republican voter. A man can dream! Yet, when shall we hear the grinding of the gears of the internal logic machine of the Fox News audience that voted overwhelmingly for a man who vowed to protect social security and medicare and just turned in a budget which would gut them? You really think those same voters are motivated by Aristotelian Logic?
Let's run through it here: A. Kavanaugh and his cohort over turn Roe. Congress passes the total ban on abortion that the Business Republicans have been promising they would get to after just one more tax cut for the beset billionaires. Cut to mourning dad, standing with toddler next to wife-denied-life-saving-abortion's casket lowering into grave. This will happen 10-20 times per year in a nation of 300 million like clockwork. Or B: Kavanaugh and cohort will continue to preach the horrors of abortion to the fervid crowd while their huckster accomplices picks their pockets.
Do the math: the abortion bans which are passed all across the country as a matter of routine now in state capitols which do not allow for an exception for the life of the mother will kill women with families who want to have kids. How many politicians are going to sign up for that equation without Roe as a backstop to prevent the inevitable horror show that would result? Think we'll find out? Doubt it.
3
"to overturn the post-1973 abortion regime and return the abortion debate to the democratic process"
1. the majority of Americans support a woman's right to control her own body: her right to choose.
2. to return this (or any debate) to the democratic process, the courts must repudiate the Citizens United decision.
Resist.
40
I will tell you this my friend. The moment Roe v. Wade is reversed is the day the Republicans will forever lose their ability to control either house of Congress. Americans are sick and tired of the inability of a bunch of white males to separate the church from the state and their irritating habit of continually threatening to take away the reproductive rights of a woman. As for the much ballyhooed conservative tilt, well... we will balance that more than adequately with the social movement that will keep drifting left.
8
Return the abortion debate to the democratic process? Why think small? Maybe they'll overturn the Thirteenth Amendment and return that debate to the states too. Who says anyone's ability to control his or her own body is an inherent right?
16
I suspect a reversal of Roe will leave women in red states in trouble, but it will set up a permanent Democratic majority in the senate...
5
I think regular, tax paying folk in the U.S. should expect little to no protection from the Supreme Court or the judicial system. Ever since corporate person-hood was recognized by the court, your and my "rights" don't matter. This has been coming for the last 30 years.
Who here believes that one can defend him/herself against corporate or special interests in the system unless one has huge financial resources? You "rights" today amount to little more that money. If you have a lot, you have rights. If you don't, sit down, shut up and do as you're told.
14
So Kennedy resigns under pressure from the White House.
An anti choice Republican gets the nod and the court lurches to the right.
I
f abortion is such a keystone for Republican success why not consider a plebiscite on abortion.
The courts should be taken out of the business of ruling on social issues better left for society to determine for itself, where it stands, by a majority rules vote. It’d be more honest and would take away a leverage that the right has abused for much too long.
4
A laughable statement. Kennedy did not resign "under pressure from the White House".
He retired under (now proven) reassurance from the White House that his replacement nominee would not offend Kennedy's moral or judicial sensibilities.
I wouldn't argue with your concerns about what his replacement will do: I share your concerns.
But I find your rhetoric self-defeating.
Were you there? I’m still trying to figure out how the “ethical” Anthony Kennedy managed to ignore the fact that his son was Trump’s baker for questionable loans.
1
I sit corrected.
Not so fast, Ross. Roe v Wade is badly outdated -- it gives the "right to choose" to the woman's "physician." It should belong to the woman. It also depends upon outdated science regarding viability. When Roe is overturned, the game will just begin. Again. Many conservative friends of mine draw the line at Roe; they are willing to go along with a lot but not that. I had an abortion at 18 before Roe. It was criminal, expensive, and dangerous; now there is at-home-drug abortion. Our new "war on drugs" will be against the abortion drugs. But Democrats should focus on other issues for the moment. Do what the Republicans did; get your people into Congress on saving the planet and the children, and then light into the Republicans on abortion. We will win in the end.
3
With this new pick the overturning of Roe/Casey is not likely, it is assured. I suspect a case will be on the Court's docket within the next 2-3 years. I will also predict that the issue of same-sex marriage revisits the Court.
2
Women's reproductive rights will be overturned. The freedom for a woman to live as if biology were not her destiny will be crippled in the states that prohibit contraception and abortion. Women are under no moral obligation to reproduce or to carry a fetus to term if they do not wish to. Adjusting the law to contend with late term abortions would be feasible. However, now we will have no law. Im grateful I live in a state that will preserve my rights. I grieve for the women who don't.
11
The Deluge is there now and has been there for a long time.
The distribution of the religious affiliations in Supreme Court does not reflect their distribution in the country, and the only one-vote majority required for the rulings makes the Court decisions not credible.
5
And there is me, a clearly naive European, thinking that courts and court rulings ought to be about the law and not politics and culture. Clearly in the US the latter two come first, or they certainly seem to do so. What is more, whilst the court is expected to lean in certain directions based on the political and cultural leanings of the court members, it would appear that the court is not expected to in anyway reflect the majority, more liberal slant of public opinion in the US on many social issues. To me that comes across as very strange. To me a court, and certainly the highest court in the land, ought to be solely about interpretation of the law and validity of such law in the context of the constitution. In the US the court would appear to have become a political instrument to implement measures, which in a number of cases, a majority of Americans do not want and congress fails to legislate for. This makes the essential separation between the legislative and political/executive branch dangerously blurred, all the more because the court cannot be removed by the voters.
23
Nah, it isn't about ephemeral notions of politics, law or culture. It is about money and although the rationale might wend its way through all of those subjects, a deep dive will always end in a pile of benefactor attached cash.
4
There should have never been any doubt that this would be the end of the Supreme Court as we know it, once Donald Trump was elected.
And this is also what Americans should have taken into consideration before voting for him, or by not voting at all.
Nevertheless, what the media and everyone else seems to forget is that the Republicans and Trump's core supporters still don't represent the views of the MAJORITY of the American people.
And if they go after Roe vs. Wade, as well as trying to resurrect the old Jim Crow Laws, they'll have a fight on their hands and be forced to remember whom they are there to serve -- namely, We, the People.
11
Oh, they will go after RvW either directly or sideways. Kavanaugh has made it clear that while he "skeptical" of regulation, when it comes to abortion there can't be too much regulation. He's a believer, firmly biased.
"unborn human lives" is certainly a tortured way of describing an embryo, which is not a person ready to be born.
But Douthat can't use the simpler "embryo" because his phrase describes a concept based on his religious belief.
The Constitution clearly bars the state from making any law respecting the establishment of religion, his or any other. Unless and until Mr Douthat and others of his ilk is willing to discuss women and the Constitution (including its privacy protections), no argument that they make regarding the state's regulation of abortion should be taken seriously.
20
You are using an untutored sense to claim that an embryo is not an unborn human life. Unless you want to rule out people with severe mental and physical disabilities by restricting the definition of life to sentience and awareness of self or people that cannot live without assisted medical attention by restricting it to viability, then the only way to define a life is by the genetic code which all humans share regardless of age or state. This includes the simpler "embryo."
No matter your views on abortion or religion, saying that an embryo is nothing but a clump of cells is akin to claiming people seen from the top of a ferris wheel are nothing but a cluster of ants. It is intellectually dishonest.
An embryo is a cluster of cells. And I’m an anatomist.
1
"It’s one thing to blow up the G-7 with trade wars and make nice with a murderous North Korean despot; it’s quite another to disappoint the D.C. conservative legal establishment."
They really don't care. Do U?
They care about fetuses, but babies, mothers, families, no. The unborn are "pure" and invisible; babies are too much trouble. They don't want to provide affordable health care for the family (Planned Parenthood's vast majority of work), they don't want sex education or birth control to be readily available, they separate infants from parents without a qualm, they bully the world about breast feeding (a shocker) in favor of corporations (Abbott, Nestle), the list goes on).
Jesus wept. (Try the Gospels.)
55
Corporations are not mothers ...
3
More wretched legal misogyny from the white, male, Christian intellectual brothel.
How about leaving women alone for once in your insensitive lives and letting women decide what to do with their bodies instead of forcing them to bear renegade male sperm ?
How about providing free LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives) to all females who want them, which would be the single most effective way to prevent abortions, instead of having crusty Grand Old Perverts in state and federal capitals shepherd forced pregnancies to term along with the accompanying exploded Medicaid and welfare bills that go with them ?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/human_nature/2014/10/red...
America's Christian Shariah Law community and their anti-abortion asylum is a one-dimensional medieval punishment isolation chamber which clamors for punishing women instead of doing the logical, practical and humane thing.....educating women about sex and giving them modern contraception (and saving untold millions in welfare costs) to minimize the problem.
And even worse, this cruel Calvinist Christian red meat issue is just one of several deceptive issues diabolically employed by Republicans to elevate their one true principle to the highest court in the land, the unfettered supremacy of Greed Over People, Robber Barons and Reverse Robin Hoodism.
Stop abusing non-rich and female Americans, Brother Douthat.
172
"Male sperm" is ever so slightly redundant.
Dave D...it would seem so at first glance, but it's critical to identify the root of the malevolence in this issue....the male gender.
We know sperm is male by definition, but I choose to call it 'male sperm' in an effort to attribute the problem as emanating from the male ego, the male psycho, the male bully and the 'male sperm' and the male's rainbow of male inferiority complexes that causes him to systematically diminish women rights.
And for the record, I'm a male.
The Republican Right will never get rid of Roe/Wade. It is too valuable to them to divide our electorate. The court has been a right wing court for most of this century with Republican Presidents, majorities in congress but never actions to repeal.
6
Roe v. Wade becomes less and less relevant to the reality of abortion each year. The actual process of abortion is now more often pharmaceutical than surgical. And "prolife" efforts only reinforce availability in Blue states. Instead, it seems Roe has really become a litmus test on gender rights. There is no reason that women and liberals cannot resoundingly win that issue at the ballot box.
9
Look at that smug smirk on djt's face in the photo! His self-satisfaction knows no measure.
16
Try as I may, I simply cannot see a United States that is horrifyingly divided between a few super wealthy individuals that completely dominate the reins of power and the rest of us. That minority (whether it's closer to 1% or 10%, I don't know) makes up our government, the corporate oligarchs that empower them, and anyone who directly helps these two groups maintain power (I would include the entire MSM in this group). On that note, I just watched the Shakespeare Theatre Company's "Romeo and Juliet Wrongful Death Mock Trial" on C-SPAN, taped less than one month after Donald Trump was elected president. There, Justices Alito and Kavanaugh sat, smugly making fun of the entire political process in this country, joined by the "mock lawyers," clearly none of them at all dismayed by the fact that Trump was elected president. And, of course, why should they be? They are completely cocooned by their millions and billions, mistaking (or, worse, promoting) the pop culture propaganda on television as if that passes for any of our daily lives. How can any of us stand for this smug nonsense much longer?
