Court ‘enacts’ abortion plank in Bush platform

The five politicians on the Supreme Court have declared, in effect, that abortion is infanticide. President Bush is beaming like the cretin he is over an appalling decision.

A New York Times editorial was dead right: “It comes at a real cost to the court’s credibility, its integrity and the rule of law.”

The Retrograde Five overturned many excellent lower court rulings. It reversed the Supreme Court’s own rule that abortion regulations must have an exception to protect a woman’s health.

Three points about the ruling are clear. 1) The law changes with the changing members of the court. 2) The court often decides cases on the basis of its morality rather on that of most people. 3) It is profoundly disturbing that just five justices--all men--make the law for millions about a private matter between a woman and her doctor.

The court recently upheld, 5-4, a moralistic measure passed by a reprehensible Republican Congress. It bore a propagandist title worthy of Goebbels: Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

On point one, if Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had still been on the court, it would have been 5-4 the other way. Although a conservative, O’Connor consistently voted pro-choice.

On point two, the Supreme Court refused in 1983 to review lower court rulings upholding firings of two people by a Texas police department simply because of their off-duty cohabitation. Similarly, in 1977 it refused to grant certiorari when the lower courts upheld the firing of two Pennsylvania library workers because they were living together but unmarried. In neither case was competency in question.

On point three, Justice Kennedy’s opinion was patronizing--and absurd. He talked about the “profound respect for the life within the woman.” He blathered about the act expressing “the dignity of human life.” He blithered about the “ethical and moral concerns.” He bleated about “the bond of love that the mother has for her child.”

In dissent, Justice Ginsburg, the sole woman on the court, honed in on the long discredited male view. She pointed out that:

• The majority decision was alarming and irrational, the hostility to abortion obvious. Its rationale was flimsy.

• It “tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban a procedure found necessary…by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.”

• The court’s obligation “is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate (its) own moral code.”

• “The court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of safety.”

In nonjudical language, the court ruled “to keep women barefoot and pregnant.” But a pro-choice banner has sound advice for government and courts: “butt out of women’s lives.”

The decision sanctions gross interference by government into medical matters. The barred procedure is often necessary to protect women’s health--and even life in case of kidney failure and heart problems.

The ruling is in keeping with the Bush administration’s retrograde anti-sex agenda: it opposes abortion, deludes itself about abstinence, tries to block the effective morning-after pill, opposes use of a vaccine to combat cervical cancer, and spreads false information about condoms to adolescents.

Tragically, the decision portends Retrograde Five thinking: reversal of Roe. The states keep chipping away at the right to abortion, approving onerous abortion curbs undermining Roe.

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The numbers are not high for the dilation and extraction abortion at issue in the case, about 2,200 a year. But the principle is everything. Women have an absolute right to abortion, a right to privacy that Justice Harry Blackmun in Roe found in the “penumbras of the Bill of Rights.”

As the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “Millions of American women…have been faced with one of the most difficult decisions of their lives…Doctors should be free to provide them with safe, private care.”

Dorothy Samuels, New York Times editorial writer, correctly noted that the court had enshrined “the rhetoric and tactical positioning of the anti-abortion movement.” Most notably, she added, the court was using junk science while pretending to act for “for women’s own good to protect their mental and moral health.”

Clearly, the Supreme Court is marching backward. Even predominantly Catholic countries like Portugal and cities like Mexico City have recently defied the Vatican by legalizing abortion.

Justice Louis Brandeis, perhaps the greatest Supreme Court justice, wrote in a wise dissent: “In the exercise of (our) high power, we must be forever on our guard lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles.” The court has done precisely that: turning its prejudices into legal principles.

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