The Case Against Roe     

We summarize Rich Lowry's opinion of the 1973 opinion.

   With Roe vs. Wade again in the news, Lowry, National Review, slammed Justice Blackmun's 1973 majority opinion as a "travesty" that should be "excised." 

   In the third trimester, states must allow exceptions to protect the life or health of the mother, defined as "emotional, psychological, familial," as well as "the woman's age." There's a way out for anyone. 

   Lowry says "the argument that Roe's policy preferences are mandated by the Constitution is flatly preposterous." After the decision came down, a Harvard Law professor, who supported legalized abortion, wrote that, "Roe is bad because ... it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of obligation to try to be." 

   Years later, a former Blackmun clerk wrote, "...no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms." Lowry adds, "none is possible." 

   The court "found" a right to abortion in the 14th Amendment, in which no state can "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Lowry sees "no obvious or even subtle connection to legalized abortion." 

   Wrote Blackmun, "abortion is so central to liberty that no restriction on it can stand constitutional scrutiny." Unborn children were not "persons in the whole sense." He even used the minimum age for presidents to prove that some rights are not for everyone. "This is too stupid for words," Lowry huffs. 

   Democrats say Roe is "settled law." Lowry notes that 60 years after Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal), the court in Brown v. Board of Education overturned it. 

   Guess it wasn't "settled" when the court wanted to unsettle it.

       Jimmy

Tomorrow: The case against back-alley abortions