CONGRATULATIONS, CHICKENS, YOU'VE FINALLY COME HOME TO ROOST — NOW, YOU MUST RULE!

By Edwin Cooney

I had intended to title this commentary “The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth,” but since there are many truths or, if you prefer, factors that shout out for recognition, I've decided to address the wings that have delivered the inevitable forces that finally triumphed last Friday, June 24th, 2022. Hence, here come the chicken wings in all their glory or inglorious forces!

Here are the forces or realities that drove the rejection of Roe v. Wade:

(1.) The United States of America remains largely a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant country and it is determined to be a home primarily for white Christians and brave white men.

(2.) Women are valued, but they are secondary citizens be they sweethearts, wives, professional women, or even soldiers.

(3.) Those who have opposed Roe v. Wade are determined to connect church and state! They regard the United States of America as a Christian nation despite a 1797 declaration to the contrary issued by the administration of President John Adams asserting that church and state are separate entities.

(4.) Social welfare is generally second to economic welfare by too many very influential Americans.

(5.) Finally, there is the force best described as illusion. I'm sure that conservatives are congratulating themselves today that the overthrow of Roe is a moral victory over "collectivist socialism.” After all, the “good guys” must naturally prevail over the “bad guys” when all they've done is to put a price on abortion. If you doubt that, all you have to do is ask the rich what they will do and where they'll go when they decide to get an abortion!

Likely results:

Approximately half of the states had adopted laws which would end legal abortions once Roe v. Wade was overthrown last Friday morning. Some states are even considering laws punishing those women who go out of state to get an abortion after they return home. Many states that allow abortions will establish charitable private organizations to allow citizens in states where abortions are illegal to obtain abortions in their jurisdictions. Even more devastating will be the effect that the overturning of Roe may have on stem cell research which is vital to fighting life-altering diseases.

In the minds and hearts of many people, we are once again coming face to face with a moral issue. What's ironic to this observer is that those who time after time oppose government authority are seeking to use the government to enforce their own "moral" ends. Even more ironic is how those very same people resist the use of government to confront another primarily “moral" issue which we all call civil rights.

Opposition to abortion as I see it is a legitimate and even compelling political and moral position. Thoughtful men and women ought to be capable of establishing a set of conditions which would both allow and limit abortions. Both government and the administration of abortions are powerful entities and must be handled as such. Civil rights, abortion issues, and the use of nuclear weapons affect government operations in eight nations worldwide: The United States, Russia, China, Israel, Great Britain, France, Pakistan and North Korea. I draw this parallel because powerful issues must, to the maximum degree, be effectively handled as high above the political process as possible.

Before Monday, January 22nd, 1973, abortion rights were a minor political issue. What occurred on January 22nd 1973 was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States of a legal issue, Roe v. Wade.  What became political was reaction to that legal decision. As early as 1976, the right to an abortion was an issue only in the Democratic Party where Ellen McCormack, a 49-year-old housewife, filed with the Federal Election Commission to become a presidential candidate in the Democratic party. She only received 22 votes at the Democratic convention in 1976, but she was the first political candidate to receive matching federal election funds and she participated in a debate witch included future president Jimmy Carter. In 1980, she was the Right to Life candidate for the presidency, but she never joined the Republican Party's “Moral Majority” movement initiated by the Reverend Jerry Falwall.

No free people ought to avoid moral issues. However, the manner of inevitable debate of moral issues can be conducted above the cackling crowing, personal finger-pointing milieu that brought about the death of a responsible civil right.

So it's back to the drawing board. Let's do all we can to keep whatever resolution or alteration of the present situation out of the chicken manure!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

SUMMER 2022: IT’S TAKING US SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN ON VACATION!

By Edwin Cooney

As I was considering writing about summer 2022, it occurred to me that back in the 1950s, a young man named Jerry Keller sang a song called "Here Comes Summer,” a happy song anticipating a summer with his girlfriend!

Summertime 2022 is likely to be a very heady time. The worries and woes that are likely to run through our heads could be overwhelming in thousands of instances.

Roe v. Wade will soon be decided by a conservative Supreme Court and the "pro life" people who anticipate victory just may very well be disappointed. It's possible that the court might modify its decision allowing some aspect of Roe to remain valid. Such a possibility is likely to make practically everyone unhappy. Add to that the debate about the Second Amendment which affects those who treasure their guns as much as they value their personal freedom to be who they want to be.

