Why the Judge Roberts Fight is About Abortion
Roe V. Wade Smokescreen
Instead, the American left will hold high the banner of personal liberty, choice and privacy and remind anyone still willing to listen that were it not for the court we might yet have segregated lunch counters.
But this is all a smokescreen; the real fight is over abortion.
It is often observed that the court is the last venue the left has for pushing its agenda largely because it is the branch of government most removed from voter accountability. Presumably, were it not for the court, most the liberal agenda would be offered the benign amusement and token attention given other assorted quackery.
This is true only as far as it goes. Huge swaths of the liberal agenda are quite popular, if poorly sold, but abortion is not a part of that swath.
While support for the Roe v. Wade decision stands at 65 percent, support for abortion is much weaker and varies widely depending on circumstance. A poll conducted on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade found that only 23 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all cases, while 42 percent believe the court should make it more difficult to get one.
According to the same poll, 81 percent of Americans support abortion in cases of rape or incest, but only one percent of abortions are sought for that reason. Only 11 percent of Americans support abortion after the sixth month of pregnancy, but these procedures represented 50 percent of abortions in 1999.
Abortion is a losing political issue. In 2002, 80 percent of Congressional candidates backed by NARAL-Pro Choice America were defeated, while 80 percent of candidates endorsed by the National Right to Life Committee went on to victory.
Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, the presumptive 2008 Democrat presidential nominee, has begun to distance herself from abortion apologetics in the hopes of wider national appeal.
Instead of full-throated support for abortion, the left insists that they are really fighting for justice and we have to remember that it was the courts that beat back segregation.
But that was then. Now when Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi so much as pays tribute to a former segregationist on his 100th birthday, he is drummed out of a leadership post.
Asked to vote on the merits of segregation, Americans would overwhelmingly back our integrated society with its improved, though not perfect, race relations. Asked about abortion and the response would be unpredictable.
Retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been the notorious swing vote in favor of the pro-choice side on all abortion-related cases since her appointment to the bench in 1981. A Roberts confirmation would shift the balance considerably, and the left knows it.
They just are not saying so.
Published by Jeremy Moore
Jeremy Moore is a freelance writer based in New Jersey. View profile
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1 Comments
Post a CommentWhat happened to people taking responsibility for their actions and their poor choices? If youre a sexually active woman, you should therefore assume you are going to get pregnant. If you are a woman who was raped, molested, or otherwise violated, there are litereally thousands of people to adopt the child that HER body made half of. There is no positive outcome to an abortion. It is a selfish right. "It will wreck my figure" being one I've recently heard. The right to abort was given by timid people who want nothing to do with defining when life begins and when to charge people with murder. You, the writer, being a man, you have never had a child in your body. If you had, you would understand that within a month of pregnancy, youre child is alive. You feel it in every bone in your body. To deny that, is the pomp of an uninformed mind.