The fact that “progressives” in their opposition to constitutional textualists/originalists—whom leftists know approach the U.S. Constitution with more rigorous fidelity than do “progressive” Justices—focus almost exclusively on the possibility that Roe v. Wade may be overturned would seem a tacit admission that there exists no constitutional right of women to have their intrauterine offspring slaughtered. The infamous Roe v. Wade is on the chopping block, and leftists are more distraught over the possible decapitation of Roe than they are over the actual decapitations of tiny humans.

In their frenzied fear that human slaughter may be one day be illegal, leftists fume irrationally that the overturn of Roe threatens the constitutional right of stronger, more developed, and powerful humans (i.e., oppressors) to order the killings of weaker, imperfect, unwanted humans (i.e., the oppressed). Well, here’s some food for thought about Roe v. Wade from “progressives” who support the legal right of women to choose to have more vulnerable humans killed—quotes that shrieking feminists may find wholly unpalatable:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor).

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent—at least, it does not if those sources are fairly described and reasonably faithfully followed” (Edward Lazarus).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

• “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer).

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-à-vis the interest that legislatively prevailed over it.… At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking” (John Hart Ely, clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• Roe “is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” (Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy…. As a layman, it’s hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science. Roe, with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it, and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers…. “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument…. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. Its overturning would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary, the pro-choice movement, and the moderate majority of the American people…. Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether. It supported that right via a lengthy, but purposeless, cross-cultural historical review of abortion restrictions and a tidy but irrelevant refutation of the straw-man argument that a fetus is a constitutional ‘person’ entited [sic] to the protection of the 14th Amendment…. By declaring an inviolable fundamental right to abortion, Roe short-circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

Roe v. Wade, my friends, is the SCOTUS decision that “progressives” argue absolute fidelity to precedent demands Justices uphold. If they think “lousy,” “indefensible,” “barely coherent,” unintelligible, a-constitutional non-reasoning must be honored in slavish service to the political end of allowing feticide, I hate to imagine what they would have thought about revisiting Dred Scott.

In June Medical Services v. Russo, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts again disappoints conservatives. Roberts voted with the politically “progressive”/morally regressive majority to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges within 30 miles of the slaughterhouses in which they kill tiny humans and occasionally end up killing or maiming their mothers. This law would have required abortuaries in which surgical procedures are performed to adhere to the same safety regulations as all other ambulatory surgical centers.

Ironically, in a similar case out of Texas similarly decided, Roberts dissented, siding with conservatives. In June Medical Services v. Russo, Roberts concluded that following precedent (i.e., stare decisis) rather than sound reasoning is the absolute highest priority of any Justice. Good thing Roberts wasn’t sitting on the Supreme Court when Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson or when Loving v. Virginia overturned Pace v. Alabama.

In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear that the abortionists pursuing this lawsuit lacked “standing”:

Their sole claim before this Court is that Louisiana’s law violates the purported substantive due process right of a woman to abort her unborn child. But they concede that this right does not belong to them, and they seek to vindicate no private rights of their own. Under a proper understanding of Article III, these plaintiffs lack standing to invoke our jurisdiction.

Despite the fact that we granted Louisiana’s petition specifically to address whether “abortion providers [can] be presumed to have third-party standing to challenge health and safety regulations on behalf of their patients,” a majority of the Court all but ignores the question. The plurality and THE CHIEF JUSTICE ultimately cast aside this jurisdictional barrier to conclude that Louisiana’s law is unconstitutional under our precedents.

Attorneys represent litigants in lawsuits, and litigants must be able to claim that they are in some way harmed by a law. The purported harmful effect is what gives them “standing” to pursue a lawsuit. Since feticidal profiteers have trouble getting women to argue against abortionists having hospital privileges, this lawsuit was pursued by “third parties” who would be “harmed” monetarily by a law requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges.

