I don’t know how to celebrate and celebration itself feels icky in a way. Surely these are the greatest words written in government in many years:
“Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion:, Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
Of course this does not mean an end to abortion. Nor perhaps, should it. It means we will have to talk about it. Compromise. Do politics. It does mean a new and different world. All the politics of the last 50 years has been inextricably bound up in the abortion debate and certainly in the last 40 years in the ability to appoint Federal and Supreme Court judges that will stand for or against the “right” to an abortion. All that is swept away today and a new political world is beginning.
Many of the people mourning the loss of their “right” to abortion fail to recognize – I think – a huge impact of the last two days of decisions. In both Bruen and Dobbs it seems to me that the Supreme Court recognized that words mean what they say they mean and if they aren’t there you can’t invent their presence. It sounds to me like John Adams’ famous closing statement in the Boston Massacre case:
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence . . .”
I think the truly interesting facts to come out of this week is that words have meaning and law without meaning or law that relies on twisted meanings or non-existent words is not law and cannot long stand. The fact that non-objective reality has no standing will hopefully strike a blow against the entire concept of reality being in the mind of the perceiver. If that happens, we will all be better for it.