OK, I have heard enough…I can’t stand listening and reading about religious zealots who think the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court spells the end of Roe Vs. Wade. These people are demented. Take Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), who commented on the gloomy Washington DC day by exclaiming that he thought that it was “God’s way of cleansing the world”. I have never been a fan of religious people, and its because of statements like this.
While Alito and newly appointed Chief Justice John Roberts have not explicitly stated they intended to overturn the past decision, they have expressed their reservations of its ruling in the past. With the nomination of Alito to the Supreme Court, many anti-abortionists believe that the Conservative majority will finally have enough votes to overturn the case that legalized abortion in the United States. Many anti-abortionists are given a renewed sense of hope that God has given them their moment of vindication.
Excuse my French, but this is fucking ludicrous, and I have two words to justify why: stare decisis, the legal principle that states that past legal decisions become precedent in the future. There is a reason why the Supreme Court ruled in favor of legalizing abortion in the mid-1970s. To remove this right, guaranteed by the Constitution, is another attempt by the Bush administration to bring old American values back to this country and bring America back to righteous bliss, when it was unadulterated and pure. President Bush gave a statement in Kansas today, saying that we should strive to fight for “the unborn child without a voice”. His argument is that of every other anti-abortionist: the right to live, under every circumstance, is the right and indirect obligation of every human being.
Interesting, I smell the Terri Schiavo case right now…wasn’t this the same argument Terri Schiavo’s family was making while she was enjoying her tasty IV from her hospital bed in her vegetative state (I was about to say extreme vegetative state until I realized that you can’t get much more vegetative than vegetative). This is something I dealt with in a past post, check it out here.
The anti-abortionist’s pro-life conservative religious extremist view is narrow, shallow, and uncompromising. Its downfall is that it is based on religious dogma and not the knowledge of modern science, society, and conscience. It simply does not follow the changes of modern thinking and the dynamics of modern time. Justice Blackmun, who wrote the opinion for Roe Vs Wade cited that anti-abortion laws were “the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage” with criminalization of abortion mostly occurring from law enacted in the latter half of the 19th century.
This archaic mindset simply does not account for dire circumstances that can arise. For every teenage girl who wants to erase a past mistake, there is a rape victim or a person who is in such physical pain that life simply is not worth living anymore.
But even this rationale is irrelevant. This might not even be an issue about morality but about liberty. This would not be a victory for God and the righteous; this would be a victory for the ever-growing government and their desire to intrude upon our everyday lives. The way I see it, by removing a woman’s right to choose, the government is taking another step toward domination and direction of our everyday lives, instructing us on what our morality is, defining our priorities, and explaining what are limited options are for the future.