The ability of abortionists to serve as third-party litigants was secured in the 1976 case Singleton v. Wulff in which two feticide providers sued for the right to have Medicaid reimburse them for killing humans in “not ‘medically indicated’” abortions. It was determined by the liberal court that the feticide providers had “standing” because, according to Justice Blackmun, “they will benefit by receiving payment for the abortions.”

“The point is, Ladies and Gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works,” says Gordon Gekko.

‘Twas ever thus.

Justice Thomas goes on to remind America of the fundamental truth that Supreme Court precedents defending abortion lack even “a shred of support from the Constitution’s text”:

Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled.

He’s far from alone in his assessment of the precedents as “grievously wrong.” Here are some assessments of Roe v. Wade from liberals:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor).

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

• “Blackmun’s [U.S. Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer).

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure.” (John Hart Ely, clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy. … “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument. … Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor. … who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. … As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

The super creepy pro-feticide organization Personal PAC, whose sole reason for its creepy existence is to protect the legal right of women to have their own offspring offed, is expressing only tepid kudos for this decision. Their enthusiasm is tempered by their correct assumption that pro-life activism will not cease:

While the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services was a temporary reprieve from the assault on reproductive rights. … [d]on’t be fooled. … The anti-choice extremists are emboldened by today’s decision and it is to our great peril if we think it portends anything other than a reprieve by the Court Trump promised would end Roe.

“Choice” is an obvious and deceitful euphemism that is not up to the task for which it was created: it can’t conceal the truth about the unseemly nature of the choice leftists want women to have.

There exists no absolute or constitutional right “to choose.” Leftists exploit the word “choose” or “choice” because of its positive connotations. They exploit it because of the fondness everyone has for making choices in life. But not even leftists believe that a free-floating right “to choose” exists. There are a host of choices they want to proscribe:

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have school choice.

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have the right to choose whether their minor gender dysphoric children are chemically sterilized or surgically mutilated.

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have the right to choose the type of sex education their children should receive.

• Leftists don’t believe minors who experience unchosen, unwanted homoerotic feelings should have counseling choice.

• Leftists don’t believe employers should have the right to choose whether to hire or fire cross-dressing men.

• Leftists don’t believe anyone should have the right to refer to cross-dressing men by male pronouns.

• Leftists don’t believe women have the right to choose to exclude all biological men from their private spaces or sports.

• Leftists—well, most leftists–don’t believe minors should have the right to choose to have sex with adults.

So many choices of which tyrannical leftists want to deprive Americans. Well, many Americans don’t believe women have a moral or constitutional right to order the killing of imperfect or inconvenient humans.

Feminist and family abolitionist Sophie Lewis cheerfully admits,

Abortion is … a form of killing. It’s a form of killing that we need to be able to defend. I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist.

Because science confirms that the product of conception between two humans is a human, abortion inarguably kills humans. At no point in the gestational process is the product of conception anything other than human. Since abortion kills humans, legalized human slaughter will never cease to divide America.

Anything that gnaws around the edges of the child-killing cultural tumor that we refer to as Roe v. Wade is a good thing. Chief Justice Roberts didn’t help babies, women, or America.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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President Trump is a lightning rod for opinions in American Christianity. As a pastor, I know. Some of my Christian friends love Donald Trump’s personality, while others find it appalling. Some strongly support his policies, while others think he is a tyrant ruining America. Few are unsure about their opinions on Trump.

Last week, Mark Galli shared his opinion about Trump. He spoke not as an individual but as the voice of Christianity Today (CT). He spoke with biblical authority or at least tried to. In Galli’s essay,“Trump should be removed from Office,” he intentionally draws a biblical line in the sand for Christians:

Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

CT’s call for Trump’s removal is built on three assertions.

1.) The call for removal is not an act of politics but a prudential judgment that seeks to preserve the church’s witness.

2.) President Trump broke the law and needs to be removed because Christians should not support a criminal in office.

3.) President Trump’s moral behavior makes him unfit for the office of the presidency. His removal is an ethical imperative.

The logical conclusion of CT’s article is that “loyalty to God” means Christians must remove the President from office. If not, you are disloyal to God.

