NY Times: Overturning Roe Isn’t Conservative Or Something

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We’ve had plenty of unhinged Hot Takes over the leaked SCOTUS document on Roe v Wade. Then, we get the folks who are supposed to be allies. Here’s the NY Times’ resident Republican (who’s really a necon and inflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome)

Overturning Roe Is a Radical, Not Conservative, Choice

Dear Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas:

As you’ll no doubt agree, Roe v. Wade was an ill-judged decision when it was handed down on Jan. 22, 1973.

It stood on the legal principle of a right to privacy found, at the time, mainly in the penumbras of the Constitution. It arrogated to the least democratic branch of government the power to settle a question that would have been better decided by Congress or state legislatures. It set off a culture war that polarized the country, radicalized its edges and made compromise more difficult. It helped turn confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court into the unholy death matches they are now. It diminished the standing of the court by turning it into an ever-more political branch of government.

So, it was a horrible, terrible, no good decision? Let’s get rid of it

But a half-century is a long time. America is a different place, with most of its population born after Roe was decided. And a decision to overturn Roe — which the court seems poised to do, according to the leak of a draft of a majority opinion from Justice Samuel Alito — would do more to replicate Roe’s damage than to reverse it.

That means nothing. The Constitution is the Constitution. If you do not like the words, try and change it with a Constitutional convention

It would be a radical, not conservative, choice.

What is conservative? It is, above all, the conviction that abrupt and profound changes to established laws and common expectations are utterly destructive to respect for the law and the institutions established to uphold it — especially when those changes are instigated from above, with neither democratic consent nor broad consensus.

Well, that’s the neocon view. The real view, based on the Classical Liberal/Federalist beliefs is that the Constitution is the Constitution, that the federal government’s powers should be limited to what the Constitution grants them, and everything else is held by the States and The People. Do we care if it can “cause damage”? We either do The Right Thing, the constitutional thing, or, we abandon our beliefs. Stephens continues with his idiotic pandering to the left by claiming keeping Roe would be Conservative for awhile, you’re welcome to read it.

And, then, of course we have Squishy Susan Collins

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Tuesday that if a report suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade is accurate, she was misled in her conversations with two justices who had told her that the landmark 1973 abortion ruling was settled law. (snip)

“If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” Collins said in a statement. “Obviously, we won’t know each justice’s decision and reasoning until the Supreme Court officially announces its opinion in this case.”

I highly doubt either said it was settled law, because it is not law. Obviously, the argument made in the case that has SCOTUS considering overturning Roe was better than the argument in favor of keeping Roe. Here’s David Harsanyi

Senator Susan Collins says that Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is “completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.” Ramesh and Ed have debunked this claim. Conceding that long-established precedents should be treated with more weight does not preclude the possibility that those decisions were wrongly decided and should be overturned. Plessy was on the books for over 60 years. As Chuck Schumer noted at the time, “this is not as simple as Judge Kavanaugh saying that Roe is settled law. Everything the Supreme Court decides is settled law until it unsettles it. Saying a case is settled law is not the same thing as saying a case was correctly decided.”

With friends like Collins and Stephens, who needs enemies? And, of course

Yup, Trump broke them so much they can’t even stick with American Conservative principles and stand up for doing away with killing the unborn.

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