Next, there's the ongoing war between the political forces that pit former President Donald J. Trump against everyone else. It's amazing to me that a man who egged on his supporters to the degree that they were willing to kill the sitting Vice President of the United States is even close to being a serious presidential candidate in 2024. It’s absolutely stunning!

Then, there are the unceasing heat waves, wildfires, floods and tornados, and early hurricanes, all of which are due to our national insistence on using fossil fuels to run our economy when solar energy is clearly the path to a better and safer future.

It's our nature to be curious and to seek control of our social, economic, and spiritual destinies and those of our children and grandchildren.

As one gets older and has less responsibility, there is a tendency to believe that the whole world is going to hell —  largely out of a realization that someone else is about to be in control and that our personal existences are about to change forever.

I see our political system dissolving from the balanced federalist system designed by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton into an oligarchy dominated by the rich just as it was up until the dawn of the 19th Century. Then, young America's leaders began relying on the best thinkers of Ancient Greece and Rome, along with Renaissance France, Italy, and Britain, to shape government from the mere gratification of medieval royalty to the legitimate ambitions and dreams shared by you and me.

It was at that time that the thinkers mentioned above were joined by the young industrialists named Eli Whitney, Robert Fulton and, eventually, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell who invented the vital tools and processes that changed our agricultural society into an industrial giant. (Read our Constitution which was written just before the dawn of industrialism and you'll see no reference to a specific political doctrine such as capitalism or socialism. These doctrines were the children of the incoming industrial era and were designed to bring forth the hopes and dreams never before experienced by a whole population.)

As Summer 2022 drapes us within her folds, it appears that the political process designed to ensure everyone's freedom may well be modified by various state legislatures that are determined, as they've done for nearly two centuries now, to emphasize "States' Rights” so that the few can control the many when it comes to electing the next President of the United States. The world, they appear to believe, which has always been run by and for the wealthy, should never be guilty of institutionalizing hope and charity as too many “bleeding-heart” liberals and socialists would do if they weren't regulated by the government. Don't ever let a conservative tell you that he or she “hates government” when they actually control government, because it is easier to control others at the regional, state and local levels than at the federal level.

Summer's greatest gift has always been the freedom its weather brings humanity to work and play.

The future, whatever spirit it creates, kind or mean, spiritual or merely profitable, helpful or stultifying, begins at 4:14 EDT tomorrow, ready or not!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

ELIZABETH II: IS SHE HUMAN OR MERELY ROYAL?

If you were born in the month of April in 1926, if you were born on a Wednesday, if you were born in England, if you are female, if you have been a wife and mother, you have got a lot in common with a very extraordinary human being — Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor! Perhaps her very humanness is the most obscure factor about her. She's one of the most privileged people in the world. She's been given much, both in wealth and in social status. It has to be the rare individual to directly differ with her, let alone contradict or criticize her. It also has to be the rare person who has cried or cursed in front of her! Yet she has numerous social and royal obligations, a list of which may well overwhelm most of us commoners.

If she's clearly been granted extra protection in the area of everyday human foibles, imagine the discipline and control of many natural urges that are denied to "Her Royal Highness!” This observer has never heard or read of her loss of temper, expression of impatience or rudeness — not even during the stressful period in 1997 when Princess Diana was killed and many wondered what role "the Queen" played in Diana's discomfort with Prince Charles, Elizabeth's eldest son.

To many of us, bound to an ordinary existence, Queen Elizabeth is the head of a fairyland on whose imperial soil the sun never set. Note: If the sun once never set on British soil as proclaimed by the great prime minister and author Benjamin Disraeli, it could be observed that the sun never rose on British soil! Another version was as follows: "The sun never set on the British Empire because God did not trust the British in the dark!”

Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Phillip were reaping one of the many royal privileges of the British Empire at the very hour of King George's death. Their Royal Highnesses, as guests of the Kenyan government, were in a mighty treehouse overlooking a salt lick in the Kenyan jungle that was visited by just about every wild animal imaginable. Summoned from this wondrous kaleidoscope back to "civilization'" and informed of her father's passing, Elisabeth was immediately whisked back to England. She changed into a black dress during the flight and emerged from the plane to be greeted by a solemn Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who immediately granted his love and loyalty.

