The Tangled Web

Today is the anniversary, thirty-three years ago, of the U.S. Supreme Court's usurpation of the democratic process in the Roe v. Wade decision. Tomorrow tens of thousands of mostly young people will walk down Constitution Ave. from the Washington Monument to the Supreme Court for the annual March for Life. The mainstream media, who report with fanfare on the most minuscule gathering of pro-aborts, will remain silent about this gigantic protest.¹ Come to think of it, it really is extraordinary news when pro-aborts get together... there are so few of them left unaborted!

Tim Carney has put together a striking compilation of criticism of Roe v. Wade by pro-abortionists:

Pro-choice Criticisms of Roe

Here's a sampling (underlining by Tim):

Laurence Tribe — Harvard Law School. Lawyer for Al Gore in 2000.

“One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”

“The Supreme Court, 1972 Term—Foreword: Toward a Model of Roles in the Due Process of Life and Law,” 87 Harvard Law Review 1, 7 (1973). [underline added]

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg — Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

“Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the court. … Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.”

North Carolina Law Review, 1985

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Edward Lazarus — Former clerk to Harry Blackmun.

“As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose, as someone who believes such a right has grounding elsewhere in the Constitution instead of where Roe placed it, and as someone who loved Roe’s author like a grandfather.”

“The Lingering Problems with Roe v. Wade, and Why the Recent Senate Hearings on Michael McConnell’s Nomination Only Underlined Them,” FindLaw Legal Commentary, Oct. 3, 2002

Should it be a surprise that the pro-abortion movement should resort to such a shameless excercise of power? No rather, it would be quite extraordinary if the text of even as venerable a document as the U.S. Constitution should stand in the way of those to whom human life matters so little.

Another great antidote to the tangle of pro-abortion lies is:

Roe Reality Check

The myths it annihilates:

1. Myth: “High Court Rules Abortions Legal the First 3 Months.”
2. Myth: Most abortions are done because of maternal or fetal health problems, or in cases of rape or incest.
3. Myth: Most Americans favor U.S. abortion law.
4. Myth: Roe v. Wade said the Constitution includes a right to abortion.
5. [Myth: Roe is respectable jurisprudence.]
6. Myth: The U.S. abortion rate is relatively low.
7. Myth: Most American women support Roe v. Wade.
8. Myth: Most abortions are done before fetal organs are functioning.
9. Myth: U.S. abortion law has not encouraged the use of abortion as a method of birth control.
10. Myth: Abortion is legal only when the fetus is in the womb.
11. Myth: If Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion will automatically be illegal in the U.S.
12. Myth: Roe v. Wade is only about a woman's right to abortion, not about a right to take life in general.
13. Myth: Abortion is standard medical practice; only religious hospitals and some physicians refuse to provide it.
14. Myth: Roe v. Wade empowers women to choose freely whether abortion is their best option.

This wonderful resource was published by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. But what about concrete steps to ensure the faithful don't fight on the wrong side? For good and bad the Conference is not the bishops.² As Pat Buchanan writes,

Which brings us to the unspoken issue here. Judge Alito is Catholic. If confirmed, he will join three other Catholics on the bench: Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who have already voted to overturn Roe.

On the Senate Judiciary Committee sit four Catholic Democrats: Leahy, Kennedy, Biden and Durbin. All have 100 percent pro-abortion voting records. All have attacked Alito out of fear he may overturn Roe.

Query: Why is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops so deathly silent in this war of Catholics to decide if abortion on demand is to remain the law of the land forever in God's Country?

Where are the Catholic echoes of John Paul II's condemnations of the Culture of Death?

Where is Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, who was designated to address the moral obligations of Catholic politicians? When John Kerry ran as the Democratic nominee, McCarrick's task force refused to tell priests to deny him Communion. Suddenly, pro-abortion Kerry was seen at the altar rail and won half the Catholic vote.

Buchanan continues,

Sixty-six years ago, Bishop Clemens von Galen took to the pulpit of Munster Cathedral to damn Hitler's regime at the peak of its power for "plain murder" in its euthanasia program and to direct Catholics to "withdraw ourselves and our faithful from their (Nazi) influence so that we may not be contaminated by their ... ungodly behavior."

Cardinal von Galen is headed for sainthood.

What is asked of you, Cardinal McCarrick, and your fellow bishops is less heroic. Just issue a statement before the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Jan. 22, 2006, declaring:

"We pray to God that Roe v. Wade is overturned. We commend all Catholics and fellow citizens working toward that goal. We condemn any Catholic politician who would deny a seat on the Supreme Court to a fellow Catholic -- on the grounds that he might vote to overturn this abomination."

That too much to ask, Your Eminence? As Dante said, there is a special place in hell for those who, in times of moral crisis, fail to take a stand. By the way, Dante put a lot of bishops in there.

H/T: Tim Carney

Strong words! May God gird the bishops' backbones to be as strong.³

Notes

1. And sadly the March for Life website will remain in the stone age: instead of reaching over the heads of the MSM (mainstream media) by posting photos of the real people who attend the March, it will allow the MSM to spin the March by zeroing in on a few weirdos. May God help the pro-life movement!

2. On economic issues especially the USCCB is doggedly "liberal."

3. For all the moaning we hear from the pulpit about the dearth of vocations to the priesthood, it might eventually occur to some of the bishops that if they actually demonstrated that real men do serve God in the priesthood, they might actually inspire more real men to serve. In a coming post I plan to write on the characteristic faithfulness of Catholics toward their bishops that tends to bewilder most non-Catholics.

References

Pat Buchanan "Who's Practicing McCarthyism Now?" Human Events Online, Jan 12, 2006.