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Abort! Abort!

The bomb-shell leak of Judge Alito’s draft opinion shows SCOTUS’s true colors: flaming, far right red. It is 98 pages of assumptions, misinterpretations of U.S. history, and irrelevances. That’s just the good part; it goes downhill from there.

Alito’s first sentence is true: “Abortion presents a profound moral issue in which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.” The fact that abortion is a moral issue, not a legal one, is why it should not be addressed in a court of law in the first place. John Adams put it this way: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Indeed, ours is a secular government. Morals are to be left to people’s beliefs, religious or otherwise.

Alito also alleges: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed [sic] debate and deepened division." Really? His (non)solution is to punt and have each of the 50 states make the same “legal solution to a moral issue” error. And that won’t be divisive? He contends sending it back to the states equates to sending it back to the citizens: it’s not. It is sending it back to state legislatures, many of which represent a small, but very vocal, subset of their constituencies.

Alito notes that abortion isn’t mentioned in the Constitution. True, but irrelevant. Not all rights are mentioned therein. He also claims there’s no history of abortion rights in our history. Based on our history you could easily believe women had no rights until 1920, when they legally gained the right to vote. And it wasn’t until 1965 that they could legally purchase contraceptives.

What the Supreme Court should do is acknowledge its error in making legal decisions on moral issues, drop all such current efforts and void any existing federal and state legislation regarding abortion.

Note: Search on “Read Justice Alito's initial draft abortion opinion which would overturn Roe v. Wade” for full text.

John H. Terrell

 

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