10
I'm male and pro-choice, but if women failed to vote, or voted third party, or voted Trump in 2016, then why should I care if they didn't. No more rationalizations allowed.
9
A winning political strategy always involves blaming the voters for not doing as they're told to do by their betters. After all, it isn't up to the politicians to represent the voters, it is up to them to represent the donors to the voters, right?
1
I hear you, but there are women who voted for Hillary and our daughters and granddaughters, and our rights cover all women, no matter for whom they voted. That’s why they’re rights.
4
I frankly think this is just another example of being careful what you wish for. The "right to lifers"/ anti-abortion monsters want to force everyone to adopt their ghastly and grossly wrong and quasi-religious and misguided ethical view of the world, a view that over-whelms the law with religious nonsense. Not all states are willing to go along with that, not even close. Soon even more states will pass laws allowing abortion. The dream of having a Federal law or the Constitution outlawing abortion everywhere in the country is DOA. Yes, some few states will prohibit abortion. And to what end? So that there can be more abandoned children, more poor people in those states? It's not the wealthy states that ban abortion, is it? No, it's not. And as soon as the Constitution fails to protect abortion in various states, there goes that hot-button/dog whistle Republican lever in National politics. I'm fine with all of that. I feel sorry for the people caught in the middle of that, but hey, they can always move to another state.
16
Ever see a connection between blocking immigration and forcing birth?
With declining U.S. birthrates and anti-immigration policies, we'll need to get new babies somewhere or face all the problems an aging population brings (labor shortages, increasing debt, etc. - see Japan).
The GOP prefer the "forced birth" option. Maybe they hope those workers will be whiter, or at least worship in churches. I don't know. If they really cared about reducing abortion, they'd be pro-birth control and sex education.
15
They don't care about it as an issue except as a way to divide us
If Roe v Wade is overturned, the backlash this will produce might unseat many Republicans. Women - even GOP women will be furious. This outrage will bring millions of non-voting women into the voting booth (at last). We could end up a one party country. Probably, Roe will not be overturned. The Republicans have done quite well stoking anti legalized abortion sentiment and they do not want to jeopardize their position.
9
There is more than a good probability that at least one (and possibly all) of Ross' daughters will grow up understanding the pain he wants to inflict on women and his almost pathological desire to control their sexual and reproductive lives. And if that hatred is turned into law I wouldn't want to be him.
Kavanaugh might have some inkling of that possibly happening to himself. And that more than anything might play a role here if he gets on the court. Obviously I am not holding my breath. But as Rumsfeld said that is a big unknown unknown.
4
On this I hope you are right that the whirring nest of smug pro-lifers end up running this way and that without a North Star. These folks are single issue disturbingly obsessed about something that is none of their business. Republicans score much higher on anxiety and control and always in others business whether abortion or sexual desires. Mostly regarding women’s right to control their bodies.
20
I hope that those who voted for Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein learn their lesson. They are responsible for this mess, along with the Russians, Adelson, Mercer and, of course, the voters who hoped that Trump would help them out of their financial misery.
The GOP exported the factory jobs to China in the 1980s to 2000s, and then fooled the voters by promising to bring these jobs back.
32
I hope that those who rigged the primaries and scheduled debates during football games learned their lesson.
3
No, because Bernie Sanders voters still insist Bernie would have won the election against Trump. They never seem to wonder why the the Republican propaganda machine that operated 24-7 against Hillary was dead silent about Bernie. If Sanders had actually won the nomination, the Republicans were ready to crush him.
4
The whole Roe v. Wade is fodder the Republican party has fed its base over the years; is really clever cover for politicizing this country's judicial system to further corporate America's belief that they, not the people, should shape civilization. And to do so, they need to rid themselves of government oversight, rules and regulations. The result will be a plutocracy free to exploit workers and the environment. This is simply a bone being tossed to the uneducated voter for helping the Koch brothers and their libertarian ilk realize their version of "democracy" for which we will all suffer under.
12
The outrage machine doesn't propel people to the polls once those people are satisfied. The dead-enders of the Great Awakening have been howling for almost five decades (yes, longer than many of them have been alive) that they should have the right to regulate other people's pregnancies. They have done what they can to make sex as unsafe as possible, presumably to scare others out of having it for fun.
So, election after election, as red-tie wearing clean-cut Americans have been sent to the House and Senate to do their best to gut environmental and bank regulations, those who, like Mike Pence, profess that, "I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order," have been puzzled that their prize cause, the regulation of other people's bodies, has not been adequately addressed.
Remember that for these people two realms exist, each as real as the other: One we share amid rising oceans and preternatural heat waves; the other exists only in their imaginations, an eternal vacation for many who seem determined to destroy this planet and some who would make anyone with the temerity to be born non-white or non-American as uncomfortable as possible.
So, Ross, perhaps this is the future of America, perhaps Trump was more prescient than we think when he evoked America's proud past of back-alley abortions and legal lynchings, a time when America was "great." Whether your faith in these charlatans (or those populating the great beyond) is justified we will soon find out.
14
As Mr. Douthat points out, fighting Roe v Wade is central to Republican identity. Without that, many current conse4vatives may finally realize how bad conservative economic policies have served Tham, and might vote Democrat! I very much doubt that the right will allow abortion to be eliminated an issue. It is what keeps them in office.
6
Can we call a spade a spade, here? What Ross refers to is the explicit, unholy alliance that the gaping maw of corporate interests forged with Evangelical voters. The New Deal and the union movement had to be crushed, and if a few women had to lose control of their bodies, that was a price that the Chamber was willing to pay.
It's about as foolish and wrong-headed as was the pact that the Democrats once built to turn the clock back on slavery. You can only throw so many scraps before you hit the bone. We're there on abortion; it has been effectively banned in several states, regulated out of existence by the anti-regulation party.
Men like Roberts and Kavanaugh went through the establishment's elite grooming in the understanding that this was a necessary wedge issue, a means to an end. They're humble enough to (partly) recognize the insanity of men legislating the insides of a woman's body into a place protected by the coercive power of government. And they're educated enough to know that a zygote is not a human being.
The question, as it so often is, is one of loyalty. Are they loyal to their own principles and those underpinning our legal system, or are they loyal to the "conservative" con-men who've been lining their (and donors') pockets at the expense of women?
Because a true conservative (if unicorns exist) would recognize that Roe and Casey are settled law, and that upending them would cause the kind of social strife that conservatism purportedly aims to *prevent*.
26
I am old and will die before much of what this nominee will effect in our nations laws. I am not a poor woman of child bearing age. They are the group who will quickly pay a steep and pointless price for this nomination. It is a shame that we have allowed the church to dictate the laws of our democracy. Centuries ago the founders of this nation, first abandoned Europe, and then fought England, to free us from the bonds of dictated worship. They created a secular state, well defined in our Constitution. Now we are back where we started. Too bad.
38
Why haven’t Democrats made a public issue long before now of thethe Federalist Society’s stranglehold on Republican judicial appointments? If the shoe was on the other foot, Republicans would have long and loudly castigated Democrats for delegating their judicial appointments to a nefarious “secret society” that seeks to use the courts to promote the agenda of the elites at the expense of ordinary citizens. In the case of the Federalist Society, that description is apt.
18
This is an excellent question and one that merits further exploration. I will hazard a guess as to why: the Democrats themselves have become beholden to big business. The two parties are not, as is usually presupposed, split between left and right. Rather the Democrats represent moderate business and establishment interests with some commitment to long term welfare and social justice as needed for stability. The Republicans represent extreme right wing and libertarian business interests focused relentlessly on immediate short term profits and the belief that with sufficient power and audacity they don't need to concede any significant level of social justice, which they view as nothing but a nuisance and a threat to their immediate moneymaking opportunities. Currently there is no left wing in US national politics.
1
I don't think that conservatives will be happy simply striking down Roe. That would merely make abortion illegal in half of the states. No, what conservatives, like Ross, really want is for it to be illegal in all 50. Once they turn the US into the Republic of Gilead, what will we do with all of the excess population? Well, we could start another war - always a winner with the Family Values crowd. Or, we could build massive prisons to warehouse the unwanted children. I didn't think conservatives would go for such a thing until just recently. I stand corrected.
A Republican dream!
19
Mr. Douthat,
As you suggest, the demise of the American woman's control over her own body and reproduction may well be at hand.
But understand that this means nothing to Trump. The only criteria that played any role in the decision to nominate Kavanaugh is his tilt in favor of the power of the Executive and the likelihood that in the coming case or cases that will decide whether the people have any recourse against the criminal and traitor currently in the Oval Office he will choose his party over his country.
12
I hear a lot of uninformed talk about Roe as if being pro-choice necessarily means supporting this decision. It doesn’t. For anyone who has actually studied the case, and understands its underpinnings, and is willing to look at it objectively, it’s really not that difficult to see that it was pure judicial legislation without much support from the constitution. Just read it - it’s chock full of powerful statements lacking substantive citation, as if the court is just making it up. Look, I’m pro-choice, but I strongly believe that Roe should be overturned. I’m joined by many liberal scholars who at least privately acknowledge the same. One may wish that the constitution has a broad right to privacy, or even a right of abortion, but it just doesn’t. Call it a flaw. Call it whatever. But it’s absolutely not the job of unelected judges to make new rights or new laws. There is a Congress for that. And a method to amend the constitution.
2
The power of extreme conservatives has to be at the apex. Ironically, the unprincipled Trump is President at the same time. My feeling is that independents, moderates, progressives and even Rinos will start having more election wins. We can only go backwards so far before we bounce forward into the 21st Century. I'll take a combo of responsible executive and legislative branches as the cornerstone to run the government. Supreme Court members, especially the conservatives, have no leeway to be activists.
These originalists have to believe Congress is allowed to write laws for the common good. (Don't they?)
3
The history of the Supreme Court when under conservative majorities, from the early 20th century to present, belies your optimism. Corporate personhood and the gutting of the VRA come immediately to mind.
3
The abortion issue doesn't affect me directly but I cannot imagine a more serious own goal than a Republican controlled attempt to mess with Roe. Even Ireland has just made a constitutional change to protect women's right to choose. For the US to head back into the past would produce uproar among women of all parties. Hard to believe the Republicans would be this stupid but they may well be.
