It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Supreme Court appears on the verge of overturning the Roe v. Wade precedent that has guaranteed abortion rights for the past 49 years. When the Supreme Court last September, on a 5-4 vote, refused to stop a Texas law that allowed private individuals to sue anyone who helps a woman terminate her pregnancy after the six-week mark, which forced Texas abortion providers to cease operations, Roe became a dead letter.
A leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion May 2 suggests the same five justices who let Texas go ahead witht the vigilante abortion ban — including the three right wingers added to the Court by Donald Trump — have expressed support for reversing Roe in its entirety, eliminating the right of women to choose abortions, rejecting the incremental approach of Chief Justice John Roberts, who apparently wants to restrict abortions but not eliminate them.
The fate of abortion rights was decided in November 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election with a court vacancy.
Trump, who had promised to do away with abortion, got to pick a Supreme justice right away, since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) had kept a seat open for nearly a year after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. McConnell refused to allow a hearing for President Barack Obama’s nominee. So Trump put Neil Gorsuch on the court, then replaced another justice when Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who had supported abortion rights, retired in July 2018, and Brett Kavanaugh got the nod. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Sept. 18, 2020, six weeks before the election, McConnell rushed Amy Coney Barrett onto the Court to create a 6-3 conservative majority.
After the court on Dec. 1 heard the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning a Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Roberts, the least extreme conservative on the court, apparently tried to get the right wingers to compromise on erasing the rule that the 1973 ruling on Roe and the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey share, which affirmed that states may not forbid abortions before “viability,” the point at which a fetus would survive outside the womb, usually 22 to 24 weeks, the Washington Post reported May 7. “Most observers of the court believe Roberts is still promoting a decision that would remove the viability line but otherwise keep Roe and Casey intact. Both liberals and conservatives are skeptical it can be done,” the Post reported.
Roberts called the leak “absolutely appalling” and ordered the marshal of the Supreme Court to investigate the circumstances. Senate Republicans were alarmed that the impending ruling would motivate women to get out to vote Democratic in mid-term elections, when they hoped to get voters to blame Democrats for global inflation and higher gas prices. Republicans at first refused to comment on the substance of the leaked draft, claiming liberals may have leaked the draft opinion and calling for the leaker to be prosecuted.
But it does not appear the leak was illegal, and the Post’s reporting lent credence to speculation that the original leak originated from the right wing, in an effort to shore up the five votes for Justice Sam Alito’s February draft opinion, which attacked the idea that the Constitution protects the right to privacy that is the basis for the Roe and Casey decisions. And the leak may have succeeded, as the Post reported, “the majority of five justices to strike Roe remains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
“A person close to the court’s most conservative members said Roberts told his fellow jurists in a private conference in early December that he planned to uphold the state law and write an opinion that left Roe and Casey in place for now. But the other conservatives were more interested in an opinion that overturned the precedents, the person said.”
Uncertainty about the leak will become irrelevant when the court issues its ruling in late June. Then Republicans must brace against the whirlwind of public opinion, which heavily supports legal abortions. A Pew Research survey of 11,044 Americans, released May 6, found 61% of respondents said abortion should be legal in most or all cases — little changed from 1995 when 60% said the same.
Religious people are not united in opposition to abortion. In fact, the Religion News Service reported the country’s many religious groups have wide-ranging opinions on the legality of abortion.
The only religious group that overwhelmingly opposes abortion is White evangelicals, 73% of whom said abortion should be illegal, the Pew poll showed. Other Christian groups are far more supportive of abortion rights. Among Black Protestants, only 23% said abortion should be illegal most or all of the time; 66% said they thought abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
While the Catholic Church hierarchy has opposed all forms of abortion — and US bishops have made it a defining teaching of the church — the Pew survey found 56% of Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Only 44% of Catholics said they were “extremely” confident that life begins at conception.
“The bishops have been trying to convince their own people and have failed,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior analyst for Religion News Service. “Catholics don’t listen to the bishops.”
“Catholic bishops will celebrate this victory for which they have worked for decades, but ironically it should lead to a divorce between the bishops and Republicans,” Reese wrote in an RNS column May 4. “The GOP has nothing else to offer them. In fact, except for abortion, its proposals are the opposite of Catholic social teaching. The bishops got what they wanted out of this marriage; it is time to move on.”
Some Republicans already are ready to cut Catholics loose because they are too friendly to immigrants. US Rep. Margorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), a leader of the QAnon wing of the GOP, said she believes Catholic bishops are “satanic” and accused them of “destroying our nation” through their support of immigrants.
Ironically, while Jesus never mentioned abortion, he did instruct his followers to feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless and welcome foreigners. Most Republican Christians apparently are unaware of the Gospel of Matthew, although Catholic bishops, to their credit, have reiterated Catholic social teaching as a “central and essential element of our faith … founded on the life and words of Jesus Christ, who came ‘to bring glad tidings to the poor … liberty to captives … recovery of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18-19), and who identified himself with ‘the least of these,’ the hungry and the stranger (cf. Matthew 25:45). Catholic social teaching is built on a commitment to the poor.”
Republicans deny economic and social policies that protect the strength and stability of family life, and they have announced they’re coming after Social Security and Medicare and want to raise taxes on the poor the next time they control Congress and the White House. Christians who have sided with the GOP over abortion at least must demand better candidates who will support the dignity of life after birth, as Jesus instructed them. For those who deny assistance to the least among us, as Republicans have in the past two years, Jesus effectively told them, “Go to Hell.” (Matthew 25:46) Look it up. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2022
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