Litmus Test
Some have suggested that Judge Sotomayor may not toe the "liberal line" on abortion. While it's possible, I doubt it--is it buyable Obama didn't care, personally or politically? It's the one issue that, if she's not on the right side, could derail her nomination.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:21 AM
4 Comments:
I presume they had conversations behind closed doors.
I suspect that Harriet Miers was a pro-life stealth candidate. But Bush miscalculated, because even those who strongly oppose Roe v Wade also want judicial competence, so nobody liked the Miers appointment.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed at age 60. I think it's a safe bet that we won't see any nominees that old for a long time. In this great Republic, the divisive issues like abortion are settled by nine people, appointed for life, whose views are secretly revealed to the President and who are chosen based on their ideological reliability (non-Souter-ness) and their youth.
One thing that depresses me is how few pro-choice people I know oppose Roe v. Wade.
One of the things that depresses me is that so many view the whole Supreme Court nomination process as being about abortion and Roe.
I wouldn't be surprised if abortion was not the first and foremost concern of an Obama appointment- de-emphasizing the issue is only in his interest
Count me among the pro-choice anti-Roe few. The reasoning was intellectually suspect and splitting the baby (ahem) on matters of public policy should be left to the political branches whenever possible. Protection of fundamental individual rights is the domain of the courts, and it's untenable to claim that such fundamental rights appear and disappear based on viability, time since conception, etc. etc.
Of course, that's easy to say living in a state where the non-Roe law likely would largely mirror current law.
The New York Times et al. routinely have surveys such as "Do you support Roe v Wade, which says that a woman has a right to an abortion in the first trimester?"
In a narrow sense, this is correct. But what they don't say is that RvW had a "companion case", Doe v. Bolton, which was decided the same day. The final paragraph of the Roe decision refers to Doe, stating, "That opinion and this one, of course, are to be read together." So it's not unreasonable to see them as two parts of one decision. (If Doe were overturned, then by definition the final paragraph of Roe would be overturned.)
And Doe deals with the second and third trimesters, saying that although such abortions can be regulated, they must be allowed in cases of the mother's health. And it clarifies what "health" means: "We agree with the District Court, 319 F. Supp., at 1058, that the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age - relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health."
If the New York Times survey asked, "Do you support Roe v Wade, which says that abortion is legal up to the moment of birth if the mother's emotional health would be hurt by a baby?" they would get very different results. Indeed, the available data suggests 80% of America would say no. And this 80% -- a supermajority -- cannot prevail as long as RvW and DvB take this matter out of the hands of the people.
(N.B. I'm pro-life myself, but I would strongly support overturning RvW even if every state would keep the current abortion regime, because I think it has totally distorted our democracy.)
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