Ever since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, it has attracted a wide range of critics who questioned two things. One is its grounding on a “right to privacy,” which exists nowhere in my copy of the Constitution. Even that icon of liberal judicial jurisprudence, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed that a right to privacy was a problematic basis for such a historic decision. In a 1992 lecture at NYU, she said of Roe, prophetically, "Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped...may prove unstable.”
The other problem with the original decision is its judicial activism, wherein seven justices on the Supreme Court pretended to be legislators — deciding, like Solomon, to split the baby. In the first trimester, the decision was the mother’s. In the second, the state could regulate abortion, but not ban it. In the third, the state could prohibit abortion if the fetus could survive on its own outside the womb. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his draft opinion, the original decision was “an abuse of judicial authority,” which was “on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.” And of course, in the last 50 years, medical advances allow doctors to save a prematurely-born fetus far earlier, invalidating Roe v. Wade’s trimester goalposts.
To hear Democrats howling and rioting in the streets, talking about ending the Senate’s filibuster and packing the Supreme Court, you’d think they didn’t know any of this. But they do. More damningly, they have had nearly 50 years to codify Roe v. Wade into law — often with Dems in charge of both Congress & the White House.
They never made Roe v. Wade the law of the land — passed by legislators, not justices — because they prefer having the issue for their lucrative political gaslighting. In the last two days, since a Democratic operative — insiders believe he is a clerk for Justice Sonia Sotomeyer with ties to Politico — leaked to that news outlet a copy of Alito’s draft decision, Democrats have raised more than $7 million.
They have nothing else to run on.
A full 94% of Americans in a recent poll said they were worried about inflation. As Fox Business News’ Stuart Varney noted, there’s very little that 94% of us agree on.
The border is wide open, and millions of illegal migrants are coming — some with ill intent, in Fentyanl or human smuggling rings, others to steal jobs from Americans.
The White House turns a blind eye to the US border, but rushes to protect Kiev’s. The war in Ukraine, however laudable the West’s support, is sucking resources we don’t have for a cause not our own, one that does not threaten our national interests.
The school system has devolved into a cesspool of woke policies that are hurting our children — from radical transgender indoctrination in kindergarten to teaching of Critical Race Theory that instructs white students they are evil imperialists and children of color that they are perpetual victims. Parents are enraged.
The administration’s COVID response failed — they ran out of tests, shelved monoclonal antibody treatments, discouraged use of Ivermectin and turned a blind eye to adverse vaccine reations. Now it comes out that the CDC paid $420 million for location data to track Americans’ lockdown compliance. Big Brother isn’t just watching. These days, he’s wearing a white coat, tracking us on our cell phones.
They are rewriting Title IX to permanently expand the definition of “woman” to include biological males. RIP women’s sports. Meanwhile such clueless wannabe liberals as Howard Stern bemoan the fact that “if guys got raped and pregnant, there’d be abortions available on every corner.” Oops guess he didn’t get Radical Leftist memo that guys can be birthing people too.
The central lie at the heart of all this outrage is that overturning Roe v. Wade will outlaw abortion. The truth is that the decision — if Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t cave to the pressure — does nothing of the sort. Instead it returns the issue to the states, where many believe it should have been left in the first place. California is already advertising itself as a sanctuary state for abortion. Some red states — Texas, Oklahoma, Florida — are legislating limits. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?
But facts don’t seem to motivate radical Dems. On the contrary, their emissaries on cable news channels, as if on cue, skewered the draft ruling for opening the door to overturning other recently gained rights like gay marital equality. The Alito brief goes out of its way to assure otherwise. “And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” it said. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to case doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
In fact this should surprise no one. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer launched this campaign of intimidation in March 2020, speaking to pro-abortion protestors at the court, when he actually threatened two sitting Supreme Court justices with retaliation if they ruled against abortion.
I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.
If that sounds like a threat, if that sounds like incitement, it was. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the leak “a judicial insurrection.” But don’t look for Liz Cheney or Jamie Raskin to run an investigation into whether Schumer should be charged with treason, or his supporters jailed without due process under the law.
When I went back to graduate school late in life to earn a PhD in American history, I studied the Progressive Era. Those activists were reformers — campaigning to clean up city sanitation and governments, to institute labor reforms, to win women’s right to vote. Today’s radical Democrats are not reformers, they are traitors, assailing our history, our institutions, our next generation. In committing a serious breach of ethics at the highest court in the land, Radical Dems have targeted another venerable institution. They don’t care. They pummel all the pillars of our society — law enforcement, schools, DAs, courts — because it stokes their base.
“When you conduct yourself in an utterly lawless way, attacking the institutions of this country, attacking the founding documents of this country, attacking the history of this country, this is what you get: lawlessness,” said Mark Levin, who once clerked for Chief Justice Warren Burger. “It's just a matter of time. All these institutions are going to collapse. This is a grave assault on the Supreme Court.”
One can only hope that in their zeal to stoke hysteria, radical Dems will appear as hysterics, leaving Americans wondering why they elected them in the first place.
And thank you, dear readers, for reading my work.
As usual, Johanna an absolutely sterling article. Thanks for what you do!