8
Yes, the Federalist Society does have millions in its' corner. But far, far more Americans support the regulation of firearms, the right to choose, regulation of billionaires' influence on elections, federal oversight over states' voter suppression, federal environmental regulation, and federal regulation to ensure workers' rights.
Ross should feel good if his goal is to outlaw abortion - this will now happen in many states. However, I'm hopeful that the rise of this right-wing reactionary Court will once and for all serve to educate the majority of voters on the importance of their votes for both the President and the U.S. Senate.
5
As far as I'm concerned, we should live up to McConnell's standard, and there should be no appointments until after the voters speak in the mid-term election.
If McConnell felt it was appropriate to deny Obama his Presidential right to fill a vacant seat on the court, I would deny him and his party the right to fill a seat on the court.
But we have not the political clout to deny McConnell's dirty, stolen victory through the legitimate political process.
it's time for massive civil unrest; protests and work stoppages seem the order of the day.
19
Ross. You do not see the greater destruction the overturning of Roe v Wade will cause. It the Supreme Court is viewed as just another political institution, whose members are partisan hacks not impartial justices, it will lose all moral legitimacy and simply become another weapon in the destruction of American democracy. When, as is inevitable, the pendulum moves and the democrats are back in power there will be nothing to prevent them from increasing the number of justices to 11, 13 or even 15 and packing the court. Since the so called conservatives already have shown that stare decisis has no meaning they then can just reinstate Roe v Wade with impunity. I think perhaps Chief Justice Roberts does not want this to be his legacy.
20
Abortion, healthcare, privacy, civil rights, etc. will ultimately be decided by the people not the courts. Yes, the courts can be either a help or a hindrance depending on where the people sit, but in the long run the arc bends to the will of the people. And the people want more freedoms and more liberties, not less. We, The People have spoken and we want abortion rights, gay rights, marijuana rights, worker rights, and, yes, gun rights. In the short run the courts can run contrary to the will of the people, but in the long run just like Mother Nature, The People will have the last say, not the courts, and that The People say “give me more liberties and less institutional control”. And, ironically, a conservative court will make us all realize just that.
5
Back when Roe vs Wade was being decided, somebody asked a progressive why they didn't seek abortion reform via the democratic process instead of a judicial decree that was bound to be unpopular. The progressive said that Catholic Church was interfering with the democratic process. Yeah, I'm sure legislators in states like Alabama were really terrified of the Catholic Church. Was anybody really thinking things through back then?
Ross is reading tea leaves again, guessing at the future. Along the way he throws a brickbat or two. One thing he avoids with diligence is any sensible remark about why forcing birth should be divorced from what happens to the child born in dreadful circumstances. Or why some group of distant onlookers should have a say over the persons most deeply involved and aware of the consequences of such a decision.
33
The truth is, there are undoubtedly many avowedly pro-life Republican politicians who would prefer that Roe v. Wade not be overturned, because they know that there would be a massive backlash at the voting booth. Right now these politicians can use Roe v. Wade to gin up anger and contributions from their base. The dynamic is not the same on the pro-choice side. That would all change if Roe v. Wade were overturned. Considering that 13% of abortions are secured by evangelical Protestants (2014 Guttmacher Institute study), it's clear that even a considerable subset of evangelicals would like Roe v. Wade to stay in place. We'll see how many Republican politicians vote a straight pro-life position if Roe v. Wade goes.
27
Pretty shrewd column. It seems to me that Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned at some point in the relatively near future, and that abortion will become a matter of state regulation again. That means a woman won't be able to get an abortion in places like Texas and Alabama and Kansas, while in California, New York, and Massachusetts she will. Obviously the country is deeply divided on the issue; returning it to the states is better than having either of the extreme positions win a complete victory.
Equally obvious is that the advocates of "choice" will be enraged by the fact that women in some states won't be able to obtain an abortion without traveling to do so. But while that will undoubtedly constitute a hardship in some cases, society will adjust to the reality that there is no unlimited "right" to an abortion.
Personally, I favor unlimited access to abortion in the first trimester, with certain exceptions allowing it later in the pregnancy. But I'd like to see alternatives to abortion, from the morning after pill to carrying the baby to term followed by adoption, used in preference to abortion. Of course, as a man it's easier for me to pontificate on the subject. The consequences for me would be tangential rather than direct. But for better or worse these are my true feelings on the subject.
9
It really is a question of rights, not choice.
In no other circumstances does the law require one individual to bind her life to another. No one can be forced, by law, to donate a kidney or pint of blood or merely sign an agreement to prevent another from dying. No one advocates that the state be able to coerce us in that way. No one, that is, except the anti-abortion crowd.
You say so closely divide a question should be decided by the states. Say wring your hands a little that women in Texas and Alabama will have to travel to California or New York. That's a very abstract, macro view. The women affected are not statistics. Or shouldn't be.
There is a right to abortion. It's in the first amendment, in the establishment clause. The very question of where life begins, of the sanctity of life, is intrinsically religious. The right of a woman to live her life by her own lights, free from the imposition of religious beliefs by the state, is pervasive in the constitution.
By turning that right into a convenience, as you do, you make it an economic choice. She with money can travel to New York or Canada or England if need be. She without will have a baby. Do you think a baby is a convenience or inconvenience? No? Neither? Then how is having one or not having one a convenience? If you have a right to have a child, then surely you have a right not to.
12
Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful reply to my comment, but I can't agree that the Constitution guarantees the right to have an abortion.
It's true that if the issue devolves upon the states some women who want an abortion will be disadvantaged. They will either have to travel to get an abortion, or choose to have the baby and give it up. I'm not really wringing my hands about it. Since I don't accept that there's an inherent "right" to terminate a pregnancy, I'm not too disturbed about it. If abortion is that critical an issue for any particular woman, she can vote with her feet ahead of time and move to a state where abortion is legal. Of course there will be women who become, as it were, victims of circumstance (I feel I don't need to give examples here), but again, that's life.
@Jon Harrison: You say, "Equally obvious is that the advocates of 'choice' will be enraged by the fact that women in some states won't be able to obtain an abortion without traveling to do so." I won't be enraged. I'll feel sorry for those women who live the Red States, which are becoming more and more like Third World countries every day.
1
The only time people want to return a subject, in this case the forced-birth debate, to the democratic process is when they didn't like the decision and they believe they can win. Otherwise they will use the courts if they feel they can't win in the democratic process.
However that begs the question about what rights should be subject to the democratic process. Why are my rights subject to popular votes while your's are enshrined as self-evident? One of the purposes of our constitution was to present the tyranny of a minority by the majority. Remember the calls "to let the people vote" in regards to gay marriage? They made that plea to use "the democratic process" because they thought that they had the votes - else they used the courts.
9
Mr. Douthat, do you realize when you make reference the Federalist Society's "intellectually impressive work" the average person would roll their eyes if they ever read it. The haughtily justified legal contortions are generally a means to a political end. For example, in Bush v. Gore, equal protection was used as a basis to stop a recount and install a Republican president. In Citizens United v FEC, the First Amendment's freedom of speech was used to protect unlimited corporate spending in politics. I'll be curious to hear to the intellectually impressive constitutional basis that five men will use to control women's lives when Roe v. Wade is overturned.
94
True. If Citizens United were overturned, can anyone find a single person whose freedom of speech would be affected? No.
In reference to the Supreme Court, a commenter used the phrase, "tarnished its aura of legal objectivity."
When I was growing up in the 60's and learning about our government and politics, the Supreme Court was always seen as a bastion of safety and impartiality, unaffected by the mire and vagaries of politics. Justices were generally expected to keep their personal views out of the limelight. Obviously there were many exceptions to this, but for the most part I think they were considered trustworthy and unindebted to anyone except their knowledge and conscience. They were the final safety net for our democracy. Not quite sure when when I lost that feeling, if the "tarnishing" predated the Bork fight or if that's the first one I remember. Regardless, our country seems to have lost a vital part of our democratic system, and I don't know if we can ever get it back.
16
For me the tarnishment came with the Clarence Thomas hearings, where it was obvious that the candidate had committed a grave offense of blackmail and sexual harrassment, and was voted in anyway. The Supreme Court lost my trust at that time.
2
The Court will kill abortion by allowing states to regulate it out of existence. While not explicitly overruling “Roe v. Wade”, the decision will be rendered moot. These decisions will be 5-4.
In many states abortion will disappear completely. Right wingers will rejoice that they can once again control the bodies of women and impose their personal religious beliefs on others.
Over time, as religion declines (since it is seen by the young as a political adjunct of the GOP), the number of states allowing abortion will increase. This evolution probably won’t happen soon, but it will occur.
30
If women can lose their Constitutionally-protected rights so easily, and be thrown to the "mercy" of Republican-controlled state legislatures, then so too can other groups of Americans: gays and lesbians, and Latino and African Americans, for starters. The bedrock civil-rights laws that Americans have come to take for granted over the last fifty years? Mere paper in the wind, easily burnt the moment they land in state legislators' laps.
44
the imaginations of journalists are stirring up fear and dreadful scenarios. So easily? It's actually quite difficult to change precedent set by the Supreme Court and it's extremely rare.
Please continue the audacity of hope, and the equanimity of rational minds.
So easily? The campaign took 45 years, though of course progressives were oblivious to it for much of the time.
Where in the Constitution does it say a woman has a right to an abortion?
If Kavanaugh holds true to his prior statements regarding the importance of stare decisis, or following precedent, he has no choice but to largely affirm abortion rights.
9
The Republican desire to outlaw abortion runs counter to their claim to be the law and order party. The decline in crime in New York City in the 1990's was not the result of Mayor Giuliani's "zero-tolerance policy" and increased police presence. Crime went down all over the country. There is ample evidence to prove that legalized abortion beginning in 1973 eliminated the birth of children who would be neglected, living with single mothers in poverty, and potentially on the way to criminal activity. There is ample evidence to prove that abortion deters crime. Middle class, upper middle class, and upper class Americans will always find a way to get abortions. Only the poor and disenfranchised will give birth to more poor and disenfranchised children of all races, the most likely suspects to add to crime statistics. Republicans are not pro-life; they're pro-fetus. Once that fetus becomes a child they don't want to spend a nickel on feeding, sheltering, or educating it. As Barney Frank said, "For the GOP, life begins at conception and ends at birth."
72
Beautifully and succinctly expressed. Bull's eye!
3
I have always thought it unfortunate that Roe v. Wade was not decided on the basis of religious freedom. It is clear that opposition to abortion is based overwhelmingly on religion: "Our religion says when life begins, that there is a soul, that "ensoulment" begins at conception. You have to obey our religion whether you believe it or not. ". Americans should be free to decide whether they choose to follow these religious teachings. But today's s Court is more likely to take up the case of whether religious zealots have the right to burn heretics at the stake, if they sincerely believe that's the right thing to do.
