Abortion advocates off the rails

The Supreme Court let slide its opportunity today to release an opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Now the country must wait, likely until next month. Meanwhile, those who want the government to permit abortion at all stages have gone off the rails. When they do that, they show that they cannot defend abortion as a sound principle of law or social action.

Supreme Court puts off abortion decision

As above, the Supreme Court released two opinions and a slew of orders, none having to do with abortion. On the case that prompted the draft leak, the Court released no opinion today. Chief Justice Roberts must still be vainly trying to build consensus by brokering a fractured decision. While he dithers, protesters still parade in front of his and his colleagues’ houses. (When they do that, they break the law: Title 18 USC § 1507). The White House eggs them on, and now even Bill Maher can’t support that. For that matter, 75 percent of the country, including 67 percent of Democrats, don’t support parading in front of Justices’ houses, according to the latest Trafalgar polls.

That hasn’t stopped House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from calling the Supreme Court dangerous to freedom, and even to families. How the Court is supposed to pose a danger to families, she doesn’t explain. Maybe Democrats don’t explain; they emote.

Obviously the Democrats have drawn the battle line. They think they can drum up support for themselves at Midterms – which they won’t, actually. Any enthusiasm they drum up for their side, pales in comparison to the enthusiasm on the other side. But their defenses of abortion itself shows that they are defending the indefensible.

Abortion as a way to fight inflation?

The worst single argument today in favor of abortion comes from Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). She actually told MSNBC Host Lawrence O’Donnell, on his show, that inflation justifies abortion.

O’Donnell asked her which issue she held more important: abortion or inflation? And she said:

Well, I don’t think they compare, I think they actually reinforce each other. So the fact that things like inflation can happen, and it can become more expensive to feed your kids and to fuel your car, is exactly why people need to be able to be in charge of how many mouths they’re going to have to feed.

Wow. Lifeboat ethics writ large. Never mind that governments and their central banks cause inflation. By the logic of Rep. Porter’s remarks, government should let parents line up their children and shoot one or more of them to save the rest.

One expects better than that from doctors – and we’re not getting it. The journal Lancet carried a letter on May 14 actually criticizing Justice Sam Alito for relying on the Constitution.

What is so shockingly [in]human and irrational about the Court’s decision is that it bases its decision upon an 18^th century document ignorant of 21^st century realities for women.

Excuse me? That “eighteenth century document” is our governing charter. Justice Alito did his job. And those doctors have come within an inch of not doing theirs.

Reproduction harder on women than men?

Then we have Sherry Colb, who occasionally writes for the site Justia, which pretends to be neutral. This one quote from her post on the unashamedly leftist philosophy-of-law site Dorf on Law states her best case:

[F]or the most part, women’s role in reproduction is far more demanding, physically and psychologically, than men’s. Specifically, men ejaculate and thereby complete their role. Women, by contrast, endure forty weeks of some combination of nausea and vomiting, difficulty sleeping, difficulty breathing, the risk of gestational diabetes, the risk of life-threatening pre-eclampsia, the potential need to experience bed rest (which is anything but restful), the most physically painful experiences at the end, including the risk of vaginal tearing and of more serious complications, followed by the production of milk that can sometimes cause very painful mammary gland blockage (if she misses a feeding or pumping) and risks of an abscess.

Your editor isn’t a lawyer, but he does have a medical degree. Toxemia of pregnancy (“pre-eclampsia”) is a risk, but a low risk for most. Gestational diabetes is even rarer. If we all decide to be as risk-averse as she advocates, the species will die out. (Is that what she wants?) Everything she mentions, people can manage.

And forbidding abortion, or denying it federal judicial protection, does not mean absolving men of the responsibility for supporting the lives they help create. CNAV would welcome the child-support debate. Let the “young studs” “sowing their wild oats” step up to the plate.

The real issue

But of course that avoids the real issue. The real issue is a fanatical desire to make abortion and even infanticide lawful. The arguments people advance for it turn out to be specious. And when people aren’t even interested in arguing, they indulge in such vulgar expressions as calling an unborn child “a good snack.” As some did at a pro-abortion rally in Phoenix, Arizona.

This shows that abortion advocates have gone off the rails. The very prospect of the Constitution snapping back from “mere thing of wax” to its proper form, has unhinged them. So don’t let them fool you. As Justice Alito said, if that’s their best, they’ve got nothing.