Roe, Rhetoric, & Civil Rights
Today the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the infamous Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed a right to medical privacy between patients and their doctors. It is worth noting that Roe was decided by a male-dominated court, so those activists who claim that no man should have an opinion are plagued with illogic and ignorance from the onset of their protests. By such logic, Roe would be impotent and inapplicable since it was decided by men.
Today’s decision to overturn Roe is not dangerous in and of itself, but the incendiary rhetoric already surrounding the leaked draft has whipped the masses into a frenzy, a propaganda campaign that has only intensified with today’s overturn.
CNN contributes to this passionate, incendiary rhetoric by repeatedly and erroneously claiming that abortion is a Constitutional right. Despite this claim, however, they focus on public opinion polls as the strongest defense of their position. CNN has yet to learn that the United States is not a democracy. Their staff might also consider refreshing themselves on the function and design of Federalism.
Hence the violent rhetoric by Leftists years prior to this decision. Democrat Chuck Schumer warned that Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh “have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” and that they “won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!” With this fiery rhetoric blasted through megaphones by Leftist political leaders, it is unsurprising that a man subsequently attempted to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh specifically to interfere with presumed Supreme Court decisions.
This did not prevent Schumer from adopting the Leftist misattribution and symbolic transference of abortion rights. Like CNN and other dutiful propagators of misinformation, Schumer insisted that the Supreme Court—what he called “five [extremist] unelected Justices”—were stripping away the rights of women. His hyperbolic and absurd rhetoric labeled the Supreme Court illegitimate and defined the return of Federalism and the reversal of judicial legislation as “one of the darkest days our country has ever seen.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) contributed to the maelstrom of profundity, claiming that the justices are “eviscerating American rights.” She also asserted that Republicans are relentlessly pursuing their “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions” and “are plotting a nationwide abortion ban.”
Claiming abortion as a Constitutional right is a dangerous and incendiary propaganda ploy. To label something a “right” is to align it with other natural rights, including the right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense, to life, and the free exercise of religion. This incorrect attribution of abortion “rights”—an invented, ambiguous, and subjective phrase—incorrectly places unfettered abortion as a cause worth of defending through the use of force. This is to say nothing of delegitimizing an entire branch of the government.
This extremism is evinced ever more clearly when one considers that today’s decision does not outlaw abortion. Instead, it would allow pro-abortion states to adopt measures even more extreme since they are no longer bound by the Roe understanding of “compelling state interest” cited in the decision and later uphold through subsequent, related cases.
A student of history cannot help but be reminded of similar claims to the constitutional “right” of slave-ownership. Like abortion, the Taney Supreme Court in 1857 attempted to remedy the ongoing “irrepressible conflict” over slavery through its decision in Dred Scott v Sandford. Like Roe, this decision only catalyzed a greater polarization over the issue and contributed directly to the decaying, sectional division in American society.
Scott and Roe both demonstrate the danger of judicial legislation and both invented a presumed right that existed far outside of the Founding doctrine. Like the “right” to an abortion, declaring slavery a presumed “right” enshrined its practice alongside legitimate rights, increasing the violent response when the presumed “right” was violated. Like today, Democrat politicians at the time stoked public rage at any perceived abuse of this judicially-contrived Constitutional right.
One can only hope that today’s public exercises greater restraint than our forebears and will cease repeating the dangerous practice of judicial legislation. Not unlike slavery, judicial activism and subsequent ideological propaganda and rhetoric places a wen upon the neck of American society, one that is “a great evil” and the nation that bears it “does not dare to cut it out. He bleeds to death if he does, directly. If he does not cut it out; it will shorten his life materially.” Abraham Lincoln described slavery thus and his metaphor continues to fit modern, incendiary discourse.
Instead of reacting to the passionate, fiery propaganda, the American public should remain sober and take an accurate accounting of the decision, its effects, and the underlying conflicts created through activist, legislative courts.