A political earthquake hit the United States as word spread that a draft of the majority opinion in Mississippi v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked to Politico this evening. The majority opinion is alleged to have been written by Justice Samuel Alito. It contains the following remarks:
It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives…This is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand…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.
According to Alan Dershowitz, who was interviewed by Sean Hannity, a leak of this sort is unprecedented in the Court’s history. He theorizes that a liberal staffer may have leaked the draft in order to either put pressure on the Court to change its decision or to induce Congress to either pack the Court or to introduce national legislation to preserve abortion “rights” throughout the country.
Others think that this may be a hoax in hope of producing enough outrage to intimidate any wavering justice to change course and reaffirm Roe. Since passions run extremely high on both sides of the debate, a staffer may have found the temptation to take matters into his or her own hands too great to resist. No doubt, if the source of the leak is discovered, said person will be immediately and permanently dismissed from ever working for the Court and disbarred. Given the monumental nature of such a ruling, the person or persons responsible, in typical short-sightedness, probably thinks that the circumstances warrant the risk. This is another reason in a long list why the Court should not be politicized.
If the Court does indeed overturn Roe, the matter of abortion will return to the People where it has always belonged. The Court brazenly took upon itself the mantle of being the arbiter of an issue it had no business getting involved in. It invented a right out of whole cloth and deprived the People of their rightful position to settle the matter in their respective communities through public debate and voting.
Being for or against abortion on a personal level bears no relevance to the legal issue of whether the Constitution recognizes it as a right. Though conservatives are overwhelmingly pro-life, their legal position has consistently been on the side of states’ rights—that states are legally entitled to settle the matter one way or the other. Conservatives recognize that certain states will legalize abortion, and though they vehemently oppose the taking of innocent human life, they acknowledge the limits of what can be done legally. Liberals, on the other hand, couldn’t care less what the law is. For them, ramming their views down everybody’s throats is as natural as breathing air. On every issue, it’s their way or the highway. If they cannot get their way legislatively, they’ll try to get a judge to supplant democracy and force the People to abide by their dictates. And if the courts don’t go along, they’ll move to pack the courts to achieve their political goals. They thus make a mockery of the law and manifest their disregard for it. For them, the law can only be used to subjugate their political enemies. Justice has no place in their mindset.
It is fervently hoped that this is truly the death-knell for Roe. It’s been a long time coming.
