By Edwin Cooney
My column last week asserting that the chickens have come home to roost and that now it's time for them to rule, brought two or three powerful responses worthy of consideration.
Becky from Minnesota writes: I thought most of your column was pretty balanced. That is until you said that abortion is "a responsible civil right.” Because I don't believe in killing anything human, I can't say that is what abortion is. Calling that a civil right of any kind is a slippery slope!
My immediate or mere defensive response to that would be to assert that all civil rights are subject to irresponsible exercise including freedom of speech, assembly and, of course, freedom of the press. Beyond that, let's remember that at the heart of Roe v. Wade (whatever the later change of heart by Roe) was a woman's right to counsel with her physician with a view to a medical procedure regarding her state of pregnancy. You’re right, Becky, abortion itself isn’t a civil right, but to have an abortion under safe and clinical conditions is something pretty close to a civil right. Remember, the Supreme Court didn’t end abortion on Friday, June 24th. It merely transferred it to the states. All they did was to make abortion harder and more expensive to obtain.
Roe was neither a political quest nor was it, as one friend of mine charged: The decision in Roe was essentially a policy decision camouflaged in legal garb. It was raw political power exercised by unelected justices, rather than by the political branches of our government.
That response on the part of my friend from Albany, New York appears to come straight out of a Conservative instructional handbook. The fact of the matter is that Supreme Court Justices become what they are straight from appointment by a president and confirmation by the United States Senate. Their job, as my friend, a lawyer, well knows, is adjudication. Justices, of course, have standards as to what cases they'll consider, but these cases aren't drawn up by the justices. They're considered as they might affect different aspects of constitutional government. Even more ironic, the author of the majority in Roe v. Wade was Justice Harry Blackman, appointed as a "strict constructionist" by Richard M. Nixon, 37th President of the United States, a self-proclaimed "conservative." It has become standard rhetoric that the Warren and Berger courts were filled with radical socialists, otherwise called “judicial activists,” appointed by liberal Democratic presidents. Presidents who had appointed the 1973 justices included Franklin Roosevelt (Justice Douglas), Dwight Eisenhower (Justices Stewart and Brennan), John F. Kennedy (Justice White), Lyndon Johnson (Justice Marshall) and Richard Nixon (Justices Powell, Rehnquist and Blackman). Even more, the Court in 1973 had a Republican majority: Stewart, Brennan, Chief Justice Warren Berger, Blackman, Rehnquist, and Powell. Justices Rehnquist and White dissented in the matter of Roe v. Wade.
I think it's fair to say that most of us regard both the approval of Roe v. Wade as well as its dismissal as being largely questions of morality. I have a friend in California, one of the smartest and most knowledgable men I know, who says it's not at all a question of morality. Here's my friend Oakland David:
“Who decides what is a moral issue and what the "moral" choice is? Five of the six justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade are Roman Catholic, as is one of the justices who voted to retain it. The Roman Catholic church believes that the soul attaches, and thus life begins, at conception, and almost every state which now will ban abortion follows that idea. However, not every religion believes that. Some believe that life begins when the fetus is "viable" or capable of surviving outside the womb. Some believe that life begins when the newly-born infant draws its first breath. Science cannot answer that question, which is essentially a religious issue. So, under our supposed separation of church and state, why is one church's belief forced on everyone? The conservative majority currently running the Supreme Court seems to consistently vote in favor of the litigant claiming freedom of religion over the rights of everyone else, whether it is the right to freely engage in commerce or the right not to have their tax money support religious instruction. The glaring exception is abortion, where they are quite willing to impose their religion on the entire country, and decide that governments, state governments in this case, can override the religious faith of their residents. They can't do this to require that adoption agencies which receive public funds don't discriminate. They can't require bakers offering their goods to the public not to discriminate. They can't refuse to fund religious schools if they fund non-sectarian schools. I see hypocrisy here.
"There have been 115 Justices on the Supreme Court, and only 15 have been Roman Catholic. That we currently have six of those 15 is astounding. The court certainly does not reflect America."
The obvious question to Oakland David and to everyone else is: what belief, behavioral expectation, political doctrine, human expectation does represent America?
I close with two ironic historical facts.
Oakland David points out that out of the 115 Supreme Court Justices only 15 have been Roman Catholic. In 1960, millions rightly celebrated the election of John F. Kennedy as the first Roman Catholic President of the United States. Too few realized, then or today, that Roger Brooke Taney was the first Roman Catholic Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was appointed by President Andrew Jackson in 1835 and served until 1864. It was Roger Taney who ruled in 1857 that slaves were not human beings, but were rightfully the property of slave holders. Quite a decision for a morally upright gentleman of justice, wasn't it?
Finally, the “Wade" in Roe v. Wade was nationally prominent nearly a decade before he was linked to the case of Jane Roe. (Her name was Norma McCorvey.) Henry Wade was the Dallas County Prosecutor who would have prosecuted Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of JFK. but wound up prosecuting Jack Ruby for Oswald's murder instead.
Comments are always welcome, but don't be too profound or I'll have to continue on this topic for a third week!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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