I never thought I’d see the day when Roe v. Wade was overturned at all, let alone in such a magnificent way. The opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito is not describable in any other way than to say it is magnificent. Every word, every sentence is a thing of beauty. I am on a long car trip at the moment and I spent two hours of it reading the decision out loud to Mr. Fox as we both exclaimed and laughed with joy many times before I was done.
Magnificent.
How long have we been speaking this truth, that there is NO RIGHT TO AN ABORTION IN THE CONSTITUTION? For fifty years, Christians and other pro-life Americans have been organizing, praying, and agitating to end the national shame that is the fictional right to abortion that sloppy or evil justices imposed on us through force.
Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. Casey perpetuated its errors, calling both sides of the national controversy to resolve their debate, but in doing so, Casey necessarily declared a winning side. Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views. The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing it to the large number of Americans who disagreed with Roe.
This country doesn’t work like that. Roe v. Wade was one of the moments in our history that began what conservatives saw as the breaking point for Constitutional law. We lost faith in the judiciary. We saw justice as no longer blind but partisan and working toward an agenda that was the antithesis of the Constitution.
The left learned that when they didn’t get their way with the voters and they failed to win hearts and minds, they could run to the judiciary and cheat by finding sympathetic judges to turn their dark desires into law without the consent of the people. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work.
Every talking point the left has used to defend Roe and Casey was destroyed by Alito.
The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition…The Court’s decisions have held that the Due Process Clause protects two categories of substantive rights—those rights guaranteed by the first eight Amendments to the Constitution and those rights deemed fundamental that are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. In deciding whether a right falls into either of these categories, the question is whether the right is “deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition” and whether it is essential to this Nation’s “scheme of ordered liberty.” …
Guided by the history and tradition that map the essential components of the Nation’s concept of ordered liberty, the Court finds the Fourteenth Amendment clearly does not protect the right to an abortion. Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.
Roe and Casey were so flimsy that the pro-abortion lawyers had to lie in their arguments about known case law, and SCOTUS called them out. My only question is, what took so long to repeal these crackpot decisions?
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Respondents’ argument that this history does not matter flies in the face of the standard the Court has applied in determining whether an asserted right that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution is nevertheless protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Solicitor General repeats Roe’s claim that it is “doubtful . . . abortion was ever firmly established as a common-law crime even with respect to the destruction of a quick fetus,” 410 U. S., at 136, but the great common-law authorities—Bracton, Coke, Hale, and Blackstone—all wrote that a post- quickening abortion was a crime.
The awesome decision also pointed out how Roe not only was faux legislation but it lied to us regarding “viability,” making Americans believe that viable babies wouldn’t be aborted. But abortion fanatics would never pinpoint viability and kept making excuses in order to crush the skulls of fully formed babies up to the very moment before birth.
The scheme Roe produced looked like legislation, and the Court provided the sort of explanation that might be expected from a legislative body. An even more glaring deficiency was Roe’s failure to justify the critical distinction it drew between pre- and post-viability abortions. See id., at 163. The arbitrary viability line, which Casey termed Roe’s central rule, has not found much support among philosophers and ethicists who have attempted to justify a right to abortion. The most obvious problem with any such is that viability has changed over time and is heavily dependent on factors—such as medical advances and the availability of quality medical care—that have nothing to do with the characteristics of a fetus.
Finally, the states have been given back their authority that should never have been stripped to allow their constituents to guide abortion laws. Despite the braying donkeys crying about losing “women’s rights,” absolutely nothing will change in the states that want to kill babies before birth. But for those of us who don’t, we will finally be able to vote with our feet and move to states that protect life.
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Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives.
But the most magnificent part of the argument was when the Solicitor General offered only two options for the Court, which may go down in history as the worst legal gamble known to man.
They contend that “no half-measures” are available and that we must either reaffirm or overrule Roe and Casey. Brief for Respondents 50. We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.
In a bittersweet nod to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who would have been thrilled to see this day come, Alito quoted the legal giant in the decision.
It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.”
It should tell you all you need to know about the activists staging violent protests over SCOTUS returning the power to the people. Abortion nuts have never been interested in persuading the public through reasoned argument but in imposing their will through raw judicial power. They must be told no.
This magnificent decision coupled with the overturning of New York’s ridiculous gun restrictions gives me hope for the first time in many years that the Constitution still matters, that America’s principles are still alive, and that the Republic may still recover from the attempt to subject it to the will of tyrants.