Pro-Abortion Democrats Disrespect the Democratic Process
What the “leak” is really about.
By Joseph Klein
Politico set off a firestorm on the Left after it published a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade if it ends up as the Court’s final ruling. Roe v. Wade was the highly controversial 1973 Supreme Court decision that created out of whole cloth a constitutional right for women to have an abortion within certain parameters. Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed the Roe v. Wade decision in 1992.
The draft opinion, which was written by Justice Samuel Alito Jr. in February, is far from representing the Court’s final word or even the final positions of the justices who supported what Justice Alito wrote. Nevertheless, pro-abortion demagogues are exploiting the outrageous leak of a preliminary draft opinion to stir up anger in the streets against the Supreme Court with outright lies.
The draft decision would not ban all abortions, contrary to the false narrative of pro-abortion activists. It would return the Supreme Court to a neutral position on the contentious issue of abortion, leaving it up to the voters in state and federal elections to sort it out through the democratic electoral process. The elected branches of government would then be able to make policy decisions on all aspects of the abortion issue with their constituents’ views in mind. These policy decisions may vary state by state unless Roe v. Wade is codified into federal law.
“Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito wrote, “and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
Leftists do not trust the democratic process. Indeed, they want to perpetuate a manufactured judicially legislated “right” that appears nowhere in the Constitution, as Justice Alito pointed out, rather than let the people resolve the complex policy issue of abortion through their elected representatives. At the same time, leftists are doing their best to strip away the enumerated constitutional right of free speech set forth in the First Amendment.
The Left is also using the draft opinion in a campaign to delegitimize the Supreme Court because leftists detest the checks and balances of an independent judiciary whenever a court decision interferes with their progressive agenda.
“The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy, and is now one of the chief architects of America’s democratic decline,” the radical group known as Demand Justice tweeted. Demand Justice was quoting from Vox, which AllSides rates as having a “Left bias.”
Evidently, the leftists running Demand Justice and Vox have forgotten a couple of key historical facts. It was the Republican Party which fought to bring an end to slavery and the Confederacy, and it was the Democratic Party which served historically as the “midwife of Jim Crow.” But that is a history discussion for another time.
What is important today is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with their Democrat caucuses, are participating in their radical base’s strategy to intimidate certain Supreme Court justices and undermine judicial independence.
Senator Schumer is no stranger when it comes to threatening Supreme Court justices by name. In March 2020, Schumer spoke at an abortion rights rally in front of the Supreme Court, warning Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh of dire consequences if they vote what Schumer considered to be the wrong way on abortion cases before the Court.
“I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” Schumer said that day.
Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked Senator Schumer for making a “threatening” and “dangerous” statement from the highest level of government.
But Senator Schumer remains unrepentant.
This time, Schumer joined Pelosi in issuing a statement maligning conservative justices who are fulfilling their constitutional duty to interpret the Constitution as they see it. These Democrat congressional leaders charged that the justices who reportedly supported overturning Roe v. Wade during the Supreme Court’s early deliberations “ripped up the Constitution.” If Schumer, Pelosi, and their pro-abortion activist friends do not get their way with their desired judicial outcome, they accuse justices on the other side who won’t do their bidding of ripping up the Constitution.
Pelosi and Schumer should look in the mirror. They have ripped up the Constitution by launching an ad hominem attack out of spite against members of the third branch of the federal government, an independent judiciary, because they do not agree with the justices’ constitutional interpretations.
Pro-abortion demagogues are spreading lies about what the draft opinion would mean if it were to end up reflecting the final ruling of the Supreme Court.
President Joe Biden is no exception today, as he embraces the pro-abortion activist agenda. However, back in 2006 then-Senator Biden was singing a different tune, saying at that time that he did not view abortion as “a choice and a right.” In 1982, then-Senator Biden voted for a constitutional amendment that would have allowed individual states to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Now President Biden has declared in his remarks to the press on May 3rd that the draft opinion by Justice Alito, which would return the regulation of abortion to the states if it becomes the final ruling, is a “radical decision.” Biden claimed that “every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question.” In addition to the right to abortion itself, the president warned that “who you marry, whether or not you decide to conceive a child or not” and “how you raise your child” could also be on the chopping block.
As an aside, it is rather ironic that the president is worried about what could happen to parents’ right to decide how they raise their child when he so vehemently opposed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation.
But more to the point here, President Biden is spreading disinformation about the reach of Justice Alito’s draft opinion.
“To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized,” Justice Alito wrote, “we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
Justice Alito could not be clearer on the limited scope of his draft majority opinion, which was confined solely to adjudicating whether there is a constitutional right to abortion. That is because abortion, unlike gay marriage, for example, involves the life of a third party.
President Biden and his fellow Democrats are misleading the American people by stoking fears with their blatant misrepresentation of what Justice Alito actually wrote.
Where is the Biden administration’s new Disinformation Governance Board when we need it to correct the president’s and his administration’s own disinformation?
President Biden also told reporters that he did not think issues involving privacy like abortion should be left to “the whims” of the public. Whims? The president insulted the American people with that condescending remark.
President Biden did get something right in his remarks to the media, however, even if it was probably unintended. He referred to the “judgment to choose to abort a child.” (Emphasis added) At least, President Biden acknowledged that the life of “a child” is at stake when it comes to abortion, rather than using the dehumanizing language of pro-abortion activists. That is worth noting, even though the president mentioned aborting “a child” in the context of falsely claiming that the draft majority opinion would ban such judgments.
Where do things go from here, given the fact that the Supreme Court has not issued a final ruling on the abortion issue and may not do so until late June or early July?
The House of Representatives voted last year to codify the right to an abortion at the federal level. The Democrat-controlled Senate will try to follow suit shortly, although at least for now a filibuster blocking the legislation from moving forward is expected.
Progressives such as Democratic-Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders are demanding an end to the filibuster. However, that is unlikely to happen with the Democrats’ razor-thin majority since Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema plan to continue supporting the filibuster.
Expect more street protests, some of which could turn violent like the one in Los Angeles on May 3rd. Abortion rights protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers, injuring one officer.
Both parties will use the re-ignited abortion issue as red meat to rev up the turn-out of their respective bases in this year’s mid-term elections. But the Democrats may have only a slim chance for the abortion issue to move the dial significantly in their favor this fall. Surging inflation, the open border, and the rising crime wave across the country would have to fall far down the list of issues on voters’ minds from the top positions they occupy now.
Moreover, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, which is by no means certain, women will still be able to obtain legal abortions in many states, which will vary in terms of any restrictions that are involved.
People also move from state to state for a variety of reasons. Some New York and California residents decided to move to other states to get away from high taxes, crime, and over-regulation. Likewise, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, women living in states that ban or severely restrict abortions are free to move to New York, California, and other blue states where legal abortions will be easily accessible.
Democrats like to point to polls showing there is an overwhelming majority of Americans who want Roe v. Wade to remain intact, as opposed to far fewer Americans who want to see the decision completely overruled. But Americans do not view the right to abortion as a black and white issue.
Indeed, most Americans, according to some polls, believe that abortions should be outlawed in most cases during the second and third trimesters. The second trimester begins around week thirteen. This is far earlier than when viability begins somewhere around the 24th week, which the Supreme Court has used to date as its litmus test in determining when the states may start imposing significant restrictions on legal access to abortion.
President Biden does not want to let voters have the opportunity to elect accountable representatives to make policy decisions regarding abortion on their behalf. He is afraid of where the “whims” of the public may lead. Such arrogance demonstrates the elitist attitude of the Left.