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The Spectacle Blog
Joe Lawler is almost right to say that I’m “less concerned with unborn babies and more concerned with electoral success.” I am concerned with the electoral success of principled candidates, and by “principled” I probably mean the same thing on at least 80 percent of issues as what Joe would mean if he used the term.
Joe’s wording makes me sound quite callous, but in truth since I don’t consider a zygote or embryo to be an “unborn baby,” at least at that stage of the process of pregnancy his wording is accurate. If we’re talking about something later term, I’m somewhat more sympathetic to the anti-abortion view, and I do not ever support the termination of a fetus which could live (particularly live without heroic assistance) outside the womb. There are shades of gray here for me in a way which I understand, and respect, there are not for Joe.
But I’d like to make a broader point, one which I think often gets lost in this debate between pro-choice and anti-abortion wings of the Republican Party: I bet that Joe and I would appoint exactly the same type of judge or justice.
I want a judiciary which does not make law or legislate from the bench. Thus, I oppose Roe v Wade even though I am pro-choice. As I’ve said before, I don’t support torturing the Constitution even if I like the outcome once in a while.
This is where I think pro-choice and anti-abortion wings of the GOP should find common ground: the anti-abortion folks won’t get anywhere until Roe is gone. I also want Roe gone, though I would fight very hard to keep it from being replaced with its opposite at the federal level.
In my view abortion is none of the federal government’s business, just as murder is generally not (and should generally not be) a federal offense. In short, let the abortion debate go back to the states. That’s as good as it’s going to get from people like me in terms of what people like Joe want. And I think it should be more than enough to allow us to continue together down the path of trying to achieve electoral success for candidates who, even if not anti-abortion explicitly, indirectly favor the pro-life position by support “strict constructionist” judges, as I do.
View all comments (7) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Ross Kaminsky
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/10/28/abortion-its-about-the-judges
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RottleBocket| 10.28.11 @ 12:58PM
Well stated on every point. Bravo.
PattyMor| 10.28.11 @ 1:34PM
I agree the judicial decree of universal abortion is one of the worst decisions by the Supremes. It was a decision that wanted and they just backed into the rationale. The abortion issue needs to go back to the States as its not a federal issue.
TLS| 10.28.11 @ 2:26PM
Let me guess. . ."ROMNEY 2012"
Anommynous| 10.28.11 @ 2:27PM
Excellent post. If Rudy had just come out and articulated what you just wrote, he might very well be POTUS today. There is no reason that pro-choicers can't be principled federalists and respect that the issue should be decided amongst the states. I understand that Democrat pro-choicers aren't federalists, but why do I hear so few Republican pro-choicers voice their opposition to Roe? There's no excuse.
Red Phillips | 10.28.11 @ 5:05PM
Focusing on Supreme Court judges reinforces the dominant but false (from an originalist constitutionalist stand point) paradigm of judicial supremacy which conservatives should be loath to do. What conservative should focus on is passing pro-life measures at the local and state level that INTENTIONALLY DEFY Roe vs. Wade. A conservative state should pass laws banning abortion despite Roe v. Wade and tell the Feds where they can put their Supreme Court decision.
Rockerbabe| 10.30.11 @ 2:16AM
Well we know how the writer of this drivel thinks about women and their rights to their own bodies and futures. Hey bozo, keep your stinking ideas off my body, my life and my choices. YOU are not the boss of me or any other woman that I happen to be acquainted with.
Anyway, your position is moot. Most women now days have a passport, credit cards, debit cards, access to cash, cellphones, iPad, computers with interenet access, etc. I can google and bing with the best of them and I can get whatever it is that I want and legally. I can make my own travel reservations and I know how to hail a cab. I can get what I want, when I want and for a decent price. It will not be me that gets an illegal abortion; it will be the 20-25% of the women at the lower end of the economic ladder that get their rights abridged.
As I read this comments on this blog, I am reminded that anti-abortion laws are not about babies, but about controlling women; their lives, their choices, their futures, their ability to access opportunity and in the most dire of cases, their very existance on this planet. I truly hope the writer has not inflicted himself on a self-respecting woman who has mind of her own and the will to exercise her own judgment about a pregnancy, that is really no one's business but her own.
ali smith jones garcia| 11.9.11 @ 1:17PM
It's not a "pregnancy" that's at issue. It's a little boy or girl. Not a potential one, an already-living, real one.