Daily Verse | 2 Corinthians 12:10
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Thursday’s Reading: Galatians 1-6

Welcome to the Daily Broadside, my friends.

If there’s one thing that deserves a ferocious broadside, it’s the scourge of abortion in our country. There’s a few things in my life from which I cannot be moved, and one of them is that abortion is not just wrong, it is a barbaric evil that is symptomatic of just how far into the gutter our culture has sunk.

But arguments at the Supreme Court began yesterday that may determine whether the court will reverse its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision declaring that women have a constitutional right to end a pregnancy and send that determination back to the states where it belongs. The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which involves a Mississippi ban on almost all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. It’s been called the “biggest abortion case in decades.” The question is “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

While I have not listened to the first day of arguments, reports and analysis suggest that SCOTUS may be leaning toward a reversal, which is sure to cheer pro-life forces and to set progressive’s hair on fire.

As for Kavanaugh, he “gave abortion rights supporters little to cheer in his comments and questions.”

He presented a list of cases in which the court had overturned long-held precedents and said that perhaps the best solution for the court was to be “scrupulously neutral” on an issue about which he said the Constitution is silent.

That sounds like a good idea. And if Kavanaugh adopts this “solution,” it likely means Roe v. Wade will be overturned regardless of what the Chief Justice decides.

Some believe the key votes are those of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh (true), but Michael Walsh makes the case that “this is the case that Justice Clarence Thomas, now the Court’s senior justice, has been waiting for since he was appointed in 1991.”

Thomas, the liberals’ bête noire, has long been an outspoken opponent of Roe: “Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled,” he wrote in a dissent in a different case just last year. “The Constitution does not constrain the States’ ability to regulate or even prohibit abortion.”

Further, Thomas is no fan of stare decisis, the absurd notion that once the Court has decided something, however incorrectly, that precedent should heavily influence later cases. Were that true, Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson would still be on the books, respectively barring blacks from U.S. citizenship and upholding state-imposed segregation.

“In my view, if the Court encounters a decision that is demonstrably erroneous — i.e., one that is not a permissible interpretation of the text—the Court should correct the error, regardless of whether other factors support overruling the precedent,” wrote Thomas in Gamble v. United States¸ a double-jeopardy case.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council seemed upbeat in his post:

Many are hopeful after this morning’s argument. The justices were mostly quiet when Mississippi’s Solicitor General Scott Stewart defended his state’s law outlawing abortion after 15 weeks. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor showed serious antagonism to Stewart, and at one point was downright hostile with her abortion apologetic, absurdly asking him: “how is your interest anything but a religious view?” Stewart ably argued the state’s case, however, pointing out that Roe and Casey are without solid footing and do injustice to what the Constitution says about a right to abortion, which is nothing.

Next up was the abortion advocates’ attorney Julie Rikelman, joined by the Biden administration’s Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. At this point the justices turned up the heat a bit. When Justice Samuel Alito quizzed Prelogar about whether Plessy v. Ferguson (an 1896 case that upheld racial segregation laws) was an erroneous ruling, Prelogar agreed it was “egregiously wrong.” The abortion advocates were also forced to acknowledge that they don’t want to settle on any middle ground; they not only want to retain the undue burden standard from Casey, but admitted they want to keep Roe’s viability standard too. But as Chief Justice John Roberts observed, “we share [the viability] standard with the People’s Republic of China and North Korea” – hardly countries we should be comparing ourselves to, a point made in a newly released FRC report on abortion around the world.

Apart from Justice Sotomayor’s snarky and absurd question, Psalm 139 affirms that you and I and every human being is made by God:

^{13 For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.}

These are hopeful signs, although don’t underestimate Roberts’s ability to be a squish. If you’re a praying man or woman, keep the court in your prayers now and in the next few months. The decision won’t be announced until mid-2022.