The ‘Stench’ of Abortion Politics

Contrary to what Sonia Sotomayor says, it comes from bad jurisprudence, not challenges to it.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday asserted that the threat to the court’s legitimacy comes not from its jurisprudence in favor of abortion but from challenges to it. “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” she asked. “I don’t see how it is possible.”
Sotomayor is oblivious to the stench that already exists, emanating from Roe v. Wade, a ruling that invented out of thin air a constitutional right to abortion. That ruling has led to the killing of tens of millions of unborn children.
Reporters ignored that stench as they babbled excitedly over Sotomayor’s rebuttal to Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, who argued for the constitutionality of restrictions on abortion in his state. In fact, the correspondent for MSNBC standing outside the Supreme Court very primly announced that the network would not show any of the pro-life signs depicting the grisliness of abortion.
MSNBC, instead, assembled an assortment of abortion advocates to decry their “anti-choice” opponents and discuss every issue except the most salient one: the injustice done to the unborn child. Many of these lawyers and activists, of course, normally argue for “democracy.” But on this issue, they are starkly undemocratic, insisting that the people within the states should have no right to pass meaningful pro-life laws.
The incoherent rhetoric of abortion advocates was on open display Wednesday. Some of them fulminated against the Supreme Court, saying it would provoke a “revolution” by upholding Mississippi’s law. But others warned that if the court upholds it numerous states will enact pro-life laws. In other words, abortion advocates couldn’t decide if a ruling favorable to the Mississippi electorate would be popular or unpopular across the country.
Nor could abortion advocates get their rhetoric straight on the dangers of overturning legal precedents, given that most of ...