Queen Elizabeth's reign is invariably compared and contrasted with that of her great, great grandmother Queen Victoria whose reign lasted from Tuesday, June 20th, 1837 until Tuesday, January 22nd, 1901 — a total of 63 years, 216 days. The two women would be very different. Victoria  was both rigid and opinionated in temperament. She came to love Prime Ministers Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli, but she heartily disliked and distrusted Prime Minister Henry John Temple Palmerston--or Pam as he was known. Queen Victoria worked with eleven prime ministers to Elizabeth's fourteen. As head of state rather than head of government, Queen Elizabeth has stayed strictly away from political doctrine whether her prime minister was Margaret Thatcher or Harold Wilson, Winston Churchill or Boris Johnson.

As for the "times," things have changed much more radically during Elizabeth’s time. In 1953, Eddie Fisher, Perry Como and even Bing Crosby were entertainment stars in Great Britain. Less than ten years later, The Beatles came along and the Queen eventually knighted the two living members of the group. In 1953, television was in its infancy. No one even imagined that one day there would be a computer in the house. As the 1950s rolled along, colonies such as Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and numerous others obtained their independence although the British Commonwealth has remained as stabilizing as the queen's monarchy itself.

In Britain as here in America, many dismiss the significance of the very idea of royalty. Although no one can form a legitimate government without Queen Elizabeth's consent, she is solely empowered to legitimize a government leadership endorsed by Parliament. Note that on Friday, May 10th, 1940, King George VI, Elizabeth's father, would have preferred to invite Lord Halifax rather than Winston Churchill to succeed the beleaguered Neville Chamberlain, but as a member of the House of Lords, Halifax himself asserted that he couldn't be an effective prime minister during a time of war.

Perhaps the finest complement to Queen Elizabeth II on her Seventieth Anniversary is that her personal presence stabilizes British society in a more genuine way than the idea of “national unity" which is what reassures the “United” States in this hour of America's most severe period of turmoil since before the Civil War.

Obviously a grand lady, she's ultimately encased in a grand institution. Royalty has never quite lived up to its grand ideal. It can’t, because every human, Elizabeth included, is ultimately fallible!

The authority she inherited through her father's accession to the throne was brought about by her Uncle Edward's abdication. George VI gained his high royal office largely through the political power of the parliament rather than through personal ambition. This gentle and humble royal servant never failed to realize that nor has his eldest daughter.  

However, before you dismiss the ongoing significance of royalty, remember the personhood of one Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

MOST WERE RIGHT AND I HAVE BEEN WRONG — HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF

By Edwin Cooney

At least twice a month as a member of the Syracuse Host Lions Club, I pledge allegiance to the flag of “The United States of America and to the republic for which it stands…”  Sadly and most uncomfortably, we're passing through a political, social, and spiritual nightmare. This nightmare is about unity versus disunity, indivisibility versus divisibility and, saddest of all, justice versus injustice.

Back in 1787, the Continental Congress sanctioned a constitutional convention in Philadelphia because the 13 (supposedly) “United States of America” clearly had never been and weren't united. Individual states had promised to contribute to the revolutionary war effort against England but some failed to do so. (Note: During the Civil War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis quarreled with the individual states that refused to provide sufficient manpower to the Confederate Army. Under confederations, cooperation even in time of war is voluntary!)

Once our independence was declared by the 1783 Treaty of Paris, it became increasingly evident that there was little unity among the thirteen "united" states. States began arguing with each other over their separate borders, began taxing one another's products and, worst of all, seemed about to make separate alliances with European nations. States, jealous of their social, political, economic and  territorial prerogatives, were only secondarily concerned with individual human rights.

Today, primarily fearful of what a majority, especially an organized majority, of citizens might do to preserve their collective rights, many states are seeking the right in federal elections to control electors in the electoral college to suit the objectives of those already elected to statewide government. Fearful that those people who were once social and ethnic minorities will soon be legitimate majorities, too many state governments insist on regulating the electoral process. It's called "replacement theory.”

