"When the draft Supreme Court opinion overruling "Roe v. Wade" leaked on Monday, my first thought was: WHY COULDN'T THEY WAIT UNTIL NEXT YEAR? ("Roe" is in quotes because Planned Parenthood v. Casey already overruled Roe, but "Roe" is still used to describe the nonexistent right to abortion.)
"Yes, it's human life we're talking about. Millions of babies are killed in their mothers' wombs each year -- it's a massacre. On the other hand, I thought, ending late-terms might end the midterms.
"But then I read Justice Samuel Alito's opinion and was intellectually offended all over again by the idea that one of our precious constitutional rights, enshrined in a founding document, is the right to kill an unborn baby. Anyone complaining about the decision should be required to cite the exact parts Alito got wrong. Be specific. And keep in mind, no important discussion of constitutional law has ever begun with the words, "My vagina ..."
"The Nation magazine's Elie Mystal took a stab at it by completely misstating Alito's argument, then saying, "the Founding Fathers were racist, misogynist jerkfaces." (I was planning on writing a scholarly and nuanced treatise on the framers, but Mystal just stole my title!)
"I also noticed that, outside of the media, no one seems especially bothered by the decision. Or to have noticed it. In groups of liberal women, apolitical women, black and Puerto Rican women, no one is talking about the case.
"They're probably right. The end of a court-managed "constitutional" right to abortion isn't going to produce the Roemageddon Democrats are predicting.
"More than half of the country already lives in states where abortion will always be legal, subsidized and sacralized. For those who don't, Harvard should set up an abortion scholarship program. Instead of spending $100 million "investigating" slavery, the university could buy bus tickets for girls who need to go to another state for an abortion.
"The Mississippi law being upheld in this case -- contrary to everything I've heard on MSNBC -- is shockingly reasonable.". . .
The Silent Scream (The ultrasound of abortion) The Silent Scream is a 1984 anti-abortion documentary video directed and narrated by Bernard Nathanson, an obstetrician, NARAL Pro-Choice America founder, and abortion provider turned pro-life activist, and produced in partnership with the National Right to Life Committee.[1] The film depicts the abortion process via ultrasound and shows an abortion taking place in the uterus. During the abortion process, the fetus is described as appearing to make outcries of pain and discomfort. The video has been a popular tool used by the pro-life campaign in arguing against abortion,[2] although it has been criticized as misleading by members of the medical community.[3]
While posting this, I found I could not watch it myself any more than I could stand seeing anything that actually went on inside a Nazi gas chamber.