Justice Antonin Scalia's Legacy | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: In Democracy Reborn, which concerns the passage of the 14th Amendment, Garrett Epps skewers Justice Scalia by name for his anemic understanding of this most important part of the Constitution. It really means what it says about individual rights vs. state governments and is not just about freemen. Nino totally gets it wrong on the history and intent - as does anyone who yearns for the easy answer of overturning Roe v. Wade and sending the matter back to the states. The hope that Alito, Thomas, Roberts and Kennedy (or a Justice to be named later) would share such an awful and ahistoric view has kept the pro-life movement spinning its wheels on a fairy tail that only the Federalist Society believes. The death of Scalia means that in fact the number of Justices favoring the Fedearlist Society option is now zero. That is a good thing for the movement to realize.
The Right to Life movement has little else in the way of strategy, since there are enough states who would pass liberal abortion laws to stop any Human Life Amendment. Trap laws, like the one in Texas, are about to be overturned by the four liberals and Justice Kennedy, so the only hope for any kind of abortion law modification is federal - and the need to compromise limits any such action to the second and third trimesters and will likely include a health objection. I would suggest that the health objection be limited to those cases where the child is certain to die before natural birth - so that termination may be as soon as possible for the health of the mother - and then only through induction. Of course, such a compromise would end the debate at all but the fringes and it would kill the movement's ability to either fundraise or get out the vote for the Republicans. That is why you will never see the GOP pass anything that is not an attempt to get the issue back before the Court - which is now an entirely useles strategy. Frankly, it always has been.
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