Overturning Roe is Hypocrisy

The big news maker last week was the draft opinion regarding the abortion case heard by the Supreme Court published by Politico. The document indicates that 5 of the 6 Republican appointees have agreed to overturn the 50 year old Roe v. Wade decision and once again allow states to make abortion a criminal offense. Had Sen. Mitch McConnell not stolen a seat by refusing to hold hearings on Pres. Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, when Justice Scalia’s death created a vacancy this decision would almost certainly been to continue the right to abortion as the law of the land.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion includes the justification that “the domestic supply of infants” is insufficient to meet demand. This sentiment has previously been expressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett saying that we don’t “need” abortion anymore because the supply of adoptable domestic infants cannot meet demand. I don’t see how that argument is morally sustainable.

According to Adopt US Kids, there are 117,000 children waiting to be adopted in the United States right now. So Alito and Barrett’s argument doesn’t hold up factually either.

Alito and several other conservative members of the court claim to be originalists, which they define as believing that the constitution is a dead document, in other words it means only what it meant at the time it was written and is to be understood as it would have been understood in the 1780’s. There’s a real problem with that notion, founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both rejected Originalism. You’ll often hear Republicans use a similar argument about government agencies they claim shouldn’t exist because it isn’t stated in the constitution. Neither is the right to travel but no one argues that Americans don’t have the right to travel within their states, or within the country, or even to other countries.

Then there’s our Firsts Amendment right to religious freedom, which this decision actually runs roughshod over. There are numerous Christian denominations, not to mention other religions that are pro-choice on a theological basis and at least as many other religious denominations that believe that abortion is a matter of individual conscience. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and the United Church of Christ are just a few of those.

In Judaism when a mother’s life is endangered by a pregnancy, it is Jewish law that the mother’s life, a life in being, takes precedent. Keep in mind that Jesus, being born a Jew, would likely accept this position since nowhere in scripture does he speak out against it. Justice Alito has essentially ruled that a pregnant Jewish woman who will risk death if the pregnancy is carried to term can be denied an abortion – against her own religious beliefs. That makes Alito and other four Justices joining him Christian supremacists. Alito has essentially declared orthodox Catholic theology to be the law of the land on abortion. Such a ruling is counter to the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.

Alito’s draft says that a right to abortion services is not deeply rooted in this nation’s history. Women on the Supreme Court are not deeply rooted in this nation’s history either, nor are anyone but white men. The Constitution doesn’t say that women or black people can serve on the Supreme Court. By Alito’s argument apparently the founders thought only white men should ever serve on the Supreme Court. So why has he never advocated for rejecting Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett’s positions on the court.

It all boils down to hypocrisy in service to an agenda that is incompatible with democracy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 11, 2022