Tag Archives: chiefjusticeroberts

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Daily Broadside | Roe v. Wade to be Overturned According to Leaked Draft Opinion

Daily Verse | 2 Chronicles 16:9
“For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

Tuesday’s Reading: 2 Chronicles 17-20

Tuesday and yesterday, for the first time in the modern history of the Supreme Court, a draft opinion was leaked to the press.

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.

This is fantastic news to those of us who believe abortion is an evil that must be purged from our nation. Abortion has been a deeply divisive issue from the start and has only grown more grotesque and extreme over the last 50-years, culminating in a flurry of state laws granting the right to have an abortion up to the moment of birth.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

Of course, the usual suspects were primed to denounce the news.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer torched Supreme Court justices on Monday night after Politico published what appears to be a leaked draft of a ruling overturning the right to an abortion.

“If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years – not just on women but on all Americans,” the top two Congressional Democrats said in a joint statement. “The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”

If you ever wanted evidence that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are two of the worst politicians to be inflicted on the American people in the last 50 years, there you have it. To call the roll-back of abortion “an abomination” and “one of the worst and most damaging decisions” is completely the opposite of what it is. It also shows you how completely immoral our leaders have become.

I would not be surprised to know that Pelosi and Schumer were both notified that the leak was coming. The leak is very damaging to this ruling in particular and to the court in general. The leak is obviously intended to produce pressure on the justices to vote to keep Roe v. Wade in place. Gin up the anger and hostility to eleven across the country.

Further, who leaked the draft opinion? That person should be identified and punished. How can the Justices of the Supreme Court trust each other?

Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law, swiftly called on the chief justice to launch an investigation into the leak.

“Roberts has an absolute obligation to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation. And at the end of that investigation, Roberts must publicly identify the persons who are responsible for this leak–that includes Justices and clerks. Heads must roll,” Blackman wrote in a blog post on Monday night.

Most agree that the draft opinion is written in the style of Samuel Alito and that he would be writing for the majority.

Ruling on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Alito wrote, “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’”

“The right to abortion does not fall within this category,” Alito continued. “Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy.”

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” the justice insisted. He quoted Justice Antonin Scalia: “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.”

[…]

“We end this opinion where we began,” Alito concluded. “Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives. The judgment in the Fifth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.” [Emphasis added]

I’m praying that it’s an authentic draft and that the egregious leak does nothing to sway the majority opinion.

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Daily Broadside | The End of ‘Roe’ May Be Approaching

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.