WHOSE JUSTICE TO WHOM?

Spark! Electrifying Linda Greenhouse looks into the Supreme Court on abortion

To the eyes of juridical system, a pre-life would become legitimately a life when passing a point on the viability line. This viable point can vary and is on the argument. Whether the fetal viability is defined as pre-formed or post-formed by a decisive or arbitrary time line, as before and after the final trimester of pregnancy or as on any earlier point, is pointed out by Linda Greenhouse in Chief Justice Roberts’s possible turn-around-ability. It is about Justice Blackmun’s early memos (in 1972) with which Greenhouse begins her opinion piece. Her “The Supreme Court Gaslights Its Way to the End of Roe” (NYT 12/03/21) highlights this enormously huge on-going issue on abortion laws with her super-nova brightness. In the end, Greenhouse supposes the Supreme Court would override Roe vs Wade. She continues. But, how and on what ground will the court explain the decision?

Greenhouse evolves her discussion by illustrations of Justices’ views which can be described (somewhat) as volatile.

Justice Clarence Thomas: On the way of rethinking his position from the Constitution providing the rights of abortion as negative to that as interpretive.

Chief Justice Roberts: Greenhouse quotes and writes, “ “{The viability line, originally discussed] is an unfortunate source, but it’s there,” {Justice Roberts] said, referring to Justice Blackmun’s papers, on file and open to the public at the Library of Congress. “

Greenhouse further analyzes:

… [By] the time the court issued the final opinion in January 1973, viability was not dicta [or arbitrary] but rather an essential element of the decision. Chief Justice Roberts may not like viability — as clearly he doesn’t, observing to Julie Rikelman, the lawyer for the Mississippi clinic challenging the state’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, that “viability, it seems to me, doesn’t have anything to do with choice” — but he was flatly wrong to suggest that it was an unconsidered aspect of Roe v. Wade.

(the italic is my emphasis)

The very noteworthy is Rikelman’s indication as that viability line is irrelevant to women’s choice. That is the major position of those who support women’s rights for abortion.

Justice Kavanaugh: Greenhouse gives to Justice Kavanaugh her gaslighting prize for his insisting on the Court’s neutrality after zig-zags.

[Justice Kavanaugh] said to Solicitor General Prelogar. “Why should this court be the arbiter rather than Congress, the state legislatures, state supreme courts, the people being able to resolve this?” he said. “And there will be different answers in Mississippi and New York, different answers in Alabama than California because they’re two different interests at stake and the people in those states might value those interests somewhat differently.”

(the italic is my emphasis)

In my part, I will give an electrifying highlight prize to Greenhouse for the following. Greenhouse says:

Justice Kavanaugh painted a soothing description of a down-the-middle resolution, but Solicitor General Prelogar, for one, wasn’t fooled. “The nature of fundamental rights is that it’s not left up to state legislatures to decide whether to honor them or not,” she responded.

Can Justice Kavanaugh really believe what he said? We’ll see soon enough.

As for Justice Barrett: Greenhouse writes,

Justice Barrett’s performance during Wednesday’s argument was beyond head-spinning. Addressing both Ms. Rikelman and Elizabeth Prelogar, the U.S. solicitor general who argued for the United States on behalf of the Mississippi clinic, Justice Barrett asked about “safe haven” laws that permit women to drop off their unwanted newborn babies at police stations or fire houses; the mothers’ parental rights are then terminated without further legal consequences. If the problem with “forced motherhood” was that it would “hinder women’s access to the workplace and to equal opportunities,” Justice Barrett asked, “why don’t safe haven laws take care of that problem?”

(the italic is my emphasis)

Finally, Justice Sotomayor: Greenhouse quotes her words and the super argument follows:

[Justice Sotomayor said], “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?”

Greenhouse sharply comments on:

I first heard “political acts” as “political hacks,” I suppose because still in my mind were Justice Barrett’s words when she spoke in mid-September at a center in Louisville, Ky., named for her Senate confirmation mastermind, Senator Mitch McConnell. “My goal today is to convince you that the court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” she said then.

I shuffled citations from Greenhouse. But, after this, Greenhouse goes on Barrett’s argument on “forced motherhood” vs “safe haven laws” as the former able to be taken care of by the latter in the way that it can be a resolution as alternative to abortion. I see this is the most dangerous flow of a logic in the issue. According to which, pregnant women are not regarded as would-be-mothers, but as mere children makers. The difference is not the matter of wording as how to describe the pregnancy. The Catholic church, for example, considers the viability line nonexistent because a life begins at the moment of conception. The same church also sees a life as God’s property, thus women have no rights to terminate their pregnancy. I agree on, only theoretically when I think of it in a theological light. The factual reality is, however, we live in the fully human world and every human being has one’s own situation and condition to live in, different or drastically different from others’. That whatever it may be, we, the state will take care of all, including your pregnancies, is a direct shortcut to totalitarianism, clearly seems-it to me.

I conclude. The Supreme Court is the top house of laws, the gardian of the Constitution in the country. One would not dare to say the house on fire. It might though be possible, at least to say, the court is looking around how to appease the calamity and acrimonies. Thus, I accord my view with that of Greenhouse, just from an another angle.