Saturday, September 24, 2005
Rightwing Logic
...is an oxymoron. As evidenced by Charles Krauthammer, quoted in History News Network:
In our lifetime, has there been a more politically poisonous U.S. Supreme Court decision than Roe v. Wade? Set aside for a moment your thoughts on the substance of the ruling. (I happen to be a supporter of legalized abortion.) I'm talking about the continuing damage to the Republic: disenfranchising, instantly and without recourse, an enormous part of the American population; preventing, as even Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, proper political settlement of the issue by the people and their representatives; making the U.S. the only nation in the West to have legalized abortion by judicial fiat rather than by the popular will expressed democratically.I wonder if he holds the same opinion of the ruling that declared the poll tax was unconstitutional: "The Supreme Court shouldn't have decided the issue, because doing so deprived the people of the right to settle the issue by a democratic vote." That's why the Supreme Court exists, Krauthammer, you twit -- because democracy is more than just the will of the majority. Not to mention that a state referendum on the issue of whether abortion should be legal would not settle the matter. Whichever side lost would just try to overturn the decision with another state referendum; or with a lawsuit asserting that the law is unconstitutional, which would just toss it back in the court's collective lap. That is, after all, how Roe v. Wade ended up in the Supreme Court -- it was a challenge to a state law. If Krauthammer thinks that either side on the abortion issue would accept the outcome of a referendum that went against them as final, anymore than they accept judicial rulings that go against them, he's deluded.
Comments:
<< Home
The "pro-choice people are destroying the Democratic Party" line, is a big feature in the "Ideas" section of today's Boston Globe. Scanned it, it's about what you'd expect.
Odd world we live in when having the majority opinion can hurt a party.
It does mention the idea of making it "rare" as a means of lessening the damage. As if anyone with a brain would be in favor of more surgical proceedures, anyone apart from the FDA commissioner.
I think one thing we have to do is present what would really happen if abortion was not available. The only model is what happened in the late 60s, after contraception was widly available. There were still plenty of back alley abortions, not that the anti-choice faction ever did anything in that area but suppress contraception informatin and availablity.
The alternative to safe, legal abortion isn't no abortion, it's unsafe illegal abortion.
Post a Comment
Odd world we live in when having the majority opinion can hurt a party.
It does mention the idea of making it "rare" as a means of lessening the damage. As if anyone with a brain would be in favor of more surgical proceedures, anyone apart from the FDA commissioner.
I think one thing we have to do is present what would really happen if abortion was not available. The only model is what happened in the late 60s, after contraception was widly available. There were still plenty of back alley abortions, not that the anti-choice faction ever did anything in that area but suppress contraception informatin and availablity.
The alternative to safe, legal abortion isn't no abortion, it's unsafe illegal abortion.
# posted by 
: 9/25/2005 11:35:00 AM
: 9/25/2005 11:35:00 AM << Home
More blogs about politics.
