Like everyone, I was shocked at the leak of the supposed Supreme Court decision on the fate of Roe v Wade. Most thinking people realize that this is an affront that cannot go unpunished. In our world of extremes where we can't seem to get along, the court has been the one place that most people see as a bastion of integrity and honesty. We are a country of laws and the vast majority agree that the Supreme Court has the last word. It's part of the contract we all have to abide by to ensure we live in a just society. When that balance is upset by something like this leak, it's an affront to us all. I hope the leaker is found and punished as harshly as possible.
Beyond that, I find it difficult to comment or articulate my thoughts on this subject. Fundamentally, I've long thought that Roe v Wade was wrongly decided and anticipated that at some point it would be overturned. But I've dreaded that decision because of the earthquake it will cause. My other fundamental view is aligned with President Bill Clinton. He said that abortions should be, "safe, legal and rare". That makes sense to me. And as a country we have generally been headed in that direction with abortions declining over the last several years. But beyond those comments and as a guy, I don't really feel it's my place to get embroiled in a controversy over abortion. However, I read something today that articulates my thoughts perfectly. Peggy Noonan writes a weekly column for the WSJ and I usually like her writing. Sometimes I'm not in agreement but most times I resonate with her thinking. But like I said, in this case we are perfectly aligned. You can read it here.
Let’s start with true anger and end with honest hope. The alarm many felt at the leaking of an entire draft Supreme Court decision shouldn’t be allowed to dissipate as time passes. Such a thing has never happened. Justice Samuel Alito’s preliminary opinion being taken from the court, without permission or right, and given to the press was an act of sabotage by a vandal. It hardly matters whether the leaker was of the left or right. It reflected the same spirit as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot—irresponsible destructiveness. As the book has been thrown at the rioters, it should be thrown at the leaker.
The justices can’t sit around and say oh no, we’re just another victim of the age. If they have to break some teacups to find who did it, break them. Chief Justice John Roberts worries, rightly, about the court’s standing. This is the biggest threat to it since he joined. At the very least it might be good if the justices would issue a joint statement that they are appalled by the publication of the decision, don’t accept it, won’t countenance it.
Apart from the leaker, here is what I always want to say when the issue is abortion. The vast majority of human beings on both sides are utterly sincere and operating out of their best understanding of life. Yes, there were plenty of people the past 50 years who used “the issue” to accrue money and power. But this long life tells me the overwhelming majority of people held their views for serious reasons. They sincerely saw the prohibition of abortion as a sin against women; they sincerely saw abortion on demand as a sin against life.
You have to respect the opposing view.
And you have to respect that as a wound, the Roe v. Wade decision never healed, never could. Josh Prager, in his stupendous history of that decision, “The Family Roe,” noted the singular fact of this ruling: Other high court decisions that liberalized the social order—desegregation of schools, elimination of prayer in the schools, interracial marriage, gay marriage—were followed by public acceptance, even when the rulings were very unpopular. Most came to have overwhelming support. But not Roe. That was the exception. It never stopped roiling America. Mr. Prager: “Opposition to Roe became more hostile after its issuance.”
Why? Because all the other decisions were about how to live, and Roe was about death. Justice Alito seems to echo this thought in his draft opinion, which would turn the questions of legality and illegality over to each state. This is not a solution to the issue, it is a way of managing it—democratically.
Some states, New York and California for instance, have already passed their own liberal abortion laws. Some states, such as Texas and Utah, will ban most or all abortions within their boundaries. It will be uneven, a jumble. But the liberal states will have their liberal decision, the conservative states their conservative ones, and that is as close to resolving the dilemma as we, as human beings in a huge and varied nation, will get.
I respect and agree with the Alito draft, didn’t think Roe was correct or even logical, and came to see the decision as largely a product of human vanity. Of all the liberal jurists who have faulted it, the one who sticks in the mind was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who after questioning Roe’s reasoning said, in 1985, that it appeared “to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” It did.
I am pro-life for the most essential reason: That’s a baby in there, a human child. We cannot accept as a society—we really can’t bear the weight of this fact, which is why we keep fighting—that we have decided that we can extinguish the lives of our young. Another reason, and maybe it veers on mysticism, is that I believe the fact of abortion, that it exists throughout the country, that we endlessly talk about it, that the children grow up hearing this and absorbing it and thinking, “We end the life within the mother here,” “It’s just some cells”—that all of this has released a kind of poison into the air, that we breathed it in for 50 years and it damaged everything. Including of course our politics.
It left both parties less healthy. The Democrats locked into abortion as party orthodoxy, let dissenters know they were unwelcome, pushed ever more extreme measures to please their activists, and survived on huge campaign donations from the abortion industry itself. Republican politicians were often insincere on the issue, and when sincere almost never tried to explain their thinking and persuade anyone. They took for granted and secretly disrespected their pro-life groups, which consultants regularly shook down for campaign cash. They ticked off the “I’m pro-life” box in speeches, got applause and went on to talk about the deficit. They were forgiven a great deal because of their so-called stand, and this contributed, the past 25 years, to the party’s drift.
Abortion distorted both parties.
Advice now, especially for Republican men, if Roe indeed is struck down: Do not be your ignorant selves. Do not, as large dumb misogynists, start waxing on about how if a woman gets an illegal abortion she can be jailed. Don’t fail to embrace compromise because you can make money on keeping the abortion issue alive. I want to say “Just shut your mouths,” but my assignment is more rigorous. It is to have a heart. Use the moment to come forward as human beings who care about women and want to give families the help they need. Align with national legislation that helps single mothers to survive. Support women, including with child-care credits that come in cash and don’t immediately go to child care, to help mothers stay at home with babies. Shelters, classes in parenting skills and life skills. All these exist in various forms: make them better, broader, bigger.
This is an opportunity to change your party’s reputation.
Democrats too. You have been given a gift and don’t know it. You think, “Yes, we get a hot new issue for 2022!” But you always aggress more than you think. The gift is that if, as a national matter, the abortion issue is removed, you could be a normal party again. You have no idea, because you don’t respect outsiders, how many people would feel free to join your party with the poison cloud dispersed. You could be something like the party you were before Roe: liberal on spending and taxation, self-consciously the champion of working men and women, for peace and not war. As you were in 1970.
Or, absent the emotionally cohering issue of abortion, you can choose to further align with extremes within the culture, and remain abnormal.
But the end of Roe could be a historic gift for both parties, a chance to become their better selves.
And if Roe is indeed overturned, God bless our country that can make such a terrible, coldhearted mistake and yet, half a century later, redress it, right it, turn it around. Only a thinking nation could do that. Only a feeling nation could do that. We’re not dead yet, there are still big things going on here.