The fact of the matter is that control of government is every political party's objective. (Note: don't let conservatives tell you that they dislike government. They love government as long as they can control it and can set its agenda!)

Between 1789 and 1933, local, state and federal governments were largely controlled by a combination of economic and social forces including banks, corporations, religious institutions, police and spiritual traditions. Then came the Great Depression which literally paralyzed the social and economic factors of our society and threatened the very capacity of the country to function on behalf of "we, the people." The solution to this national paralysis was an active federal government controlled by a well-informed people.

Then, beginning in 1969, as I see it, conservatism began making its comeback.

I fear that for the second time in our history, we may be on the brink of a civil war the nature of which is far beyond and even more dangerous than anything that can take place on a battlefield.  FDR's "economic royalists” appear about to return as an all-encompassing oligarchy whose bottom line is profit.

No country can successfully function without rich and influential leaders, but healthy leadership nurtures both the poor and the rich, the ill and the healthy, the uneducated and educated and, above all, ensures the personal safety of us all.

Since 1789, freedom for all law-abiding people has been what America is all about. I can't find anything in the agenda of those who are presently being predicted to be our congressional leaders beginning in 2023 that would protect the freedom of most people. Can you? 

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.”

No document, including our Constitution, is perfect and beyond readjustment or amendment. It is too early in this crisis to know exactly what needs to be adjusted in our most fundamental legal document, but It appears to me that we are headed to that place we once were before everyone's well-being really and truly mattered!

If that doesn't scare you, you've got no nerves whatever!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THINKING ABOUT BUFFALO!

By Edwin Cooney

Saturday, May 14th's outrageously brutal attack on the Tops Supermarket in East Buffalo, New York brings forth a lot of memories and associations that are very personal.

Buffalo was founded in 1832. Its first mayor was 45-year-old Ebenezer Johnson, a Jacksonian Democrat, whose brother Elisha served as an early mayor of Rochester, New York. Situated at the western end of the newly completed Erie Canal, its location and commerce were vital to the nation's early 19th Century ever-growing prosperity.

I became aware of Buffalo as a child at school in nearby Batavia. Every spring someone, whether it was the Lions Club or members of Temple Beth Zion, would sponsor a trip to the Buffalo Zoo for all students from kindergarten through third grade. As a little boy who was then called Eddie, I enthusiastically identified with Eddie the Monkey, and I especially thrilled to the lions' roars throughout the echoey Lion’s House. Then, there was the cotton candy, peanuts and crackerjacks, along with the balloons. The best  part of it all was the anticipation. I remember one night prior to our annual visit that a boy named Jackie, in anticipation of going to the Buffalo Zoo proclaimed: “Tomorrow, we go to the Buffalo Zoo and see the lions and the bears" and from just beyond the door of our dormitory came a voice saying something like: “You’ll see a bear tonight, Jackie, if you don't be quiet!"

Buffalo was about radio to me. There was polka radio, Black radio, and “establishment” radio. WBEN was the CBS affiliate and, ultimately, there was WKBW which, in August of 1958, became what they called "Super Sonic Radio” and remained Buffalo's top rock station for the next 20 plus years.

Buffalo seemed to have greater pride in its ethnicity than any other city. People from Buffalo were more Polish, Jewish, Italian, or Black, it seemed,  than the ethnics of other communities.

A little lady who brought me into her life and family was born on Potomac Avenue in Buffalo on January 1st, 1910, living and loving for 100 years and 10 months thereafter.

What's especially sad and even revealing about the terror in Buffalo last Saturday is my own reaction — or, to put it another way — my usual mild attention to or even non-reaction to shootings in other cities. It demonstrates how parochial I can be without realizing it. All that is within me cries out as I write these words: it happened in Buffalo, New York, and it's got to stop, stop, stop!

The question is how can we stop it?  If we seek to regulate guns, we are “unconstitutionally" violating our national right to bear arms. If we seek to arm absolutely everyone, it's my guess that the more people who are armed, the more that deadly altercations will inevitably occur. 

If we can't constitutionally regulate gun manufacturers, or gun owners, we're going to have to regulate our whole selves! The only option left to us is to install sufficiently armed security personnel in all stores, shopping centers, schools, and even in churches, synagogues, and mosques. If hiring sufficiently trained marshals to protect the public safety must be our ultimate public policy, someone is going to have to pay for their training and, ultimately, their salaries as well.

