Amid Kavanaugh nomination, both sides of abortion debate face crossroads

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/amid-kavanaugh-nomination-both-sides-abortion-debate-face

MGB:  It is no secret that the Pro-Life movement has always been the Republican Party at prayer, although most GOP donors and politicians only speak pro-life because it fires up their donations and electoral base. Thinking that Donald Trump makes it any dirtier is wishful thinking. Trump is simply more obvious in his pandering. Pro-life? about as much as he was Pro-Choice when he thought he was running as a Democrat. Recall that Sarah Palin used abortion as her big issue, until Katie Couric asked her for specifics about Roe. The Empress had no clothes.

As for the Democrats and NARAL, they have found fundraising and GOTV success as well with this debate. Sadly, Hillary took it too far in defending partial birth abortion when she did not need to in winning her base. It cost her enough of a chunk of the Catholic vote to lose. She should have simply trashed the pro-life movement as a sham. That was how we got Obama's Catholic numbers to match his population totals. The saddest of all are Democrats for Life who, like the Republicans, don't really say what being pro-life means as far as who goes to jail and why - mostly because the movement won't admit that you have to recognize legal personhood and then the crime becomes infanticide, not abortion, and mothers cannot escape punishment. The prospect of punishing mothers and doctors makes any Democrat for Life a pariah in the Party. 

Democrats against abortion can certainly limit themselves to favoring a living wage for parents - not a fixed amount for the family but one that gives $1000 per child per month (the Church can try it without waiting for a tax refund to avoid hypocracy). Of course, most social conservatives are also economic conservatives who will tell you that they do not support paying women to have sex or children. If that is the case, then the pro-life movement really is about controlling female sexuality.

Now do you see it, Michael?

That the bishops parroted the Federalist Society on what to do about abortion is tragi-comedy. Whomever put that into their press release must be fired if staff or retired if a bishop. Their stance is likely a function of their ignorance. They have been told that Roe is wrong, although it is not. The reasoning is a sound extention of the 14th Amendment, which is controlling law. They don't like the result, but the result really has not changed. There were more abortions before Roe than after. It is like that in both the U.S. and any nation that bans abortion.

I will repeat what I posted regarding abortion and Kavanaugh last evening.

Modern justices who come from good law schools, like Yale, are well schooled in the logic of Roe v. Wade.  That kind of education makes ovetruning both federal supremacy and privacy, which are the basis of the decisoin, rather unlikely.  Additionally, he worked under Kennedy (like Gorsuch), who is the master of the abortion middle. He may have been the hand picked successor and, regardless of what either says about the issue, neither Bush nor Trump are particularly pro-life. Indeed, because he likely had a role in picking both Chief Roberts and Justice Alito, both of whom voted with Kennedy on Gonzalez v. Carhart, the parital birth abortion case, in not oveturning Roe, we can guess that Kavanaugh probably has the same views.  This nomination is great for stoking both the pro-life and pro-choice bases and gives thos of us write about abortion an excuse to write copy, but it won't lead to any change in Roe. Indeed, it is likely the death of the issue.

I won't repeat all of what I wrote on Monday, but I will repeat the money quote about overturning Roe:

MSW still assumes that overturning Roe means empowering states. Under the 14th Amendment that is not only impossible, it is STUPID. We fouight a Civil War about state power over slavery. No way should we return to states right regarding abortion. Whether a person is a person is a FEDERAL question and always will be. Brennan correctly weighed the rights of all the unborn to be protected by positive law against the mother's rights to be left alone and found for the mothers because the state had no compelling interest to compel their behavior.

The law is all about compelling interest analysis and Brennan got it right. Roe was not wrongly decidied, those who react to it simply don't understand legal reasoning. Lawyers who say it was wrongly decided are being paid to say so. They have no ethics. Everyone else does not know any better.

Now, back to counting Justices. Anyone who remembers April 2007, when Congress sided with the Government in supporting the Partial Birth Abortion Act by a 5-4 vote. This was not a win for the pro-life side. Kennedy wrote the decision based no on overturning Roe and privacy, but on the Commerce Clause. Scalia and Thomas wrote concurrences saying they would overturn Roe and Roberts and and Alito JOINED KENNEDY. in preserving Roe.

For those who can count, that means there was a 7-2 Court UPHOLDING ROE including two Bush appointees. One of those two is now dead and Gosuch and Kavanaugh are Kennedy law clerks, with rumor having it that Kavanaugh is Kennedy's own pick (and Gorusch might have been too). ..  By my count, that is 8 pro-Roe justices and one against and Thomas is old. Stick a fork in the pro-life movement. It's done.