37
"Religious freedom" was never a part of the Roe vs Wade decision. His opponents harp on religion because the decisions' actual reasoning is so unconvincing: at the time it was ridiculed as being in the "penumbra" of the Constitution.
...as opposed to based on science? That a human fetus is human life is scientific fact. Were even a blastula found on Mars, it would be the scientific discovery of the millennia. *Life* found on Mars!
The Pro-Life and Pro-Choice labels are a perfect example of how the mainstream media has been manipulated by the Right. Pro-Life implies that the opponents are what? Pro-Death? Anti-Abortion would not even be correct because many on the Pro-Choice side don’t promote or would ever abort a baby of their own. Many would like legal and less abortions and I would argue that the Right with their anti-poor and anti contraception polices are responsible for more abortions not less. No, I’m pro life and in favor of legal abortions with government help to plan pregnacies and more support for unwed mothers.
30
Doesn't being pro-life also necessarily, logically, humanely also require being pro the things that make life livable? In this case, things like good, accessible, affordable medical care for mothers and children, good, cheap, affordable, accessible day care for working parents,substantial parental leave as a matter of right? And taking a step back, if one is going to be both anti-abortion and somewhere between opposed and ambivalent about cheap, reliable, accessible contraception, shouldn't one have a coherent view bout how to change young adult views about sexuality?
Come on, Mr. Douthat, I'm an old leftie. I know all about being stridently against stuff, and how much harder it is to be for stuff when it's time to govern. But it's time, and we're waiting for some sign of real adult responsibility here!
47
And how soon after the Court overturns Roe V Wade will the empowered Congress do away with that "democratic debate" and enact a federal ban on all abortions, with a fine religious pen, upheld by the new Federalist Society Court?
I fear that the return to backroom abortions, women, and physicians, going to jail for their beliefs, and continued strife over the rights of women to control their own bodies and destinies will continue.
16
I respect Ross Douthat's right to oppose abortion, but I would like him to explain why he insists that a fertilized egg is a human being, a person, and a citizen, with rights under our 14th Amendment and our Constitution--rights that outweigh the rights of a pregnant woman. My definition of a human life differs from Douthat's, and allows for abortion embryos and fetuses in the early phase of pregnancy. I am happy to allow Mr. Douthat to practice his beliefs. But he is not willing to allow me to practice mine. Instead, he calls me and the millions of Americans who support abortion rights advocates of murder. I find his views intolerant of intellectual, religious, and political diversity.
190
Perhaps I can try: A fetus is a living, developing human, it's not debatable. It's a scientific fact. As liberals often say, forte entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts: your "own definition" doesn't work here. Even a blastula found on Mars would be touted as the scientific discovery of a millennia. Life on Mars discovered!! Of course, the weighing of the rights of the mother vs. the fetus does carry weighty moral, ethical, and religious considerations. The right to experience a lifetime vs. the right to prevent the life (for sometimes very compelling, and sometimes less so, reasons), is indeed a difficult question.
@Chris Rasmussen: My Jewish faith holds that personhood begins at birth. Ross Douthat has a constitutional right to believe otherwise; he does not have a right to use US law to force me to conform to his religion.
4
A man and woman can create a physical body when they mate but they cannot create the soul or spirit, which is the part that makes us human. That soul or spirit comes from God. At what time that soul enters the embryo or fetus is not known, which makes the issue so divisive. In the book of Genesis, if you take it literally, Adam is fully formed before God breathes His spirit into him.
This SCOTUS moment isn’t about a systematic grooming of candidates. It’s about the blocking of Merrick Garland. And president who lost the popular vote. And now changing the court system because of a representative system that does not reflect the will of the people.
The will of the people can only be repressed for so long before the backlash takes hold. And it will be severe.
47
"The will of the people can only be repressed for so long before the backlash takes hold. And it will be severe."
I wish you were right, but I fear we are witnessing the boiling of a frog. By the time we wake up it will be too late.
2
Mr. Douthat's concluding phrase about "the groundswell for Barrett," is further reminder that the Federal courts have become a political branch of government. Douthat predicts political war if the U.S. Supreme Court does not overturn Roe and Casey. But there will also be political war if it does.
37
Would a strict constructionist decision by SCOTUS to overturn Roe based on the Tenth Amendment open the doors for the Blue States to go in a federalist way towards a de facto kind of separatism? From reading many of the comments lately it would seem the Blues would like to cut off the welfare that flows to the Reds. Could it be done legislatively? The shoe would be on the other foot when it comes to state's rights. The way the country is divided combined with the inherent weaknesses in our electoral system, resulting in rule by the minority, leads one to ponder solutions such as this as a way out for progressive states, short of secession. Any constitutional scholars out there?
14
" Abortion rights" is a short and misleading phrase. For instance, Ireland just legalized the possibility of abortions, and will probably move to allow abortion for 14 weeks. Louisiana just passed a bill to limit abortion to 15 weeks. And Norway allows abortion on demand only for 12 weeks.
In other words, the US, allowing abortion for demand for 24 weeks is the outlier.
I hope that abortion on demand will be limited in most or all US states for 12 weeks, and attempts to limit it further, or to expand 12 weeks to longer, will cease.
Too much of our law has been taken out of the democratic process. The people need to take back their power and ask the SC to stick to the constitution.
but "the people" do not know what they want, quarrel with each other, and so the courts step in. The court seems to have been liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues.
Is THAT what we want?
3
"but "the people" do not know what they want, quarrel with each other, and so the courts step in."
That's not what happened. Pro-aborts were losing on the democratic front, so they used the courts to circumvent democracy. People knew perfectly well what they wanted. As for "quarrelling", that's better referred to as "democratic debate".
1
How interesting then that a Republican court recognized the right.
Why is it always a male that comments on women's rights and opines on what he would accept? I don't really care what you want. When you start taking care of the product of taking away our rights, then maybe I'll listen to you about your " hope and feely".
3
Mr Douthat reflects his ignorance on regulations and Roe vs Wade. The States have passed over 400 regulations restricting abortion since Roe vs. Wade was passed. The federal courts have been powerless to stop those laws from passing allowing some states like Mississippi to severely restrict abortions. Those states, with the approval of voters, will probably continue putting more restrictions around it. The Supreme Court ultimately will have much less influence on abortion than Mr Douthat indicated; misinformation he readily distorts. He needs a primer on abortion rights in the States before he acts as though he knows what he's talking about.
16
If the Democrats regain control of Congress and the Presidency, they should enact legislation expanding the Supreme Court from 9 to 11 members in order to restore the balance there would have been if the Republicans, acting without principle and contrary to precedent, had not refused to vote on President Obama's nominee to replace Justice Scalia.
15
This doesn't make sense. This would require a Constitutional amendment -- a very involved process., including ratification by 2/3 of the states. Anyway, Franklin Roosevelt tried it, and it wasn't even close.
Not correct, Boston. The size of SCOTUS is determined by Congress. It's not in the Constitution. FDR's failure to pack the Court established the norm that the Court can't be packed.
Arguably that norm was in the blast radius of the nuclear option. If Roe is overturned, I can easily see the Dems campaigning on packing the Court.
That’s untrue. There is nothing magic about the number nine. It is nowhere enshrined, and is an increase from previous Courts.
And Roosevelt was successful. Owen Roberts knew that SCOTUS was in peril and switched his vote. And history was altered.
Anti-abortion voters have been waiting for this moment for 40 years. And they have voted consistently for people who would reverse Roe v Wade, winning a huge portion of government representation by very narrow margins. In some cases, losing margins.
In spite of the totality of our conservative to right wing representation, half of this country is neither conservative, nor right wing, and remain unrepresented.
So, for this Justice, for this nomination, we have traded away healthcare, contraception, union protections, corporate checks and balances, a vast number of environmental protections, net neutrality, banking protections, and frankly our position in global trade along with our global dignity. But, we have the Justices to overturn abortion.
I live in a country in which I have no voice. I will keep voting, though. Anyone out their want to join me, even of the candidates are not the best ever? Because the anti-abortion voter is out there looking for another single issue to use as an excuse to unravel every progress since Teddy Roosevelt.
64
In most advanced nations, the electorate debated abortion, decided which forms were acceptable, and came up with laws that had widespread support. In the US, the courts gave all the power to the pro-abortion side and then removed the whole issue from democratic control, making compromise impossible. To get their voice back, opponents had to battle for 40 years. All those gains that the writer talked about were collateral damage, and I blame the progressives who refused to compromise.
2
As a pro-life Democrat (yeah, we exist), I have never felt that overturning Roe was the solution to abortion. Providing birth control, sex education and support for the parents/children go a much longer way in reducing abortions and unintended pregnancies. What if, instead of focusing on Roe, pro-life folks started focusing on what we could do to reduce abortions to the absolute minimum number for medical necessities? See Colorado's effort against Teen Pregnancy NYTimes article July 2015 for what can be done about teen pregnancy. Why can't something similar be done to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies? It boggles my mind that some pro-life conservatives are also against the most effective forms of birth control and against sex education.
115
Why does it boggle your mind? I don’t agree with your position but it seems well-considered and practical. As a reproductive rights advocate, I think “pro-life” better applies to me.
You are genuinely interested in the women whose reproductive health is a stake. The right-wing just wants to punish them for having sex. That’s why they don’t support birth control.
2
Because they are hypocrites. They seem more intent on punishing women for having sex than in taking sensible steps to reduce the rates of unintended pregnancy. Their lack of concern for post-birth babies shows they are not pro-life at all.
2
Roe vs Wade is not a solution. But it is the democratic thing to do, far better than an elite committee forcing their views on the whole country.
Gentle downward drift?! I guess it’s easy to muse that way when you are convinced your rights are secure. As SCOTUS has already done a “good” job of making a theocracy a real possibility and is on the move to destroy workers and consumer rights along with women’s rights, that drift seems more dangerous to the rest of us. Women, in particular, are at risk.
At risk too is the basic principle, albeit Imperfectly followed, that no one is above the law. Sadly, I venture a guess that commitments have already been made to overturn Roe...even if that means doing it sub Rosa..along with much worse for women and making sure that any move to indict Trump will be crushed and even the impeachment powers of the Congress may be curtailed.
I have no illusions about the nominee. He’s a Trump man and will vote like one. We should all be very afraid even those who think they are safe.