The fact of the matter is that we will never be able to protect everyone against what one person is determined to do, especially if they're willing to sacrifice their freedom and, ultimately, their life in order to empty their tankful of emotions, resentments, and odd spiritual and political commitments to achieve their goals.

Most of the tragedies we read and hear about, and even see on television and through the internet are impersonal because they are happening to someone else in a distant place. What happened to ten people in Buffalo, New York also happened to more people in the Ukraine at roughly the same hour, 16 days ago. However, with all due empathy toward the Ukrainians, what happened in Buffalo was more real and especially painful to me,  because it happened here, close to home.

As President of the New York State School for the Blind Alumni Association, it felt like that terrorist attack was potentially an attack on some of my personal constituents. Insofar as I'm concerned, an attack on Blacks is also an attack on non Blacks who live in Buffalo. People named Paul, Linda, Richard, Karlene, Felecia, Judy, Terry and many others were potential victims.

Buffalo, New York, is the home of many of my fondest memories. It’s where a number of my closest friends dwell. Buffalo, New York, is deep and rich in people and institutions. Here are just a few: The Buffalo Bills, The Buffalo Sabres, The Buffalo Bisons, temporarily, the Buffalo basketball Braves, disc jockeys Dick Biondi, George Lorenz, Danny Neverth, sportscasters Stan Barron and Van Miller, newsman Irv Weinstein, and, oh, so many more. 

We'll find a solution to gun violence when we stop socially analyzing it and politically excusing it and start taking it very, very personally, rather than academically.

Oh, one more wonderful memory. I knew a guy who used to get a kick out of spelling Buffalo phonetically. It went like this: B-U-P-H-P-H-A-L-E-A-U-X!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

OFF THE FENCE AND INTO THE FIRE!

By Edwin Cooney

I've never been completely comfortable with Roe v. Wade but I've favored it for three primary reasons. First, it limits the traditional coercive authority of narrow-minded males over their wives and daughters. (Note that the overwhelming number of state executives, legislators, judges and even lawyers are males with male predilections and interpretations.) Second, I believe in a living Constitution more than I believe in an interpreted Constitution. (That makes me a loose rather than a strict constructionist of the Constitution.) Third and most significant, my insistence on self-respect lies in the likelihood that I'd probably have been aborted had Roe v. Wade been in existence in 1945.

Roe v. Wade was decided on the basis that the 9th and the 14th Amendments were founded on implied references to human rights enumerated in those constitutional amendments.

Although no law can prevent a woman from ending her pregnancy if she's sufficiently determined, a woman's pregnancy is a moral question more than it is a legal question. Roe v. Wade, having been adjudicated rather than legislated, avoided all moral questions. Hence today, it's about to be adjudicated out of existence.

Moral questions unless written into the Constitution are inevitably vulnerable. In other words, the moral fabric of a nation is best legally and legislatively established when it is introduced from the hearts and minds of the nation's population. That’s a legislative act.

Therefore, I assert that Roe has run it's course. Roe v. Wade was decided on state prerogatives rather than on moral obligations or non obligations. As difficult as it may be, we the people have the capacity to draw distinctions between the moral and the practical and we ought to find common ground on the moral before we establish the practical. What a woman can do and ought not to do with her own body, I believe, depends on the circumstances of her relationship with other people — specifically her male sex partner. I know of a marriage that broke up because the wife got an abortion without consulting her husband. Many religious leaders insist that our individual bodies are not our own but are temples of our relationship with God. (For any religious interpretation on this topic, see your most trustworthy clergy person rather than this mere mortal!)

As for the political parades, they're coming. After all, liberals and conservatives agree on one thing: their political, social and especially their moral interpretations are absolute and ought not ever to be questioned!

As for settled law, I'd define that as law so fundamental that it ought never to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the United States. Only time will tell if 

Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and/or Amy Coney Barrett lied to the United States Senate by insisting that Roe v. Wade is settled law.

There are both dangers and opportunities in the debates and trials ahead. What will be the fates of same sex marriage, stem cell research, interracial marriage, and the fate of liberal voting rights as interpreted by those currently serving on the Supreme Court? Stay tuned!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

SO, YOU'RE SURPRISED? REALLY AND TRULY? WOW!

