Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade decision, a leading pro-life legal expert believes the decision has never been more vulnerable to being overturned.
In his new book, Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade, Clark Forsythe, senior legal counsel at Americans United for Life, details what he uncovered in examining the private papers of the justices, their case files, and oral arguments. After 20 years of research, Forsythe found that
–The justices decided to hear Roe under a misunderstanding that it concerned state criminal prosecutions, not a constitutional right to abortion.
–They arbitrarily expanded fetal viability from 12 weeks to 28 weeks with little discussion or medical knowledge.
–The Court’s majority relied heavily on popular, but unproved, ’70s-era evidence that there was an urgent need for population control in the United States.
This is actually a pretty good article. The one point he missied is how the petitioners got standing to bring the case in the first place, because by the time the Court got the case, there was nothing to decide. There are four cases which have applicability to this case. The first one, Dred Scott really has nothing to do with Roe directly, but is a perfect example of what happens when the Court gets involved in something the political process should hash out–in Dred Scott’s case, the Civil War. Plessy v. Ferguson then decided that states could segregate people based soley on race, which was wrong based on teh 13th and 14th Amendents–the things we ended up fighting the Civil War over. To fix that the Court decided Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka. But Brown wasn’t decidied on legal principles, but on feel good, social science. Thus Roe. Once the precedent was set to ignore the facts and the law/stare decisis in order to do the “right thing” the flood gate was opened. I am not arguing that the Brown Court didin’t do the right thing. But I am arguing that once the Supreme Court decided their job was do-gooding, we were trouble. The greater civil rights movement is a perfect example of Congress stepping in, through a political process, to pass a Civil Rights act which was a political decision based on the constitution. Whether we like it or not the constitution works. Sometimes it just takes longer than do-gooders and activitsts want. When the Supreme Court steps in and ignores the Constitution, and trumps teh political process for a do good reason disaster soon follows. Stand by for what havoc Justice Roberts’ decision in Obamacare will dump upon us for those same reasons.