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February 10, 2012
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
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Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
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Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
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January 30, 2012
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January 27, 2012
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
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January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Oct. 25, 2007
/ 17 Mar-Cheshvan 5768
Abortion's So-What factor
By
George Will
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Almost 35 years have passed since the Supreme Court decided to end America's argument about abortion. Because of the court's supposedly therapeutic intervention in the nation's supposedly inadequate democratic debate about that subject, the issue still generates an irritable irrationality that was largely absent before 1973.
Then, America was operating under a regime of moral federalism. In the absence of ukases from the federal judiciary that generate continent-wide eruptions of tension and anger, many states were reexamining their abortion regulations, and many were relaxing them. To sample today's confusions, consider California.
There the electorate so strongly supports abortion rights that no right-to-life candidate for governor, U.S. senator or president has won in California since 1988. This is so despite the fact that a governor, U.S. senator or president has only slight relevance to the status of Californians' abortion rights.
Nevertheless, it is said that if the Republican Party wants to be competitive in California in presidential politics, it must nominate a pro-choice candidate, of which there is only one Rudy Giuliani. This is almost certainly true. It certainly is irrational because pro-choice Californians have next to nothing to fear just as pro-life Californians have next to nothing to hope for from a right-to-life president. The practical consequences of such a president concerning abortion would not differ significantly from Giuliani's consequences. Here is why.
Abortion policy is almost entirely in the custody of the U.S. Supreme Court and will remain so unless or until the court decides to restore moral federalism regarding the issue. On Jan. 20, 2009, when the next president is inaugurated, the court will have one justice in his late 60s (David Souter, 69), four justices in their 70s (Stephen Breyer, 70; Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, 72; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75) and one 88-year-old, John Paul Stevens. The two who will be oldest, Ginsburg and Stevens, are strong supporters of a constitutional right to abortion. The three who will be youngest John Roberts, 53; Samuel Alito, 58; Clarence Thomas, 60 seem unsympathetic to the court's abortion jurisprudence.
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The next president probably will have an opportunity to significantly shape the court, which has frequently divided 5 to 4 on important questions, including abortion issues. But regarding abortion, the reasonable response to this fact from residents of many, perhaps most, states, and especially from Californians, should be a shrug of a question "So what?"
Suppose Giuliani or some other Republican becomes president and responds to a court vacancy the way all the Republican candidates promise to, with a nominee similar to Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. And suppose a case gives the court an opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade. And suppose it does so.
Pause here a moment. This third supposition is somewhat dubious, because one of the justices who thinks Roe was improperly decided might nevertheless reason as Chief Justice William Rehnquist finally did concerning the "Miranda rights" of arrested persons the right, arising from a 1966 ruling, to be notified of their right to counsel and their right to remain silent. Rehnquist repeatedly and strongly argued that the Constitution, properly read, did not require the ruling, which he thought impeded effective police work. But when in 2000 a case gave the court an opportunity to overrule Miranda v. Arizona, Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion in a 7 to 2 decision upholding it. He wrote:
"Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture. While we have overruled our precedents when subsequent cases have undermined their doctrinal underpinnings, we do not believe that this has happened to the Miranda decision."
So, the overturning of Roe might not result from a Republican president's alteration of the court's balance. But suppose it did.
Again, so what? Many, perhaps most, Americans, foggy about the workings of their government, think that overturning Roe would make abortion, one of the nation's most common surgical procedures, illegal everywhere. All it actually would do is restore abortion as a practice subject to state regulation. But because Californians are content with current abortion law, their legislature probably would adopt it in state law.
It is not irrational for voters to care deeply about a candidate's stance regarding abortion because that stance is accurately considered an important signifier of the candidate's sensibilities and sympathies, and of his or her notion of sound constitutional reasoning. But regarding abortion itself, what a candidate thinks about abortion rights is not especially important.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
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