Perhaps, because I don't have a dog in this fifty year struggle by my old, or should I say, former Republican and Conservative colleagues as well as the effort by my fellow Democrats to preserve Roe v. Wade I can afford to have a rather pompous objectivity on this whole matter.

I'll state my personal status very briefly. In 1945, had my biological mother the right to abort me, she undoubtedly would have done so since she never acknowledged my very existence. The fact is that she deliberately obliterated me by not acknowledging my birth in the family's list of significant events. Hence, my sense of self-respect requires me to be glad she didn't have that option. Ultimately, we both survived and thrived, she for 97 years and me for 77 years come next November 28th.

Moving forward to the present, this issue could have been addressed more calmly and wisely if it hadn't been so temptingly political on all sides. To sum it all up, people love being righteously angry with one another whether it be slavery vs. emancipation, the legitimacy of labor vs. the original rights of ownership of property, or the debate over how the rich got rich while the poor were born poor. There are two major factors that need consideration here.

First, there is the history of the Supreme Court. Going back to the 1790s and early 1800s, the court was essentially as much about politics as it was about law. The last thing President John Adams did before leaving office was to appoint fellow federalists to the court to counter Thomas Jefferson's likely Republican Democratic justices. Two years later, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in Marbury v. Madison that while the court couldn't force Secretary of State Madison to give Federalist William Marbury his commission, it did have the power to judge whether laws passed by Congress were constitutional or unconstitutional because we were a government of laws and not of men. However, 54 years later, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney asserted that Dred Scott was a slave and under law had no more rights than a horse. Of course, Scott was a slave due to the wishes of men. Subsequently, Justice Taney's statement of the law couldn't prevent the Civil War. Then, in 1937, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to the chagrin of all Conservatives regardless of party, sought to "pack" the court with up to five justices to replace justices seventy years of age and older who refused to retire. The reaction was righteous outrage. However, as Harry Truman pointed out, nothing in the Constitution addresses the number of serving justices at any time. Again, the idea that we are a government of laws and not of men was preached to condemn FDR.

The second factor is the inclusion of the general public's needs by the traditionally corporate-oriented Supreme Court. Beginning in the 1950s, it was recognized that the laws perceived and passed by rich, powerful men ultimately affected the lives, liberty and property of less wealthy and  powerful men and women. Thus, the Warren Court and the Burger Court began striking down and otherwise altering laws that inhibited the well-being of the less popular among us. Conservatives began shouting that the "liberal" Court was legislating rather than adjudicating the law.

Since the issuance of Roe v. Wade on Monday, January 22nd, 1973, opposition  to Roe has been both intense and politically organized and it appears that Conservatives may well prevail. Thus, here's the ultimate reality.

Law is law however fair or unfair, workable or unworkable, practical or impractical. The alteration of law however is ultimately political. Law is conceived and enforced by men and women. Getting our undies in a bunch about the leakage of Justice Alito's draft may be of concern to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., but whatever the effect of that leakage serves only as melodrama to the process of revoking Roe.

As a Democrat, I'm sympathetic to the idea that this whole issue could change the political dynamic next November. There is much speculation at present as to what other rights might be taken away from us. For instance, what's the future of stem cell research so essential to examining and preventing diseases? What's the future of birth control medication? Finally, how often has it historically mattered how popular a law on the statute books is? Does popularity have much to do with morality? Remember that chattel slavery, which practically everyone regards as immoral, was supported by the majority throughout the days of our historic founding. Prohibition for much of its fourteen year reign was overwhelmingly popular. Its repeal was largely due to its ultimately impractical enforcement as well as to the badly needed revenue it spawned to the benefit of state and national treasuries.

Whether we like it or not, 21st Century America is not a government of laws as much as a government of doctrinaire politics. The sad truth is that we're a government of ambitious, judgmental, self-righteous and dominant-oriented men and women. As to what effect the revocation of Roe will be, it's my guess that it won't be as effective as Conservatives hope, nor will it be as damaging as Liberals insist. As for the political and social chaos the overturning of Roe may create, that’s as American as cherry pie, is it not?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY