Elections have consequences
When it comes to domestic policy, the Bush administration may have repeatedly disappointed the far-right base through passivity and inaction, but the president did deliver on one key promise: he shifted the Supreme Court to the right with two very conservative new justices.
The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The opponents of the act “have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
Though most of you can probably guess the five in the majority, just to be clear, they were Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg slammed the Court majority in a scathing dissent, writing that “the Court’s opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman’s health.”
This is a truly awful ruling.
Keep the history in mind. In 2000, the Court considered a similar law and struck it down as unconstitutional. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that time, Justice Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman’s right to make an abortion decision.
In response, the Republican Congress and the Bush White House passed a new law in 2003, which was struck down by six different federal courts, all of which were unanimous in their agreement that the law was unconstitutional.
As a result, today’s ruling overturns recently-established Supreme Court precedent, the judgment of every federal court that considered the law, and the medical judgment of OB/GYN professionals.
The consequences could be devastating for women with troubled pregnancies, many of whom have relied on the D&E procedure to save their lives. As Nico noted, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the law, explaining, “The intact variant of D&E offers significant safety advantages over the non-intact method, including a reduced risk of catastrophic hemorrhage and life-threatening infection. These safety advantages are widely recognized by experts in the field of women’s health, authoritative medical texts, peer-reviewed studies, and the nation’s leading medical schools.”
Instead, for the first time, the Supreme Court has interfered with — and banned — a specific medical procedure that saves women’s lives, backing a law that includes no protection for the health of pregnant women.
As for the big picture, publius explained quite well the point I’d hoped to make.
This case was not decided today. It was decided on November 2, 2004. Don’t blame the Court, blame the American people. They voted in a Republican President and the entirely-predictable consequence was increasing restrictions on abortions. In fact, Bush is one Justice Stevens illness away from overturning Roe entirely.
And for what it’s worth, if any of the current Republican candidates win, Roe is over for at least a generation. Maybe you think that’s good, maybe you don’t. That’s not the point. The point is that voting for Republicans has consequences and this is one of them. And these things are worth thinking about when you base your vote on things like John Kerry’s windsurfing, or Bush’s probably-fun-to-drink-with-ness.
Today is a setback for civil liberties, women’s rights, and public health. It’s as simple as that.
Hey,but one of my ex-republican friends back in 2000 told me, in reference to Bush, “cmon, how much damage can one man do.” In all seriousness.
I hope all the liberals in the media (not saying they are all liberals) realize that the kind of coverage they gave the 2004 election, and BushCo in general, has led to this ruling.
I’m thinking in particular of the NYTimes decision to embargo the story about the illegal wiretaps until after the election.
I’m gonna have to poke around the Internets to find out how Congress can outlaw any medical procedure in the first place. Last time I checked, Article 1 Section 8 gives Congress legislative authority only on federal territory, such as DC and “forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.” The Commerce Clause has expanded that somewhat, but what if an abortion provider isn’t engaged in interstate commerce?
IANAL, so I’d like opinions from the more scholarly among us: This ruling truly does seem to be egregiously bad, as Ginsburg notes. Wouldn’t that make it easier to overturn several years hence, after a Democratic president changes the Court’s makeup yet again?
All of the Democratic candidates for president should be vigorously denouncing this decision on their website right NOW! Are you listening Hillary, Barack, John, and the rest?
Hopefully this will energize the Congress as well as the voting public to pass new legislation to correct this atrocity. Even if we have to wait for an absolute majority in 2008 it has to be done or a lot more death and suffering will happen.
Ah yes, didn’t both Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito, during their confirmation hearings, make Big Important Points of their respect for precedents as “settled law”????
Anyone who trusts a conservative any farther than they can see them with their eyes closed pretty much deserves what they get. And I most particularly include every bastardasshole Democratic Senator who voted for these two pigs. (Actually, calling them pigs is an insult to an intelligent, loyal, curious, friendly animal – characteristics no coservative will ever demonstrate – so I’ll change it to “these two scumsucking fascist bastards”)
Gregory,
Which of the conservatives on the court is likely to die in the near future? Scalia is about it. And I’ve observed that meanness is the biggest factor in ensuring longevity.
Every time someone says that the next Democratic president/congress can fix the problems created by the Republicans, I have to ask how many people will have died in the interrim.
I think we should impeach Bush and repeal everything EVERYTHING done while he was president.
If Stevens were to retire and Bush appointed another Justice then Roe would be overturned.
But, have you considered the possibility that Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts probably think that the Constitution prohibits abortions? If Alito and a new justice share that view then we wouldn’t just overturn Roe. We would immediately make all abortions illegal.
Am I nuts to think that we are close to completely losing the ability to get a safe, legal abortion?
Check Hillary, then Obama, then John Edwards online. Guess who was the one with the “rapid response”?
John Edwards for President
Our government is no longer serving the needs of the people . . .
This law, in it’s extremity, says that the life of the mother is secondary to that of a non-viable foetus. My assumption is that there are legal alternative procedures to acomplish the abortion but that they are more dangerous and/or expensive. If anybody actually knows please reply.
I think that Grumpy’s right. How does the Fed have jurisdiction?
When to the doctors get to review and reverse the congress?
Don’t hold back, Cleaver . . .
Tell us what you REALLY think . . .
If Iraq hasn’t killed the Republicans as a national party this decisions very well may.
I have often wondered what Sandra Day O’Connor thinks about the timing of her retirement and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s death. I think she must be appalled.
Hey Tom Cleaver–actually it would be the bastardassholes who voted for cloture.
I’m gonna have to poke around the Internets to find out how Congress can outlaw any medical procedure in the first place. Last time I checked, Article 1 Section 8 gives Congress legislative authority only on federal territory, such as DC and “forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.” The Commerce Clause has expanded that somewhat, but what if an abortion provider isn’t engaged in interstate commerce? –Comment by Grumpy
Unfortunately Grumpy I think this may have been litigated with their equally terrible ruling in Reich vs Ashcroft, or medical marijuana. The areguement was about “rights not delegated” and the Court ignored much medical evidence, and the entire state’s right arguement to agree with the Bush Administration.
Can we impeach Roberts and Alito for lying to Congress about “settled law”–in lieu of impeaching Bush and Cheney?
Hopefully, rege is right about the Republican national party.
Above, I was speaking about reaction to the decision by Democratic candidates for president. What are the reactions of Rudy, Mitt, and the others? The devil owns McCann’s soul. What about the others?
This eventuality was brought up time and again by Democrats in 2000 and we were cynically told “there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans.”
I wonder how Ralphie-boy and the liberated-women-voters in Florida that year who voted Green Party have to say now.
I don’t think this will lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but it is infuriating nonetheless. None of this conservative carnage needed to occur.
But thanks to you, Mr. Nader, it did – and is continuing.
#12 Sumi “I think that Grumpy’s right. How does the Fed have jurisdiction?”
Grumpy is often right, ahem, but there must be something more going on here. It’s such an obvious weakness that I couldn’t be the only to to notice something hinky. The argument over federal jurisdiction is what torpedoed Violence Against Women, for example.
GRACIOUS might be right, but I have a feeling this goes deeper than Raich.
The next time some dumbass Republican crows about activist judges and the need to push the Supreme Court to the right (or in their code speak “make the court more constructionist”…whatever the hell that means)
Remind them that:
7 of the 9 current Justices were nominated by REPUBLICAN Presidents
slip kid at #18 said exactly what I suggested to the Mrs. at lunch.
but since the title of CB’s post is “Elections Have Consequences,” let me add that if Congress doesn’t undo this by the end of the week, I’ll have to start wondering what the point is of having a Democratic congress.
i have not yet read the entire opinion, only numerous news reports, but I can’t imagine how they can square this with the prior D&E case that required a “health of the mother” exception.
and talk about your “activist” justices – now they think they are competent to make medical decisions? apparently there really is no reason we send people to 8 years or so of higher education and apprenticeship to competently make medical decisions – the Supremes can make them just fine with no training at all, thanks. Maybe Frist filed an amicus brief saying he’d watch a video of a D&E?
all i can say is lets hope this wakes America up. I suspect a lot of moderate suburban women are rethinking their party affiliation about now.
A political show for an ideal that has tragic consequences in reality. The abortion is not illegal only the procedure by which it is done. Yet it is a way for the Right to say, “Look, we have finally done ‘something’ about abortion”, and toot their horns as if they’ve won some big issue. The only real issue(since this ruling does nothing about actually having an abortion) is that women’s health will suffer from lack of the correct procedure to have such an abortion. The incompetence in the name of politics continues.