Galli writes a poorly argued essay that is more political talking points than Christ in culture. Galli should have never written it, but he did. His editorial causes the very harm from which he seeks to protect Christianity.

Galli couches his assertions in the “reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel.” In other words, support of Trump is anti-Christ. This is a strong accusation against Christians who support Trump’s reelection. It’s no wonder there has been backlash from conservative Christians. The evangelicals-are-stupid trope aligns with a “progressive” narrative that says evangelicals have made a deal with the devil and need enlightenment. This is Never-Trump 2.0.

Galli didn’t write his call for Trump’s supporters to remove the president to protect the church’s witness but to not feel embarrassed by Trump and his supporters. Justice Joseph Story observed in his highly regarded magnum opus on impeachment that,

Many of the offences, which will be charged against public men, will be generated by the heats and animosities of party.

Justice Story is spot on. Impeachment can happen when the person being impeached is despised by his opposing party. President Trump is despised by his opposition but more important, Trump is despised by the elites in the United States. Elites are easy to identify. They’re the ones that snicker at Trump supporters and can’t imagine how anyone could ever support him. Elites are utterly embarrassed that anyone could vote for Trump. They feel he represents everything wrong, backwards, and racist in our country.

CT is striving to be part of, in the words of Matthew Schmitz, the “Evangelical elite.” They are yearning for affirmation from the New York Times and airtime on CNN. This article has done exactly that. This has more to do with social clout than Christianity.

Galli also builds his argument for removal by declaring that the President broke the law:

[T]he facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is … a violation of the Constitution.

Unambiguous means that there is only one way to see it. This is a factually untrue claim concerning Trump’s actions. All the U.S. House Republicans disagree with the assertion made by CT. Annalisa Merelli from Quartz disagrees with Galli’s claim saying, “there is no clear law on the matter.”  Democrat and law professor Alan Dershowitz disagrees as well. The point is that whether Trump broke the law or not is highly ambiguous. By stating as fact—and condescendingly so—what is opinion, Christianity Today aligns with the left’s political machine. CT has provided talking points for those who despise Trump. Go on Twitter and you will see for yourself.

The crux of CT’s argument is that President Trump is the high water mark of presidential immorality, and all Christians must oppose him. Surely Galli understands how ridiculous the claim is that Trump is especially sinful. Here is a look at some of President Trump’s competition–all of whom claimed to be Christians:

President Lyndon Johnson was vulgar, crude, racist, and groped women.

President John F. Kennedy had multiple affairs while in office, worked with mobsters to get elected, and was probably blackmailed as President to award a multi billion dollar federal contract.

President Bill Clinton was credibly accused of groping and/or raping multiple women, had an intern perform a sexual act on him, and lied to Congress about it.

President George W. Bush invaded Iraq on what can kindly be called, spin. At the very least, the Bush administration suffered from confirmation bias. The Bush administration involved the United States in a multi year struggle costing thousands of lives and hundred of billions of dollars on a rush to war.

President Barack Obama rewarded top fundraisers with administration positions. The more money raised, the better chance of getting a position. The positions were given based upon raising money for a campaign not competency. This is called quid pro quo.

The egregious sins of these former presidents do not justify the sins of Trump. Rather, they provide evidence that the reason he is being pursued for removal is not that he is worse but that the opposition thinks there is a chance they can do it. They aren’t removing him because of his immorality but because this is the most effective strategy to neutralize his agenda. If Trump had the command of the legislature like Johnson, or the love of mass culture like Obama, it is very likely this would be a non issue. Impeachment is “political [in] character” according to Justice Story. It’s not about deciding right and wrong. If it were, the judicial branch would make the decision. An impeachment process is the highest form of political theater, and CT appears to be trying to have a starring role.

The real tragedy of CT so blatantly entering into this partisan battle is that now CT has been swallowed up by what Justice Story calls, the “vortex of the political.” Politics saturate our cultural landscape. CT has jumped right into the middle of the chaos and picked up a sword against its own. They aren’t defending Christianity; they are striking at it.