41
" making sure that any move to indict Trump will be crushed and even the impeachment powers of the Congress may be curtailed. "
Why would conservatives do that? Once Roe vs Wade is overturned, they will have no reason to put up with Trump.
"And ....if another Republican appointee writes another opinion that limits but still preserves a constitutional right to terminate unborn human lives...."
Ross, words matter. By picking the most histrionic ones and ignoring the First Amendment that protects Americans "from" religious approaches to secular laws, you aren't seeing the abortion issue" the same way the public does--a public that prefers keeping Roe vs Wade by a two to one margin.
Ross, I don't get your inconsistency. It's only women's privacy that under attack from your normal GOP "small government" free-thinking approach.
If, say, you applied the same logic of using religion to justify intruding on a woman's privacy, they why don't you go after all the precedents lon the environment, corporations, and healthcare access? The Catholic church has quite a record of statements in favor of protecting those hot-button issues.
No, it's just the women thing, and the privacy thing, and a Catholic convert's fervor to roll back the clock on women's freedoms.
It's hypocritical, and you know it.
161
@ChristineMcM: This has nothing to do with logic. You nailed it when you used the word "histrionic." Ross Douthat believes for some reason that women should bear large numbers of children. He's frustrated and angry that Trump didn't nominate the fertility queen. That's all.
3
The abortion issue concerns the interface of moral and religious law with positive law--law backed up by the state's use of power. This issue is complex within the context of democratic pluralism.
Do Pro-Life voters fully realize that they live alongside people with differing values and beliefs? That they are citizens within a representative democracy? Have they seriously reflected on the prudential issues associated with the interface of law and morality in such a context? Have Pro-Life voters actually thought through the likely consequences of heavy handed restrictions on access to abortion or the re-criminalizing of abortion?
If Pro-Life supporters are extremely heavy handed in imposing restrictions or succeed in re-criminalization:
(1) What levels and types of resistance and social discord might we expect?
(2) What degree of criminal activity--"back alley" abortions, etc.--should we anticipate?
(3) What manner and quantity of policing would be necessary?
(4) How much tax-payer funding would be required for policing and for prosecuting offenders?
(5) What further levels of disrespect for legal authority and for lawfulness in general might arise?
When Prohibition of alcoholic beverages became the law of the land, it soon became obvious that the foregoing questions had not been addressed. The consequences were horrendous.
Whatever one's own ethical beliefs concerning abortion, doesn't prudence demand that we ask and reflectively respond to the foregoing questions?
17
I am a woman in my sixties who is Catholic and pro-life. I know full well , as I did fifty years ago that religious views can have a profound influence on one 's position on abortion. I decided as a teen that I would never have an abortion but at the same time, I wouldn't impose my religious faith on others. That doesn't mean that I don't believe we should do all we can to prevent abortion including modest restrictions (I.e. limiting late-term abortion). It also means that I will freely articulate my belief that abortion is taking a life. It's these positions that puts me at odds with today's Democratic Party.
6
The most effective means of reducing the number of abortions has been known for a very long time and it is not anti-abortion legislation. It is good sex education and access to birth control. Countries that have these have the lowest per capita abortion rates.
2
No - anti abortionists are totally obsessed. They don’t care. Their way or the highway. Authoritarian parents. They need to find their own country and democrats need to vote.
2
"...if Kavanaugh proves aggressive (and his appellate record suggests he might be), and even if he frequently joins Clarence Thomas on the court’s right flank, it’s easy to imagine the prudent Roberts becoming still more cautious and consensus-oriented in response."
Not really.
As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wrote in "Conservative Judicial Activism: The Politicization of the Supreme Court
Under Chief Justice Roberts"
"A troubling and unmistakable trend has developed over several decades, and accelerated in recent years, of extreme judicial activism within the conservative bloc of Justices on the Supreme Court—reaching a new pinnacle under Chief Justice John Roberts. The Court’s recent activism has advanced a pro-corporate agenda at the
expense not only of injured Americans, but also of fundamental democratic institutions. The Court has exposed our elections to corruption and eroded fundamental protections, such as access to the ballot box. It has weakened the role of the civil jury, a constitutional institution intended to ensure equality before the law and an important check in our unique American system of
separated powers. The price of the Court’s corporate agenda has been high."
35
@Matt
Excellent (cup worthy) comment and I wholeheartedly concur. It would seem corporations will soon outnumber people. (considering SCOTUS interpretations)
7
Ross, the problem with overturning Roe is that it solves little while leading to a volatile national future.
First off, it might well lead to highly exacerbated tensions between the fifty states as the rhetoric employed by the pro-choice and pro-life sides gets completely out of control.
I can easily imagine evangelicals ramping up their criticism of pro choice states - "why does New York and California allow women to murder their babies?" I can just as easily imagine pro choice voters in New York and California responding "why are my tax dollars still going to support your ignorant, under-educated, backwater state?" And lest we forget, it is the pro-choice states that pay the bills here in America.
Secondly, I can easily imagine violence erupting within pro-choice states, as inflamed but marginalized evangelicals act out their completely hypothetical righteousness - and then find their entire community portrayed as collective pariahs, as destabilizing to a community as any jihadist.
Thirdly, reversing Roe will not end abortion in America - but it will lead to more improvised abortions in red states and more well-to-do women traveling to pro-choice states to have an abortion - which will be great for blue state tourism but so great for the State of our Union.
Nothing good comes of this - least of all for our Union.
93
I am consistently struck by the hyper-focus on Roe v Wade when a nominee for the Supreme Court is put forward. With all due respect to both sides, there are far more significant issues which come before the court. Yet Roe has crystallized two truths for me. First, the activist court that set new precedent on a divisive issue has led over to time, to place the court in the center of politics, and tarnished its aura of legal objectivity. Second, legal solutions are much more an orderly (what is permissible) in society than about a good (moral) society. The moral conversation about the good society is far more likely in my view to bridge the chasm that the culture wars have created. Such a conversation would begin with an open-minded inquiry into the multi faceted reality of a terminated pregnancy and its moral implications.
4
Roe vs Wade is a very significant ruling for all citizens of the USA, but in particular women. The ruling emphasizes the right of the individual who is pregnant over the religious views of many religious communities in our country. Many wars in the history of man on earth have been fought between religious parties with differing views. Our government wields tremendous power. That power should not be directed against an individual who wants to obtain an abortion. Who wants to exercise their individual right of choice for themselves on a personal level. It violates our right to Freedom of worship by ruling for religious communities who want to foist their religious view of abortion on other individuals who are not members of their church.
21
You have to be a man if you believe that the right of more than half the population to keep the government’s hands off of them is not the most significant issue.
4
So how is your rationale about abortion (that the government should not foist its power on an individual) any different from that of the Gun Lobby regarding AR 15's and the creep of government power? The idea of freedom and choice cuts both ways, without a moral framework plus serious and empathic engagement around which to enter a dialogue, choice and freedom can become the mantra for all kinds of behavior.
Ireland just voted overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban by 66.4% to 33.6%. The Irish Prime Minister said after the vote: 'It's also a day when we say no more. No more to doctors telling their patients there's nothing can be done for them in their own country, no more lonely journeys across the Irish Sea, no more stigma as the veil of secrecy is lifted and no more isolation as the burden of shame is gone.'
If Douhat is right and the rights to abortion are left to the states, we will face women (who can afford it) in states that ban abortion forced to take lonely journeys, and the rest relying on other, more dangerous, means. But, like the Irish, citizens will eventually say 'no more.'
116
Perhaps missing the obvious point that abortions around the world are limited even when they are legal.
In Ireland women can only access a termination within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
In the USA, it is typically ranging from 20 to 24 weeks.
In Ireland abortions are permitted in cases of fatal fetal abnormality. Beyond 12 weeks abortions would only be permitted where there is a risk to a woman's life or of serious harm to the physical or mental health of a woman, up until the 24th week of pregnancy.
That is completely false, SteveRR. 91% of abortions take place in the 12 weeks. Later ones are when something has gone very wrong in the pregnancy.
The more serious question for this candidate is not whether he would uphold Roe vs. Wade (although it is a very close second), but rather would he condone a President thumbing his nose at the law/Constitution by ignoring subpoenas and pardoning whomever he wishes, including himself ?
Of course, there will be no direct questioning by republicans, and obfuscation of the highest order by the candidate. It will NOT be an easy confirmation, because there is going to be sustained pressure and protests. It will carry through to November, where republicans will pay a serious price at the polls.
The precedent that republicans have and are setting for confirmation hearings (at all levels) is now 50+1 regardless of the candidate and what they might do.
You will reap what you sow.
70
As a fervent anti-Trumpist, I find Kavanaugh to be solidly center-right, and reassuringly grounded.
The outrage machine can probably only hurt its electoral cause if it goes to extraordinary lengths to block the nomination. That may well be Trump's underlying tactic.
4
As usual right wing branding is a lie. There is no "pro-life" there is but a forced-birth movement.
A non-disingenuous pro life movement would care about the things that are required to sustain life such as clean water and air, health care, a living wage for parents, family friendly working conditions, education,
What the forced-birth movement, tied to Republican ideals, results in is, "There, we fixed it for you. You are required to give birth by order of the state, however the state will not support and defend your right to life thereafter supporting the interests of those who would sap it from you and your children."
246
Except forcible rape there is no way for a forced birth.
"If you’re expecting a broad “conservative revolution” as opposed to a gentle rightward drift, it will take “a sixth or seventh conservative justice” to deliver it."
Well yes, if they take the WHOLE Court, they'll be able to move more radically. If they're awaiting that, we are probably safe.
9
The sum of the parts are greater than the whole. A once great nation -- the U.S.A. of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies (foreign policy excluded) -- is crumbling under the weight of numerous events that, individually, seem like major irritations but that, seen as a whole, threaten the very fabric of a nation founded on the principles of freedom, justice and equality.
This isn't a "gentle rightward drift" but a lurch to Robber Baron dictatorship that has taken most Americans and foreign observers by surprise. I saw this coming in 1980 and my warnings were met with scorn. Nobody's laughing any longer.
If the U.S.A. can descend voluntarily towards Fascism, what chance do emerging nations, including mine, have?
194
You hit the nail on the head. All of what's happening in the U.S. is basically a case of some rich people deciding they'd prefer to live more like rich people in Brazil, Pakistan, or the Philippines (i.e. with impunity and without accountability) than live like rich people in Germany, Sweden, or Canada (still very well, but within limits).
The implications of this are huge. Even Brazil's flawed leaders know that their country is too socially stratified and riven by internal problems to project any sort of military power overseas. All the countries where people view the U.S. as the essential guarantor of their peace and security--the European democracies, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, & Taiwan--need to understand that Donald Trump is a symptom and not a cause of America's own long-term process of "Brazilification."