What I said earlier (#41 under “Mandatory, state-imposed religion won’t help”) —
Placing their personal faith above medical knowledge, all five Catholics on the US Supreme Court just voted to outlaw the safest method of late-term abortion. Two of the justices said they could find no basis for Roe v. Wade in the Constitution. Just as it completely loses all control over European nations (which apparently had enough of religious meddling in their histories), the Church of Rome begins its takeover of America. Do burkas come in red-white-and-blue? Will Americans wake up from their TeeVee-induced torpor in time to prevent the religious fanatics and other ignorant yahoos from destroying the Constitution utterly?
Having had time to reflect, I don’t think Americans will wake up. Not in sufficient numbers to counterbalance the zealots who will be inspired by today’s decision. Just when I thought the Bush Crime Family was in its death spiral, it comes back to life. Grrrrr.
I’m touchy about the subject of abortion, so I’ll try to keep the rant to a minimum. Like the previous posters, I am outraged that this decision has been made. One of the things that has really bugged me about the abortion debate is how we let the right frame the argument. Words have power. We let the pro-lifers (or anti-choicers, depending on your perspective) name the procedure ‘partial birth abortion’. This term is just inaccurate. It infers two things. First, that the labor process has begun and second, that the ‘delivered’ child would otherwise survive. Both of these are incorrect. To say ‘partial birth abortion’ to someone without knowledge of the actual medical procedure conjurs up an image of a doctor killing the baby as it emerges from the mother. The medical term ‘intact dilation and extraction’ has its own ‘ick factor’ (which is true of any medical procedure) but does not bring to mind images of doctors killing newborn babies.
Wasn’t there a recent post about how unsuccessful the Religious Right has been in accomplishing their goals?
Every time I look at the make up of the Supreme Court, I have to disagree.
Kathy,
I have often wondered what Sandra Day O’Connor thinks about the timing of her retirement and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s death. I think she must be appalled.
I doubt she is appalled. There are credible stories about her reaction in 2000 to the Florida recount. Apparently, she was quite concerned that she would have to wait out a Gore presidency to retire as she only wanted a Republican’t to nominate her replacement. She may have been the first woman Justice, but she wasn’t that strong an ally to progressive forces in this country.
Good news for Democrat’s- Abortion rights is a clear winner for them
Executive Order: 2007 Amendments to the Manual for Courts-Martial, United States – check out new paragraph 44a. Coincidence? Or correlation?
The spouse of the first woman to die over this travesty should sue the heck out of the Supreme Court. I wonder if that is possible?
Re #31 – alas, the Sup Ct has immunity. Her estate should instead sue Nader. As should the families of those killed in Iraq. And those killed from smoking conducted since the DoJ minimized the damage claim in their tobacco suit. And those who died of environmentally-caused cancers whose causes would have been addressed in a Democratic administration.
“Not a dime’s worth of difference” between Nader and what a friend of mine calls “heifer dust” if you ask me.
The consequences could be devastating for women with troubled pregnancies, many of whom have relied on the D&E procedure to save their lives.
This is a bit misleading. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act specifically excludes “a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of the mother” from its prohibition. Justice Ginsburg’s objection is that it does not go on to exclude partial-birth abortions necessary to protect the mother’s health, as well. But abortions necessary to protect the mother’s life are expressly excluded from the scope of the Act.
Also, to Grumpy and others questioning Congress’s authority in this arena, note that the Act applies only to partial-birth abortions “in or affecting interestate or foreign commerce.” That explicit jurisdictional element essentially guarantees the constitutionality of the Act, though it also means that in any prosecution thereunder, the government will have to show that the particular abortion in question was “in or affecting foreign or interstate commerce.” At oral argument in Carhart, Justice Stevens specifically raised the question of whether the Act would apply to a free abortion clinic; the government responded that it has not as yet taken a position on that question. So it’s something that remains to be litigated, if and when the government brings a prosecution under the Act.
Thanks, James. I figured there had to be something like that.
Of course, if any controlled substances are used during the procedure, like local anesthetic, that must make it a federal case. And what about the coffee in the waiting room? Those beans must’ve come from overseas, which gives Customs Enforcement jurisdiction.