Daily Broadside | It’s Weird to Hear Abortion Supporters Say SCOTUS is Removing Their Rights

Daily Verse | 2 Chronicles 21:13
“But you have walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and you have led Judah and the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves, just as the house of Ahab did.”

Thursday’s Reading: 2 Chronicles 24-25

It’s Thursday and Cinco de Mayo. I hope my appropriation of that term doesn’t trigger anyone.

The news that continues to shock and awe observers is the leak of the Dobbs opinion. It was obviously a coordinated leak, as the rent-a-mob spooks were already cued, and the Democrats had their talking points ready to go at a moment’s notice. But now that the dust has settled some, cooler heads are examining the fallout, much as investigators pick over the remains of a downed airliner.

Here’s what some of them are saying.

“It is the first time a full draft opinion has been leaked in the Supreme Court‘s 233 year history, according to former law clerks.” The Left does nothing but criticize and destroy, whether it is people, traditions, culture or institutions. This is just the latest in a long history of destruction wrought by the militant Marxists who infest the weight-bearing walls of our American home.

It has done great damage to the institution of an impartial judiciary. “Davis, who now works with the Article III Project told me on KTTH Radio that the leak was ‘shocking, shameful, and likely illegal. I think this is unprecedented. It’s very clear that someone is leaking this opinion to try to influence justices’ votes on this Dobbs case to overturn Roe and Casey. And in that case, we’re looking at potential obstruction of justice charges against whoever did this.'”

“Midterm voters care about affordability first and foremost, and they are not people who are worried every single day about losing access to abortion,” says Roginsky. “My fear continues to be that sometimes we as Democrats run on things that we wish the voters cared about, rather than what the voters do care about.” This is a good sign that even one of their own recognizes their overreach on this issue.

Additionally, the timing is off for Democrats. I predicted that the Dobbs decision would be old news by November, and some Democrat strategists think so, too. Politico notes, ‘Even before the [leaked] draft was reported, Democrats bullish on the political effects of Roe being overturned feared a June release of the decision might come too soon to help them in November. The disclosure pushed the Democratic outrage earlier in the calendar, with six months before the elections.'”

All the states in the union are aware of the impending court decision and have already or are currently preparing their own laws regarding the practice of abortion. As these laws will be crafted at a more local level, they will better reflect the preferences of each state’s citizens. By the time November rolls around, there may even be less discord and strife regarding abortion than there is now. At any rate, the Worst Thing Ever! will have come to pass, the world will have continued to turn, and people will have gone back to being more concerned about inflation, the Biden Recession, and looming war.”

Exactly. The anti-life anarchists are all amped up now, but in November, Dobbs will be a speck in the review mirror. Good luck restarting the rage machine then.

On the decision itself. “That is particularly true when it comes to abortion, the most vital Leftist sacrament, an action of holy import. For the Left, abortion represents the power to deny the objective value of human life; it represents willingness to engage in the highest form of self-serving moral relativism. Absence of abortion presents the possibility that actions have moral consequence, that the value of life is not an arbitrary and subjective one, that women and men have duties to their children. All of which challenges their basic worldview.”

Old Joe Biden said Tuesday that Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was ‘really quite a radical decision’ and ‘a fundamental shift in American jurisprudence,’ but as usual, he was lying. Alito’s decision appears to be carefully reasoned, firmly based on what the Constitution actually says, and written with a full recognition of the nature and importance of judicial precedent. What is unprecedented is the leak that has allowed us to evaluate this decision before the Court has actually ruled on the case at hand, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Samuel Alito’s crafted opinion strikes at a vast body of evil—a lethal evil, massive in its scale—but at the same time it holds out an assurance that this ‘right,’ which some people see as bound up with nothing less than their personal freedom, will remain secure for them, at least in the States where they wish to live. But when people came out in pro-life marches in the worst weather in Washington, they were registering their opposition to the poisoning or dismembering of babies in the womb. They never thought that they were arguing for a license to keep engaging in that killing on a massive scale, so long as it was done in Blue States.”

The opinion’s careful analysis of text therefore represents not only the overruling of Roe but also a sea change in the appropriate method of reasoning about the Constitution. What was notable about Roe was that it failed to locate the abortion right in the text of the Constitution or even in previous precedent. As law professor John Hart Ely said about Roe, ‘it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.’ (Not surprisingly, Alito quotes Ely.) But Roe was also the culmination of decades of loose thinking about constitutional interpretation, as expressed in cases that ignored the original meaning of text and were driven by what the justices thought of as good policy. If the Dobbs decision follows this draft opinion, then its most important legacy will be the restoration of a more rigorous method of reasoning to the heart of constitutional law. And it represents a triumph for the conservative legal movement in its decades-long fight to restore the original meaning as the centerpiece of constitutional interpretation.”

Even so, Alito’s draft is consequential. It not only represents a potential preview of one of the most significant Court decisions in a generation, but also articulates a compelling understanding of the nature of liberty and the role of the judiciary in American constitutional law.

“First, it’s important to understand the question before the Supreme Court. It is not ‘Should American women possess a right to abortion?’ but ‘Does the American Constitution protect abortion rights?’ The distinction is of paramount importance. The Court’s job is not to determine which rights we should possess but rather the rights we do possess.”

Abortion as a Constitutional right was created by SCOTUS in 1973. For those wailing about SCOTUS “taking away” that “right,” remember that you will still have that “right” in states which have provided for abortion. In those states that don’t provide for abortion or severely limit abortion, you can elect representatives who will legislate such a right.

Not that you should. But you could.

What SCOTUS gives, SCOTUS can take. Especially when the original opinion was so wrongly decided.