Some people who resisted the first onslaught of globalization in the 1990s appeared to get it, but they were a minority. They understood that "globalization" meant "Americanization," and that "Americanization" unfortunately didn't mean anything good or attractive for members of the non-wealthy majority. What it meant was a decline in the quality of modern life's necessities--publicly financed mass transportation, health care and insurance, and education especially at the primary and secondary levels.
A palace built upon a dung heap--when rich people decide they want to live in that kind of a world, then the world's people are in trouble.
28
Don’t lose hope. Ireland just voted by referendum to legalize abortion, and did the same for marriage equality a couple of years back. If a country once so dominated by Catholic dogma can move forward and embrace the ideals of equality, respect and tolerance, it can happen anywhere.
I just sincerely hope with every fibre of my being that the opposite does not happen in the USA.
3
You have the benefit of not making the same mistakes. You can write constitutions that more accurately reflect the modern world
2
I think we should look at the Supreme Court like a team. When a new member comes in every other member has to adjust. This does not seem to me to be a radical choice. There might be one or two ideologues on the Court, but by and large they are all conservative in the sense that they see themselves as part of a team whose job it is to interpret the Constitution. Great legal minds tend to pull toward the middle, toward non- radical interpretations of the Constitution and keeping intact precedence.
1
Get religion out of my private life, Mr. Douthat.
Now.
426
I wish I could recommend this twice.
Douthat may not realize it, but this kind of creepy religious attempt to control our lives is leading many of us to despise religion.
5
Thank you!
2
Reversing Roe and leaving the issue to states will increase the cost of abortions in states where they are illegal, because women will have to go to where they are legal. People with enough money to raise a child will also have enough money to end a pregnancy. Once again, money talks and those without enough of it are the ones who suffer. People with money can afford to oppose abortion publicly and obtain one if needed privately; how many of them do this, we do not know and have no good way to find out.
This is a satisfactory solution for those who like a public facade of morality even if the reality is different. Jesus hated that sort of thing, but organized Christianity often loves it.
87
Suppose that at some point the Court returns control over abortion to the states. Those states that effectively nullify the right of women to choose will in 10-20 years relegate themselves to economic backwaters. Corporations that operate at the interstate and international level will abandon those states except as sites for local outlets.
Roe v. Wade is favored by more than 60% of current adults. Look at the surge in acceptance of LGBT individuals and their rights in just the past 20 years. Notice the widespread super majorities in favor of more regulation of firearms. Notice the public's demand for protection of the environment. And so on.
The clamor against modernity has gotten more shrill and odious as its adherents shrink as a share of the populace. That shrinking minority is already overplaying its hand as it attempts to impose its will on the majority. Peak Hubris is at hand.
261
That's occurred to me as well.
We thought Indiana and NC had fireworks with their pro-conservative churches/anti-gay law, imagine the backlash when a right to privacy is gone - sweeping away Roe and Lawrence v Texas, the birth control access cases, etc.
Just as states still have anti-abortion laws on their books, 13 of the 14 states which had sodomy laws struck down by Lawrence still have them on their books, 15 years later, despite repeated legislative attempts to repeal them.
Why? Because they were waiting for today.
Be careful what you wish for - the states that make a medical decision criminal and make criminals of a gay couple civilly legally married for years, will destroy their communities and economy in an instant.
I also wonder, if Roe is struck down what do conservative pols do to rile their voters; xenophobia and racism are all they have left.
If you live in NY or CA then you do have a voice for the many liberal policies legislated and enacted there.
Peak hubris is good. I also like "death throes".
1
I was a teenager in Michigan in 1972 when legalized abortion was put to a referendum vote. After months of public debate, it was defeated, albeit narrowly. A few months later, Roe v. Wade was decided, rendering moot Michigan's referendum. I believe Michigan would have voted to legalize abortion within a few more years, and the decision would have been accepted with comparative good grace by those opposed to abortion, because at least it would have been decided fairly and democratically. Roe's legacy is a bitterly divided country because those who oppose abortion- and there are many- never got a say in the decision to legalize it.
11
Those who oppose abortion rights aren't going to stop with overturning Roe and letting states decide. They don't want to debate the issue. They want to outlaw it, in all cases, everywhere.
16
What do you mean, those who oppose it never got a say? Obviously the case was won by Roe, but Wade got his chance to brief it and argue it, not to mention all the amicus briefs filed in the case.
2
Sadly, the sentiment that the “decision would have been accepted with comparative good grace by those opposed to abortion, because at least it would have been decided fairly and democratically” is not true. Oregon put it’s assisted suicide law on the ballot for a popular vote. The same groups that fight against abortion lobbied hard to defeat the initiative, but lost. Three years later, these same groups succeeded in putting a measure to repeal the assisted suicide act on the ballot. They lost again, by an even wider margin. If one holds the religious belief that assisted suicide and abortion are grave sins, and God will hold you to account for not trying to stop others from committing these sins, no amount of fair, democratic referenda will matter. So-called pro life groups are still trying to overturn Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act.
1
Our founders decided to be secular for a very good reason - to save us from ourselves. We should continue the tradition.
203
It is no accident that Trump's pick, the devout Kavanaugh, puts yet another Catholic conservative on the court, along with Alito, Roberts, Thomas. For the Catholic church has been the most consistently adamant against birth control - and women's rights generally.
Dianne Feinstein was right in questioning Barrett on making dogma her priority - and the issue ought to come up again with Kavanaugh.
10
The right to an abortion was firmly in place at the time of the founding of this country. It shouldn't be subject to the democratic process. Should the right to worship as you see fit be turned over to the democratic process? The Founders believed, "In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights." Federalist 51. In our federal system, a woman's pre-existing right to an abortion should be treated no differently than a person's pre-existing right to freely worship. If conservatives really believe in limited government, they'd leave Roe v. Wade alone since the decision recognizes - and there's NO argument to the contrary - a pre-Revolutionary, historical right protected like every other civil right by the Constitution.
47
I disagree. Oh, Trump’s hyper-conservative base may have certain expectations of Kavanaugh, but on this issue I doubt that it’s a slam-dunk, or anything even close.
Trump was never going to nominate another Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or indeed anyone who was NOT a reliable conservative. Among the choices assembled, clearly Kavanaugh was the most judicial in temperament and least likely to vote religious tenets. His acceptance statement made clear what while he is both an originalist and a textualist, he also believes in respecting judicial precedent – and I believe him. Note that Roe is a judicial precedent; and quite possibly the most brilliant judicial compromise solving, under the law at least, an intractable confrontation of fundamental interests in our history.
You don’t vacate such a balanced compromise lightly. Some believe that reversing Roe and Casey simply will toss this contentious issue back to the states to “return the abortion debate to the democratic process”. But the democratic process never WAS able to resolve the matter– what was happening until 1973 and Roe was that it meant one thing to be an American in Mississippi and quite another to be an American in New York, on the very basic issue of women’s reproductive rights. It took the Supreme Court to define and impose a general solution.
There have been quite a few pieces lately celebrating the anniversary of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which conferred citizenship …
10
… on ANYONE born or naturalized in the U.S., forbidding states to curtail the rights under law that accrue to that status. While ground-breaking and necessary, the 14th Amendment still was only partially successful for the better part of a century, until the SCOTUS ruled on its landmark race cases. There are some issues TOO publicly contentious for legislatures to solve – specifically for Congress to solve. Abortion and race clearly are the poster-children for such issues on which a Supreme Court MUST rule if we are to cohere as ONE nation. However, note as well that a union’s rights to compel dues used for ideological political purposes from members and non-members who disagree with those ideological positions is NOT one of those fundamental issues.
I’m not at ALL sure that Kavanaugh, a thoughtful jurist who interned for Anthony Kennedy, will be that quick to overturn Roe. Expectations need to be moderated until we find out; and may need to be permanently adjusted. I for one fervently hope that this will be the case on this issue.
12
"I for one fervently hope that this will be the case on this issue."
But, if not, whatcha gonna do? EMBRACE THE HORROR. Today's comment captures perfectly Richard Luettgen's fundamental failing as a prognosticator, as well as an analyst. He's all in for hitching his (and our) wagon to Trump when it comes to tax cuts and deregulation, but he's just hopey-changey when it comes to the hot button social issues. Because in these he prefers to live and frolic among the liberals. Richard Luettgen mistakenly imagined that Trump would "break the ice" and thaw our frozen politics by being non-ideological. What he neglected to account for was Trump's hyper-narcissism. Trump, in his curdled core, may be neither liberal or conservative, but he's addicted to being the winner and the only way for him to do that is to align with the right wing religious zealots. The evangelicals got what they paid for (with their souls, no doubt). Richard didn't and when he wakes from his small government fever dream he's going to be shocked. Embrace that!
4
@Richard Luettgen: If Roe v Wade is overturned, it will be a political disaster for the Republican party. If Roe v Wade isn't overturned, the Evangelicals will turn on Trump. It's a lose-lose for the GOP.
While I have often disagreed with Mr. Douthat, I have rarely challenged his sincerity or honesty. But when he argues that conservatives, presumably including himself, want to "return the abortion debate to the democratic process," his pious words reek of hypocrisy. Douthat has never concealed his strong opposition to abortion, so his endorsement of the "democratic process" hinges on his belief that a large number of states would ban the procedure.
If his prediction proves correct, and the SC overturns Roe, those states which ban abortions will probably witness a resurgence of unsafe operations, accompanied by an increase in deaths among pregnant women. Laws which defy public opinion in a democracy do not command much respect.
261
Red State women will travel to Blue States for abortions. Or they'll use the internet to obtain medications, which is common practice in Catholic countries where abortion is illegal and abortion rates are among the highest in the world. Despite all the anti-abortion movement's determined efforts to obstruct access to abortion since Roe was decided, millions of American women still undergo the procedure. Even killing doctors, bombing clinics and making terroristic threats hasn't worked. Women who want to end pregnancies find ways to do it. They always have, and they always will. The Supreme Court, no matter how conservative, won't change that.
3
It will be good for the prison business. Already a woman in Indiana is in prison for taking an abortion pill after the 20 week ban. The fetus was aged somewhere between 20-24 weeks.
3
It would be a switch for Ross to believe in the “democratic process”. What’s next? A belief in common sense and fact and statistics???
