re: SCOTUS - Oral Argument in Jackson Abortion Case begins 9:00 Central - Link to Audio

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Dobbs abortion case threatens Democrats' house of cards

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There is one thing that every serious legal scholar, regardless of his or her opinion on abortion, can agree on: The 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade is a goofy ad hoc abomination of a legal decision. Don't take our word for it — take the word of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called it a "heavy-handed judicial intervention" and "difficult to justify."

Roe removed the issue of abortion from the democratic process. It also created a new right to kill one's baby in utero. In deciding Roe, Justice Harry Blackmun and the Roe court set out to create a new version of women's equality that the original suffragists would have soundly rejected. They did not care what sort of shoddy reasoning they needed to get there, and it really shows.

The abortion case that will be argued before the justices today, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, offers them an opportunity to revisit Roe and its progeny — cases that have caused the United States to depart dramatically and unjustifiably from the civilized world when it comes to abortion laws.

Dobbs pertains to a Mississippi law limiting abortion to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. For context, this law is still among the world's least restrictive. Three-quarters of the world's nations, including most of Western Europe, ban abortion after 12 weeks — i.e., the first trimester. Consider that if Mississippi's law is allowed to stand, the Magnolia State will still have abortion laws looser than France. Meanwhile, only seven nations in the entire world, including the U.S., currently permit elective abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, as Roe and subsequent decisions have permitted.

To provide still more context, Democrats in several states have proposed laws to permit abortion right up to the moment of birth. They can still pass such laws even if Roe is overturned. But wouldn't it be a bit barbaric?

Polls show that most people, regardless of their position on abortion's legality in principle, support reasonable restrictions such as the one Mississippi is defending. For example, 65% believe that abortion should be illegal after 12 weeks, i.e. after the first trimester, according to a new poll from the Associated Press . This is a typical poll result. If people had been allowed to vote on this issue since the 1970s, laws in states where abortion is legal would probably look a lot like Mississippi's. That, in addition to the specious legal reasoning behind the original ruling, is a sufficient reason for abolishing Roe and letting the voters decide.

Outside the legal realm, Roe's legacy has been to make 62 million abortions possible over 48 years. Not only is that greater than the populations of California and Florida combined, but it skews with nearly genocidal disproportion toward the destruction of nascent black lives. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, approximately 21 million non-Hispanic black lives have been extinguished directly by abortion since Roe. In some heavily black jurisdictions, such as Washington, D.C., more than one-third of all pregnancies end in termination. This is not inconsistent with the racist views of abortion pioneers such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.

The Left has convinced itself that abortion is popular — that people will angrily come out and vote to defend it. That didn't happen last month in blue Virginia. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe spent millions telling voters that his opponent would sign a restrictive abortion law like the one that had just taken effect in Texas. Exit polling shows that the voters who voted based on abortion actually broke for the Republican, Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, by 20 points.

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