There is a better way. Justice Story speaks about a class of citizens that stays above the fray. He was referring to judges. For Story, judges must be seen, “as impartial and just.” This is because they represent justice–not politics. Democracy fails when the rule of law becomes political. In the same way, the world flourishes when Christian leaders represent Christ. We must be seen concretely living for another world and serving a greater king. We represent Christ not politics. Sadly, CT has forgotten the primacy of Christ. They diminish his glory by lowering themselves into this impeachment farce.

Reverend Billy Graham, as is often the case, is the model of a better way. Graham’s personal convictions were private. In public he (almost) always represented Christ not politicians. He was a pastor to both Democratic and Republican Presidents. He was a non-partisan Christ-follower to the whole nation. He served the country on behalf of Christ. In 2011 reflecting upon his legacy and his occasional missteps into politics he said,

I … would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back, I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.”

Christianity Today, you are making the very mistake that Rev. Graham regretted at the end of his life. By taking sides on Trump, you weaken your credibility on the very issues that Christians need biblical wisdom on engaging. Abortion, marriage, immigration, race and sexual identity are at the center of American culture. Display Christ here. Otherwise, Christianity is lost at Christianity Today.

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Staci Fox, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia said this about the Alabama ban on human slaughter: “[T]hese laws are unconstitutional and they [pro-life advocates] don’t care.”

It’s remarkable that the Founding Fathers managed to make clear to “progressives” that women have a constitutional right to have their offspring offed without ever uttering a single word about it in the U.S. Constitution.

Here are some quotes from liberal scholars and writers on Roe v. Wade collected by Timothy P. Carney, commentary editor at the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute—quotes that shrieking feminists may find wholly unpalatable:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor).

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent—at least, it does not if those sources are fairly described and reasonably faithfully followed” (Edward Lazarus).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

• “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer).

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-à-vis the interest that legislatively prevailed over it.… At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking” (John Hart Ely, clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• Roe “is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” (Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy…. As a layman, it’s hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science. Roe, with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it, and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers…. “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument…. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. Its overturning would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary, the pro-choice movement, and the moderate majority of the American people…. Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether. It supported that right via a lengthy, but purposeless, cross-cultural historical review of abortion restrictions and a tidy but irrelevant refutation of the straw-man argument that a fetus is a constitutional ‘person’ entited [sic] to the protection of the 14th Amendment…. By declaring an inviolable fundamental right to abortion, Roe short-circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

Roe v. Wade is the SCOTUS decision that “progressives” argue absolute fidelity to precedent demands Justices uphold. If they think “lousy,” “indefensible,” “barely coherent,” unintelligible, a-constitutional non-reasoning must be honored in slavish service to the political end of allowing feticide, I hate to imagine what they would have thought about revisiting Dred Scott.

Save these quotes to show your pro-human slaughter friends next time they claim Roe v. Wade is the unchallengeable law of the land and reflects immutable constitutional truths.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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“Progressives” control academia, government schools, the mainstream press, access to information (e.g., Google), social media (e.g., Facebook), professional medical and mental health organizations, the arts, and are infiltrating even churches. And now they seek absolute control over the judiciary through “court-packing.” They want constitutional revisionists to dominate the U.S. Supreme Court even if that means expanding the number of Justices. And some of them openly share their reasons for this proposal, thus exposing the brazenness of their tyrannical quest to transform America into a totalizing and totalitarian “progressive” dystopia.

Todd N. Tucker, political scientist and fellow at the liberal think tank, the Roosevelt Institute writes that,

With Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump’s Muslim ban, Wednesday’s decision attacking public sector unions, and Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announcement that he’s retiring, it is time to push a once-marginal idea to the top of the agenda: pack the Supreme Court….  A thoughtful court-packing proposal would ensure that the Court more carefully reflects the mores of the time, rather than shackling democracy to the weight of the past…. [T]he time to begin mainstreaming an enlarged Court is now.

