A Plain-Spoken Court

Blue Skirt (my Red Skirt response also here) opines on the Supreme Court this time, suggesting based on a few decisions that the new Roberts' court is a throwback to the values of our nation's founders over 200 years ago.

The founders' values still resonate with me.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

As far as Abigail Adams' plea to remember the ladies when drafting the Constitution, Abigail made a good point. She was a strong woman, I remember reading a biography of her as a girl. Her husband, and later President, John Adams was a brave visionary, though his vision did not reach quite that far. (There were men at the time, though, who did remember the ladies, notably in the state of New Jersey. Hard to believe, I know. Later, when it became a territory, Utah was firmly for women's suffrage---all those Mormon males--perhaps Blue Skirt will be moved to become a Romney supporter on the strength of this single issue, set in history.)

But let's get a little more perspective, as we celebrate Independence Day again this year. Legal historian and author Joyce Lee Malcolm in the WSJ:

It's easy now, in a nation awash with complaints about what our Founders did not do, what imperfect humans they seem to 21st century eyes, to overlook how startlingly bold their views and actions were in their own day and are, in fact, even today. Who else in 1776 declared, let alone thought it a self-evident truth, that all men were created equal, entitled to inalienable rights, or to any rights at all? How few declare these views today or, glibly declaring them, really intend to treat their countrymen or others as equal, entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Certainly not America's 20th century enemies, the Nazis and communists; certainly not today's Islamic radicals, who consider infidels unworthy to live and the faithful bound by an ancient and brutal code of law. We are fortunate that the Founders of our nation were enlightened, generous, jealous of their rights and those of their countrymen, and prepared to risk everything to create a free republic.

The principles the Founding Fathers espoused have stood us in good stead, in the modern era making the case for the equality of women even as enlightened statesmen in Britain then made the case for the independence of the colonies:

The British taught us respect for the rights of individuals, for limited government, for the rule of law and how such values could be realized. "An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery," Edmund Burke insisted, pleading our cause before Parliament in March, 1775.

Later, leading women who successfully pushed for the vote were Republicans, spurred on by their belief in the rights of individuals and the limits of government.

Next Blue Skirt cites the case of Gonzales v. Carhart to condemn the court as anti-women, as they upheld a common sensee ban on partial birth abortion. But how can we remember the women and not remember the babies? Remember the rights of individuals, no matter how powerless. Women for infanticide? How is that progress? It's a self-absorbed feminist, blinkered liberal view, as blinkered as John Adams was about women. Abortion itself is worse than slavery---at least slaves were viewed by their slavemasters as partially human---these children are murdered in the womb. And "partial birth" abortion is the most cruel of all---a scissors to the skull, tortured and torn apart on the brink of drawing their first breath. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the previous Senator from NY, a rare Democrat with a conscience, described the procedure as a form of infanticide. Walter Weber, NRO on the decision:

For far too long abortionists have been treated as exempt from the rules that apply to other physicians. Not only do they literally “get away with murder,” they also frequently get away with malpractice. Courts, meanwhile, have tended to bow to whatever “Doctor” says: if the doctor supports or practices abortion, that doctor’s testimony about what is or is not a valid safety concern has been treated as virtually infallible. Indeed, after the Supreme Court’s prior partial-birth-abortion case of Stenberg v. Carhart, things got so bad that courts were overturning laws just because some pro-abortion doctors questioned the medical merits of the laws. As the court put it in Gonzales v. Carhart, “Stenberg has been interpreted to leave no margin of error for legislatures to act in the face of medical uncertainty.”

A number of respected doctors---they can't all be ideologues Blue Skirt--and at least two major medical associations had said there was no medical necessity for it back in 1998:

This week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association features articles on late-term abortion that editor Dr. George Lundberg notes are sure to be controversial. All address partial-birth abortion. Two are point-counterpoints, and one is "a scientific discourse with abundant references." Lundberg writes: "We anticipate a flood of protests from many points of view on this issue. Nonetheless, we believed it important for JAMA to serve again as a forum for responsible discussion and debate on even this troubling and divisive issue" (JAMA, 8/26/98 issue).

In "Rationale for Banning Abortions Late in Pregnancy," Dr. M. LeRoy Sprang of Northwestern University Medical School and Dr. Mark Neerhof of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, argue that partial-birth abortion is unsafe for pregnant women, painful for unborn children and unethical because of questions about fetal viability. They also note that "[a]n extraordinary medical consensus has emerged that [partial-birth abortion] is neither necessary nor the safest method for late-term abortion."

The authors note that in its policy statement on partial-birth abortion, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said it "could identify no circumstances under which this procedure ... would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman." In addition, the American Medical Association backed federal legislation to ban the abortion procedure. Public opinion and state Legislatures also back banning the procedure, the authors note.

They conclude: partial-birth abortion "should not be performed because it is needlessly risky, inhumane, and ethically unacceptable. This procedure is closer to infanticide than it is to abortion." (Sprang/Neerhof, JAMA, 8/26/98 issue).

The Supreme Court in this most recent decision reasonably gave state legislatures more scope to resolve the debate. More from Weber:

The Supreme Court repudiated this approach in Gonzales v. Carhart: “A zero tolerance policy would strike down legitimate abortion regulations, like the present one, if some part of the medical community were disinclined to follow the proscription. This is too exacting a standard . . . .” In particular, abortionists are not a law unto themselves. “The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice, nor should it elevate their status above other physicians in the medical community.” In other words, from now on abortionists must play by the same rules as other physicians.

And in another recent laudable Supreme Court decision, the free speech of the little guy has been defended against powerful, vested interests.

Equal pay for women has been a phony issue for my entire adult lifetime, flogged by the feminists to fan a sense of injury and explain away some individuals' lack of initiative or life choices. Enough already!

Finally, how is judging people by the color of their skin progress? This decision should put an end to the new cycle of racism we have endured for at least the last generation, and is a move toward a color blind society. Steve Chapman:

At Franklin High School in Seattle, noted Chief Justice John Roberts, the use of race meant that the racial composition of the 2000-2001 freshman class was 30 percent Asian-American, 40 percent white and 22 percent black. Without it, the breakdown would have been 40 percent Asian-American, 21 percent white and 30 percent black -- not exactly the resurrection of Jim Crow. In neither district did the racial "tiebreaker" affect more than a tiny number of students. Integration was secure without the use of colorcoding.

As Justice Roberts stated with liberating clarity: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." A rigid quota approach has been dehumanizing, looking at groups, not individuals. Ruben Navarrette, RCP:

For one thing, the decision forces everyone to think about whether such race-based solutions, while essential a few decades ago, have outlived their usefulness. What is needed today are higher standards, stricter accountability, and an end to excuses for why some students don't excel as much as others. Segregation is a legal relic of the past, but what President Bush has called "the soft bigotry of low expectations" lives on.

And it forces the debate toward fixing what's really wrong with education (hint: teachers' unions), not busing kids around. Navarrette advocates school choice for failing schools.

I like to think if Abigail Adams were around today she would show as much vision now as she did then, and view this court as wise and plain-spoken, unraveling some of the pernicious and unintended consequences of past rulings. One of her other noted remarks was "We have too many high-sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them."