3
One of the issues which most conservatives, or, many liberals of the Democratic party, also swallow during times when Democrats have a plurality and a President, making the error that having the apointments to the court is the same as the "keys to the kingdom". In fact, having a long lasting, often powerfully one sided majority on the court-like the "Warren Court" in the 50's- 70's, which had justices-once thought conservative from before the FDR administration, now become liberals in new spots, makes lazy thinkers of too many party faithful. Many women-after Roe V. Wade began to take it as not merely settled "law" but as a legally binding constitutional right! In fact, it is a state issue in the worst times, and only became fodder for the court because it was an accepted case at precisely the right time. Just as NYC cabbies on N-S avenuesmaintain a certain speed so they 'keep the light'-never going too fast-or slow-and so, get where they're going more swiftly. For the very reason it now is seen as a "right" and not a law making the operation legal in a couple of states by millions: equally many millions of ultra conservatives are now willing to expend their entire lives in the effort to undo one or all of these laws.
It ought to be remembered that there will be some blowback any all conservative court may now take, seemingly without recall. In this case-ultimate power is only for a while-not forever- Justices being men and not God's representatives.
2
When you talk about promises "coming due," there is an implication of a cost to be paid. That's appropriate, because two thirds of Americans do not want Roe v Wade overturned. if the conservative legal movement pays the bill they owe to pro-life voters by overturning Row v Wade, then it may cost conservatives at the polls.
It is the nature of our two-party democracy that when one side gains full control of the government, they tend to sow the seeds of their own defeat by overreaching the boundaries of popular sentiment on behalf of their base. A supreme court that reverses Roe v Wade could very well be the catalyst for a backlash against the party of Trump.
112
There is no may cost conservatives - it will cost conservatives - it will completely wipe them out as a political force for generations.
How is overturning Roe and sending it back to the States going to help? If a woman doesn't have a constitutional right (state or federal) to security of the person and the right to privacy how will any pro-choice "law" withstand a constitutional challenge by the anti-choice movement that will never give up the cause. Without constitutional protection women are merely the property of right-wing and religious politics. How long before the zygote has constitutional protection and the onslaught of nightmare laws against women that will thereafter be enacted. First we take away your choice, then we're coming for your birth control.
309
I'm not totally clear on it myself, but the idea is that if the Supreme Court rules that the states can enact their own laws regulating abortion, then there will no longer be any further constitutional challenges, because precedent will make the Supreme Court reject any further cases on the grounds that abortion is now a state issue.
12
Sending this or any other issue to the states to decide--creates and institutionalizes inequality. We've seen this in states that failed to support the ACA and rejected federal dollars to support their citizens in need of Medicaid support. What happens when people in these states sue to secure equality? Surely the Supremes can't be so ivory-tower isolated not to see the impact.
15
The Canadian Supreme Court ruled in1988 that the entirety of the section of the law concerning abortion to be invalid because it violated Section 7 the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that”Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of the person, and the right not to be deprived thereof, except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”
The Court held that creating barriers for women to access to such medical procedures violated their fundamental rights under Section 7 of “the Charter”. Canadians are fortunate to have had a Supreme Court that has generally defended our fundamental rights as citizens, unlike Americans, whose highest court are too partisan to attend to defending Americans against the predations over overweening governmental and corporate power.
16
So lives are in the balance (either women or babies, depending on your point of view), and Mr. Douthat's biggest worry is the political unity of the Conservative movement. At least we now know what his priorities are.
213
Mr Douthat, I think you will be surprised, once Roe v Wade is in serious jeopardy, and people - especially women - have a chance to take that in - the backlash will be stronger than you would think looking at polling. A lot of people don't like abortion. But when it comes down to decisions in their own families, a lot of them would like to make their own choice. Not to mention that the choices families make about reproduction and end of life issues is often considerably more nuanced than it appears the evangelical literature.
354
Haiku,
You may have a point. Once, in the ancient years, I had a right wing acquaintance whose daughter became pregnant. He asked me for help in arranging an abortion. The Parish Priest never knew.
Yet, in consideration, I firmly believe this man never voted for a Democrat in his life.
3
Casey did NOT "limit Roe’s ambit but basically uphold its vision". Roe told women that they had a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy during the first three months if they so chose. Casey eliminated that right and said that the State could prevent the termination of a pregnancy AT ANY POINT if the foetus was "viable", and the rationale for doing so was explicitly because medical advances had made the Roe trimester framework moot.
Medicine will continue to push back the date of viability, ultimately to the moment of conception. So Roe is essentially already dead--Casey made it clear that there is no point during a pregnancy earlier than which a woman has an unfettered right to make her own choice.
Few people on the left (of whom I count myself a member ) appear to understand this. Because of Casey, the Roe battle has already been lost, all of the current media coverage notwithstanding.
We need to be prepared to fight for an unencumbered right to terminate a pregnancy during the early stages--which is what Roe was truly about. Given Casey, that will take additional legislation or a Constitutional amendment. Sadly, in the current and foreseeable political climate, that seems impossible.
25
Well, you are sure optimistic. At this point, any fetus younger than 21 weeks gestation cannot survive, no matter how aggressive the intervention. Fetuses between 21 and 23 weeks gestation are unlikely to survive (between 17 and 39% chance of survival) even with medical intervention. Actually, there are less than ten surviving children known in the world who were born less than 22 weeks into their gestation. Even artificial human uteri are highly unlikely to be effective to incubate fetuses younger than 24 weeks gestation, so babies will continue to need a woman’s womb to survive well into the second trimester. Casey is still applicable, and will be applicable for some time to come.
11
I’m a lawyer. Casey upheld Roe. There is no viability before 24 weeks, and all the medical progress in the world isn’t going to change that.
7
In vitro fertilization and use of a surrogate is already happening...
If these conservative justices claim to be originalists or better yet, reading only the words of the Constitution, something Scalia did not do in the Heller case, why would not a woman's right to have power over her own body fall within her 10th amendment powers that are reserved to the people?
Why ought states have power over a woman's body after the 13th amendment outlaws slavery? To force a woman to carry a fetus or baby to term against her will is the state taking control over her body for nine months. Is that not involuntary servitude?
449
Beautifully stated!
3
It's not that cut and dry. The baby in her body is another human being so the states are looking out for that, as yet, unborn but still a human person.
"Why would not a woman's right to have power over her own body fall within her 10th amendment powers that are reserved to the people?"
The answer would be obvious to anyone taking stock of both sides of the abortion debate seriously. For abortion opponents, the fetus has, at some level and to some extent, rights as well (i.e., the "right to life"). When rights come into conflict they must be balanced, and that balancing usually comes about through public policy, subject to judicial oversight.
Even in Roe itself, those rights were balanced, which is why third trimester abortions were heavily restricted even then. An overturn of Roe overturns the concept of a Federally-protected right to abort (under the guise of medical privacy), but doesn't change the fact that there's *already a balancing taking place*, and so pointing at the 10th Amendment and throwing your hands up is missing the point.
Roe remains the gold standard of judicial arbitrariness, even as science has moved on since the 1970s. If there's a specific policy or expression of rights desired, it should come through the ballot box. If it conflicts -- judicially -- with the purported rights of the fetus, make it a Constitutional Amendment. If you don't have the votes, get them.
Regardless, the left and the right seem to now both agree that if there's Something That Matters, a SCOTUS victory that has the effect of enabling a policy is not the end of the story.
Freedom of religion in America.
It includes the freedom to live and think and learn and love WITHOUT IT.
The church has long been firmly entrenched in American politics, all the while claiming tax-free status. No one is allowed to question their motives or operations.
How long are Americans going to tiptoe around this issue? Atheists and agnostics are the new silent majority in America.
558
Maybe so , but I will now admit that my youthful girlfriend-16 when I was 17, who became pregnant -(by a guy other then myself- long before DNA testing)-admitted her predicament to the Group Parents at a Catholic Charities group home. 7 or 8 girls-all living in a wooden house, in a semi exurban area of the Bronx. Apparently, when she admitted that the father was NOT the nice, sweet and kind boy who was her regular boyfriend-(meself)-who called every night, who came to take her to movies and walked her home-even in a foot of snow- from the Train, who they trusted enough to allow her to spend her weekends at his home- So concerned were they that they picked up the tab(Archdiocesean funds)and found a Planned Parenthood office which would conduct the abortion all on one afternoon.
Ever since, I've took a less jaundiced view of the Church and never again jumped to conclusions about ALL catholics. There are bad people everywhere, but at least that time, one friend of mine-a young, parentless girl, was given all the help and aid by them and with no questions asked.
Sometimes you get lucky, too.
3
The free tax status of 'christians' seems very inappropriate as many of these 'christians' are anti-christians. As Pope Frances recently, some atheists and agnostics are much more likely to end up in heaven (if it exists) than are many 'christians' who obviously oppose Jesus Christ as do the majority of current group who supported Trump for president.
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"Atheists and agnostics are the new silent majority in America."
And that right there is the problem: silent.
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I would like to state that I hope with all my heart that the right to same-sex marriage, established by an opinion of Anthony Kennedy, would not be imperiled by someone who had clerked for him and seems to share many core values that Kennedy espoused. That is my hope because that decision changed my life more than any other in my life and the thought of putting it at risk is more than I could bear. Am I naive in my hope that Obergefell will remain safe with the addition of this jurist?
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Obergefell probably survives for the time being. I think the Chief Justice recognizes that the country has moved on and has accepted marriage equality. Further, tens of thousands of couples married in reliance on Obergefell and overruling it now would create chaos for those couples and their families. And in Masterpiece Cakeshop, the Chief Justice and Alito and Gorsuch signed onto an opinion that ruled narrowly for the baker but had strong language supporting gay rights nonetheless. This is not to say that LGBT rights won't be curtailed or that future bakers, florists, or wedding vendors won't be able to turn away gay people, but the right to marry itself should be okay unless Trump gets two or three more appointments.
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If not, William, I am in the streets with you in a heartbeat.
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Why on earth would anyone still be predicting restraint and temperance in the age of Trump? I assume such pundits have only just woken up from a 2 year coma. Clearly Ross is right; the implied right to privacy in the 4th amendment has been a long-time target of conservative legal theory for a variety of other reasons in addition to abortion. There's no way they just eat away at the edges..
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The court needs balance and the full range of judicial philosophy represented. It needs it both for thoughtful analysis of the Constitution and so it can continue to have the support of the American citizens. Democracy depends upon the consent of the governed. Thus far the Court has had it, even when it ruled in a way that put George W. Bush in the White House when he may well have not had the votes in Florida. That ruling demonstrates how deep the consent of the governed has been. But if this Court swings so far to the right that it can no longer command the respect and consent of the citizens, then the Constitution cannot hold, not for the judicial branch or any branch. At that point the Constitution is dead. There is much more at stake here than Roe or voting rights, as crucial as those are. The entire American experiment is at stake. The Union is at risk as surely as it was i 1860. The Republicans do not seem to grasp what is at stake.
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Or, perhaps they do grasp what is at stake, and they are fully at ease with that.
That's what causes me, and I think millions of others, to lie awake at night.
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Indications are that they grasp it; it just isn't what they want or care about. We're on our way back to feudalism for us; money and power for them.
Difference is, for the first time in Homo sapiens history (as far as we know), we have developed the ways and, apparently, the WILL, to put miraculous, balanced life on Earth at risk for immediate monetary and financial benefit for the few. We already see sea life migrations to formerly colder waters; plant communities changing; invasive species damage. Wait until sea level rise dislocates human populations into already-occupied areas! This is unfathomable disrespect to God's Cathedral, Earth, and all its perfect, interconnected life.
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The Supreme Court HAS become so partisan that it has lost the faith of many of us. Bush v Gore was a bald-faced ploy to put a Republican in the White House, with justices voting along party lines. “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” -Justice John Paul Stevens [Dissent] Bush v. Gore (2000)
The partisanship of the Roberts court has only grown since, with the 5 Republican justices voting the party line in Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, gerrymandering, government employee unions, Jesus cake bakers et al. Republicans now control all three branches of government, SCOTUS is just as partisan as Congress.
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There is no conceivable version of freedom that includes forcing women to bear children against their wills. If this court makes the barbarisms of our most backward states the law of the entire land, then the whole thing is over.
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Well said.
"There is no conceivable version of freedom that includes forcing women to bear children against their wills."
Does that mean that in the many thousands of years of human history before safe abortion technology was developed, there was no freedom?
I agree about compulsion but if you understood the law and the SCOTUS precedents we are not talking "the law of the land". We are talking about a pre-Roe return to individual state governments making the law but only within their borders.
At least 20 to 25 states will keep some form of lawful pregnancy termination available, at least in the first two trimesters. Apocalyptic claims may stir activists to action and money-raising but are Trump-like in their falseness. The reality which I have stated is serious enough. It needs no exaggeration.
Oddly enough, Ross Douthat of all people, does not seem to recognize that ultimately this is an argument whose emotional and staying power is founded in the Christian evangelical and Catholic churches. Whatever the outcome of the confirmation process of Judge Kavanaugh, whatever the outcome of the next abortion case, the Bible-believing, doctrine-believing (dogma believing, if you credit Senator Feinstein) body of Christ has a viewpoint on this issue that extends much further and deeper than any local political fight. We are still fighting over Roe v. Wade, a 50-year old decision, for that very reason. Children, including children in the womb, have inherent rights, including the right to life; although the mother's rights are and ought to be superior to the child in the womb, the mother's rights cannot be so absolute as to give the mother the right in her sole discretion to end the child's life. It is the cruelty and the indefensibility of abortion on demand which fuels this fight and inspires the Church to this political struggle.
21
It is also why the cruelty and indefensible actions of the right in health care, education (scientific reproductive training is tossed aside for the biblical just say no), and the untested rape kits are among many issues in women's reproductive health that are constantly under threat or denial, and lead directly to prochoice supporters.
1
You are certainly entitled to your opinion but it is funny how you declare it with such absolute certainty, completely unaware of the ethical and biological problem that abortion poses--or more likely, it is simply an unwillingness to acknowledge another point of view. At the very least, because abortion creates such division, it should be acknowledged that some kind of puzzle or quandary exists, and then you should try to justify your point of view, instead of declaring it ex cathedra.
So says the middle-aged man. I wonder if you would feel the same if you were a woman.
The conservative majority on the Court, like the conservative majority in Congress, is not truly interested in overturning Roe v. Wade. The culture war issues that excite you (abortion, gay marriage, racism and immigration) are low on their priority list. Conservatives are committed to furthering the agenda of their wealthy donors. The agenda calls for using culture war issues to distract voters from the real issue -- a sound economy that works for everyone not just for the wealthy donors. The Douthats, the Brookses, the Kavanaughs, the Thomases, the evangelicals, the white supremacists and all the other useful fools are needed to vote Republican. That's what it takes to create the oligarchy the wealthy donors crave.
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Why are we only concentrating on the Roe v.Wade issue? There are many other issues where this nominee can do tremendous harm. The abortion issue is disruptive and quite entertaining . Please lets look at everything else this man stands for and ask congress to concentrate on all aspects of this man actions.
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Kavanaugh may be about the best we could hope for from a Republican President. On the other hand, aside from abortion, and I know that’s a big “aside,” Judge Amy Barrett, having attended Notre Dame Law School and been a professor there, may retain a spark of humanity which would serve the country well on all other issues. I expect Kavanaugh to be a hardline, automatic vote for plutocracy and the forces of Organized Money.
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You're positing a relationship between attending/teaching at a Catholic institution with "a spark of humanity," ejs?
Please square that with the tsunami of Catholic organizations in North America and worldwide - from maternity hospitals and orphanages to boarding schools and seminaries, from archdioceses all the way to the Vatican - bankrupting their treasuries and reputations amid revelations of decades of institutionalized sexual abuse.
I'd want to look elsewhere for a spark of humanity.
Campaign promises do not have the force of law. And it wouldn’t be ethical to actually enforce a campaign promise, if it’s wrong or would cause great harm (at least according to Protestant and Jewish thought). If, to take an extreme example, Trump had promised to burn witches if elected, should he actually do so, just because he made a promise to the evangelicals or some religious fringe? Exodus 22:18 says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and if you live by the Bible, that’s pretty much a direct order. (BTW, abortion isn’t even mentioned in the Bible.)
I don’t expect witch-burning any time soon, because the American public won’t allow it. Likewise, they will not allow a situation in which women lose their reproductive rights. That’s a deal-breaker for the majority. So, cultural conservatives, you can lead on the abortion issue by example, by precept, and by actually helping children, AFTER they are born; but if you try to shove your solution down the throats of the American people, you will lose, and not just on Roe v. Wade.
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Ross, I think you may be projecting a little too far. Abortion may be a political wedge issue right now, more for theocracy devotees, like the evangelicals than even for Catholics, but it is a global non-issue and not likely to carry much weight going forward. Beyond our preservation of separation of church and state, and our ability to understand that breeding ourselves into poverty just to advance tribal numbers is bad for individuals as well as countries, we simply are better than that.
The American public, as frustratingly dumb as it can be, is still composed of practical folk who, despite propaganda, are not going to spawn willy-nilly because of sexual accidents, try to support large families needed for the farms that don’t exist, or take anyone’s word that sex isn’t a biological and fun process.
The fundamental issue of when life starts isn’t that difficult either. Legally and culturally, we mark birth and death with concrete dates, and have no way to define our way out of doing just that. Even death would become indeterminate if, say, your organs or just cells in cryogenic storage were “you” and still alive, or if the religious theorists included afterlife in the calculations!
No, Ross, the Supreme Court of the United States is not going there as long as any shreds of our democracy persist.
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Bingo!,,,,but hope based common sense is not a cold-hard objectice strategy.
If abortion law goes back to the states, how is this not also likely to sharpen the differences between the residents of each community? Will there be migration of like minded folks toward their brethren in other states? Will we become “a house divided against itself” and by extension one “that cannot stand?”
Americans forget that popular sovereignty brought violence and eventually war. Clearly we are sliding toward disunion. Perhaps state’s rights will finally win the day and with it America will be returned to it’s status of an atavistic backwater. In so many ways that seems to be where we are heading.
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Yes, after RvW, states will differ in their laws on the subject. Admittedly, democracy is imperfect, but consider the alternatives.
Turning the issue back to the states does not impose the laws of the most backward states on the entire land. This is the advantage of federalism.
Who says they are going to let women migrate between states? Women don't have a right to privacy, so you now you can demand that they take a pregnancy test at the Alabama border. All of the rights belong to the embryo, not the incubator, so maybe it's in the embryo's interests to restrict women's rights to travel or move freely.
If abortion is a felony in your state, what keeps Texas from putting you in jail when you return from California no longer pregnant?
And hey, women don't have a right to their own bodies, so maybe now you can search any woman with a transvaginal ultrasound wand based on probable cause that a crime might occur - like conducting an internet search for abortion clinics or being overheard saying that you don't want another baby. If there is any doubt about a woman's intentions, why not have the judge make her a ward of the state? The judge can mandate what doctor a woman will visit, what care she will receive, what medicines she can take, what activities she can do (spin class? is she trying to commit negligent homicide?)... After all, she's attempted the crime of baby murder.
1
Roe v Wade has helped many people but, given that it's been the single most important factor in sustaining for several decades the grievously destructive Movement Conservatism, I think it's hurt many more. Without Roe we'd never have had Trump, G.W. Bush, or even Reagan, never have mortgaged our future in the interests of unlimited corporate depredation, never have watched helplessly as the world's most powerful country allowed the world historical catastrophe of climate change to unfold before our eyes. It's not impossible to make a case that billions will die because of Roe. Not to mention that despite its good intentions it was a bad legal decision. So although I'm pro-choice, I'm anti-Roe. Overturn it, let people fight it out democratically at the state and local level, and free our national politics from these vicious hypocrites.
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I reluctantly agree. When young women see that the Republicans want to deny them not just abortion but contraception, they will finally wake to see that the Handmaid's Tale is not so fantastical as the right would have them believe.
To protect the autonomy of women, Republicans need to be defeated not just at the federal level, but at the state and local levels as well. And those women who are conservative need to form a conservative wing of the Democratic Party to achieve their goals.
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I hope Douthat is right about Kavanaugh because as a Conservative attorney if Kavanaugh becomes another Kennedy, Souter or Stevens I will never trust an organization I have supported most of my life.
Eliminate gay marriage, return abortion to the states, end all discrimination INCLUDING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, and require government agencies to fall squarely within one of the three branches of government. Do that and the reputation of the Courts will be just fine.
You actually make a very important observation! Okay, yes, let's take Roe out of national politics. In doing so, we take the steam, as you say, out of the Republican strategy!
For those who believe that Roe v Wade is essentially “un democratic”, the recent vote in Ireland may well demonstrate how the voters will choose if they have the opportunity to vote upon the legality of elective abortion. I am sure most Republicans are fully aware of this reality as well. No matter how many “conservative” justices are appointed, they will never overturn Roe.
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Indeed ... and by all means, sir, let's "... return the abortion debate to the democratic process."
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It is the cruelty and the indefensibility of forced birth which fuels this fight and inspires women and others who value the right to privacy and control of their own bodies to this political struggle.
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