Chief Justice John Roberts himself confirmed yesterday that the leaked draft opinion, which delineates the reasoning for the (Republican) Supreme Court to finally overrule Roe v. Wade, “is authentic.”
I commented on the Mississippi law that provided the pretext for the Court to deliver this death blow to abortion rights in America in “Abortion Brings Out Political ‘Stench’ at Supreme Court,” December 4, 2021.
Here is how I opened that commentary:
It seems everyone in Washington was alarmed at the way arguments on Mississippi’s anti-abortion law played out at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. This, because the Republican-appointed justices kept signaling their intent to betray legal precedent, even common sense, to overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that granted abortion rights.
And here is how I closed it:
As for the Court’s survival, its fate in these times of growing division between red states and blue states seems ominously analogous to its fate in the years of growing division between states on either side of the Mason-Dixon line before the Civil War. Think about that folks… For now, though, I rest my case.
My cynicism is well documented. Even so, I thought institutional integrity would trump political hackery and prevent Republican-appointed justices from so willfully throwing the Court into disrepute. But never before in my 17 years of blogging have I been so gutted for being so wrong.
Here is how POLITICO reported its scoop of the century on Monday:
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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.
‘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.’
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And so, evidently, Republican political hacks masquerading as justices seem committed to doing what they swore under oath they would never do, namely ignore settled precedent just to ban abortions.
As the title to my commentary at issue indicates, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned this “judicial activism” would cause a “stench” so offensive it would erode public trust in the Court for generations to come.
But it seems her Republican associates couldn’t care less. They had their marching orders …
In short, they see themselves as scoring a decisive win for red states. This, in the growing division between red and blue states that seems ominously analogous to the role the Court played in the years of growing division between states on either side of the Mason-Dixon line before the Civil War …
By the way, “triggering laws” mean that this draft opinion would ban abortions in most red states the minute it becomes an official decision in June. Moreover, many of those red states have enacted laws that would penalize not just women who travel to blue states to get abortions but anyone who helps them in any way to do so. So…
But forget Trump’s MAGA programs! Conservatives on this Republican Supreme Court are the handmaidens whose decisions – banning abortion rights, suppressing voting rights, and ending affirmative action – will deliver the dystopian union Republicans dream of.
More to the point, I fear Republicans are so hell-bent on aping the Taliban that it will take a second civil war, which no less a person than former President Ulysses S. Grant warned about, to stop them.
God help America!
Related commentaries:
Abortion political stench…