(Dobbs) Nominees Weren't Honest. Now They Are Justices
It looks like they lied to get on the High Court.
“Honest people can disagree.”
This is often said when two sides clash over controversial issues. Usually it’s true.
But not with abortion, because people weren’t honest, people who serve on the United States Supreme Court. It looks like they lied to get there. It looks like they lied to get their way.
Like Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. In the aftermath of Friday’s abolition of Roe v. Wade, two United States senators— one Democrat, one Republican— have lashed out at these two Trump nominees to the Court. According to Maine Republican Susan Collins and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, the most Republican of all Democrats, each man assured them in their private meetings and their public hearings that they believed in the importance of precedent. They were talking about abortion, legalized by Roe v. Wade, a precedent in American life for almost 50 years. For two out of every three Americans, the protections of Roe are all they’ve known.
But as we are learning now, those assurances were lies. Collins’s notes show that Brett Kavanaugh told her when he was lobbying to be confirmed, “Start with my record, my respect for precedent, my belief that it is rooted in the Constitution, and my commitment and its importance to the rule of law.”
Collins, who ultimately voted to put him on the High Court, now says, “I feel misled.”
Manchin feels betrayed by both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. “I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans.”
All Americans should be. Especially the two-thirds who have told pollsters they were opposed to overturning Roe. My hope is, they’ll show their alarm at the ballot box.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his decision for the majority, “In 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one.” Left as an afterthought is, over the years, the Court has held that all kinds of rights should be enshrined in our lives, rights about which the original body of the Constitution makes no mention. The right of women to vote. The right of Blacks to own property, and to be educated in integrated, not “separate but equal” schools. The rights of Blacks, in fact, to be full American citizens.
The Constitution never mentions those. Would the current Court take them away?
Alito also wrote, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” Translation: leave abortion policy to the states.
Forgive my cynicism, but some of these are the same states whose governors and legislators are perverting and diluting voting rights and civil rights and human rights before our very eyes. Unlike other issues, there is no distinction between women seeking abortion in one state and those in another. It is a common concern in all 50 states and where there’s an unwanted pregnancy, a common need. A woman desperate to terminate her pregnancy in Mississippi is no different than a woman in Massachusetts. The only difference now is, in Massachusetts she’ll have a chance. In Mississippi, she won’t.
Nevertheless, the spokesperson for the National Right to Life Committee said happily on NPR: “This is a day when Americans will be allowed to do what they think is best on a very critical issue.”
Except, of course, a woman who thinks it is best— for her mental health, for her household, for her economic survival, for any other reason— to abort her pregnancy.
The Court’s ruling killing Roe v. Wade came not 24 hours after it killed a restrictive New York State gun law. Liberal CNN political commentator Ana Navarro underscored the hypocrisy: “Apparently states are allowed to regulate my uterus, but not guns that kill people.”
Or as a friend of mine even more plainly put it, They’ll ban abortions but they won’t ban AR-15s.
With the ban effective immediately in roughly half of America, the pro-choice movement, supported by statistics from the American Medical Association, projects more botched self-inflicted abortions where women can find no alternative, and more children brought unwanted into the world.
That does not bode well. Already in America there are more than 400,000 unadopted children in foster care. Do abolition’s advocates honestly believe that with legal abortion abruptly struck down in roughly half the states, there will be fewer children born to that kind of life, rather than more?
A conservative commentator on CNN, Alice Stewart, says society can handle it. “There are crisis pregnancy centers set up across this country that are there to provide assistance, financial assistance, for expectant mothers.” But pressed on how they can handle a new surge of unwanted children, all she could say was, “There are a lot of factors that need to be ironed out.”
Tell that to those foster children already living without a parent.
Matt Ford, a writer at The New Republic, points out that the Court has said in decisions over the years that the concept of settled precedent ensures that rulings are “founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals.” Friday, when Roe went down, Ford ruefully wrote, “Today, the proclivities of individuals rule.”
Individuals like Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
A man who reads my posts on Substack wrote in response to my Friday column condemning the Court’s decision, “Fixing bad law, vis a vis our Constitution, is not the end of the world, or the end of our Republic.”
No it’s not. But it’s another step in a disturbing drift. A drift away from precedent. A drift away from honesty.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Greg: thanks again. Your words always seem to ring true for me. I am cynical too. While the decision wasn't a surprise to me, it was a shock. Disgusted? You bet. . . at SCOTUS and Collins and Manchin. Manchin, of course, is a DINO. Why should we let him stay in the party at this point? His vote is unreliable at best. And Collins, seriously, she's surprised she was lied to? Too bad she was re-elected because she she is clearly out-of-touch with reality. Even a legally blind guy can see that. And thanks for the warning, Clarence, you and your wife's positions are clear. Can't we impeach him for wading into politics - or al least disqualify and recuse him from voting on those matters should they bubble up o the high court? But enough of the rant. Elections matter folks. Every 2 years - not just 4. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir since I'm guessing your readers do. . vote that is. Shame on you if you don't.. And remember what the German theologian and Lutheran pastor said in his 20th Century poem::
“In Germany they came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left
to speak up for me.”
― Martin Niemöller
So, who is next?
Thanks for allowing me to share,
Mark