The far wiser Richard Weaver, author of Ideas Have Consequences, wrote something a tad different about the weight of the past:

Whoever argues for a restoration of values is sooner or later met with the objection that one cannot return, or as the phrase is likely to be, “you can’t turn the clock back.” By thus assuming that we are prisoners of the moment, the objection well reveals the philosophic position of modernism. The believer in truth, on the other hand, is bound to maintain that the things of highest value are not affected by time; otherwise the very concept of truth becomes impossible. In declaring that we wish to recover lost ideals and values, we are looking toward an ontological realm that is timeless.

In an article for the online magazine Slate, Osita Nwanevu summarizes the pro-court-packing argument of David Faris, author of the troubling book It’s Time to Fight Dirty: “The argument you’re making here, in sum, is that the time has come for Democrats to throw out some parts of the rulebook of American politics and embrace radical, structural strategies.”

Faris explains—with no evident sign of irony—that his sense of “urgency definitely comes from just this long ideological march off to the right in the Republican Party. That, to me, is dangerous because the Republicans are no longer committed to the spirit of the constitutional framework as it exists. And they’re committed to policies that are going to wreak incredible havoc on this country.”

Have you ever pulled into a parking spot, looked at the stationary car parked next to you, and wrongly perceived your own car—which you forgot to put in park—as stationary and the other one as backing out? That’s the optical illusion Faris is experiencing. Faris wrongly perceives conservatives, who parked their ideological and political car securely with emergency brake activated, as moving rightward while in reality “Progressives” have careered madly leftward.

Faris ironically frets that “incredible havoc” will be wreaked by conservatives. Yes, a card-carrying member of the party that believes it’s ethical to kill humans in the womb for no reason other than that their mothers don’t want them; that destroyed marriage; that recognizes no intrinsic right of children to be raised by a mother and father; that wants to eradicate all public recognition of sexual differentiation; that wants to limit the exercise of religion to homes, hearts, and pews; that put Christian adoption agencies out of business; that seeks to force citizens to lie by using incorrect pronouns in the service of a science-denying cultic belief worries that conservatives will “wreak incredible havoc on this country” and is “no longer committed to the spirit of the constitutional framework.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe conservatives aren’t committed to the “spirit,” or penumbras, or emanations of the Constitution. Maybe they’re committed to the text of the Constitution.

The fact that “progressives” in their opposition to constitutional textualists/originalists—whom they know approach the U.S. Constitution with more rigorous fidelity than do “progressive” Justices—focus almost exclusively on the possibility that Roe v. Wade may be overturned would seem a tacit admission that there exists no constitutional right of women to have their intrauterine offspring slaughtered.

Well, here’s some food for thought about Roe v. Wade from “progressives” who support the legal right of women to choose to have more vulnerable humans killed—quotes that shrieking feminists may find wholly unpalatable:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor).

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent—at least, it does not if those sources are fairly described and reasonably faithfully followed” (Edward Lazarus).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

• “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer).

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-à-vis the interest that legislatively prevailed over it.… At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking” (John Hart Ely, clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• Roe “is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” (Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy…. As a layman, it’s hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science. Roe, with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it, and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers…. “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument…. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roeon constitutional grounds. Its overturning would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary, the pro-choice movement, and the moderate majority of the American people…. Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether. It supported that right via a lengthy, but purposeless, cross-cultural historical review of abortion restrictions and a tidy but irrelevant refutation of the straw-man argument that a fetus is a constitutional ‘person’ entited [sic] to the protection of the 14th Amendment…. By declaring an inviolable fundamental right to abortion, Roe short-circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

Roe v. Wade, my friends, is the SCOTUS decision that “progressives” argue absolute fidelity to precedent demands Justices uphold. If they think “lousy,” “indefensible,” “barely coherent,” unintelligible, a-constitutional non-reasoning must be honored in slavish service to the political end of allowing feticide, I hate to imagine what they would have thought about revisiting Dred Scott.

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/No-Surprise-Leftists-Want-to-Fight-Dirty.mp3

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