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Everything I Was Told About Roe v. Wade Was A Lie

If we were lied to, one can only wonder what could be next. Because when an institution fails, all those liberties we took for granted are on the table.

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Abortion Whole Womans HealthThe leaked Justice Alito draft in Dobbs proves it: I was being lied to.

I was told that there was no way the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade.

I mean, first of all Professor Chua assured me that Justice Kavanaugh is a mentor to women. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Justice Kavanaugh himself assured us.  “In each case, I have followed the law. I do not decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.” He is an independent, impartial judge.  He said so.

Another law professor assured us that Justice Barrett would HAVE to recuse herself in abortion cases based upon Barrett’s own words!

She writes that such judges are “obliged by oath, professional commitment, and the demands of citizenship to enforce the death penalty,” but they are also “obliged to adhere to their church’s teaching on moral matters.” They are therefore “morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty.”

What’s a Catholic judge to do, then? According to Barrett’s article, the judge must recuse herself.

No worries!  Even if she doesn’t recuse herself, Barrett assured us during her confirmation hearing that “Judges can’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I have an agenda. I like guns, I hate guns; I like abortion, I hate abortion,’ and walk in like a royal queen and impose, you know, their will on the world,” Remember the blank notepad? NO AGENDA.

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Precedent is important to Alito, say his associates. “But Alito’s associates and independent legal analysts who know his record say a Justice Alito would be reluctant to use that power, even in such areas as abortion, in which the court’s past rulings are most controversial.”

Justice Gorsuch, too, would never do such a thing.  As a supporter wrote: “His record suggests he prioritizes the rule of law and precedent over his own personal views about policy. In United States v. Games-Perez, he ruled against the grain of his own judgement in favor of long established precedent, saying, ‘Our duty to follow precedent sometimes requires us to make mistakes.’” Indeed, Gorsuch would have WALKED OUT THE DOOR if President Trump had asked him to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Justice Breyer assured us that court packing was unnecessary. Because, SCOTUS “eschews personal political beliefs for time-tested interpretive methods in making decisions, attempting to ‘minimize the number of cases likely to produce strongly felt political disagreements,’ and deciding cases on narrow grounds where it can,” according to Harvard Law Today.

I was told that people who were concerned about Roe being overturned were “hysterical.” That precedent was binding. That Sens. Collins and Murkowski were watching. Trump assured us “You don’t know [Barrett’s] view on Roe v. Wade.”

I was assured that Roe is the law of the land (well, except in Texas). Many times. By many sources. Some dared call those who warned of this paranoid.

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So, if we were lied to, one can only wonder what could be next. Because when an institution fails, all those liberties we took for granted are on the table.

What if SCOTUS is just another player in the political football game?

Who’s next?

Read the draft. Regardless of who you are, regardless of what you believe, this is a threat to you. But for sure, it’s a threat to some more than others in the short run.  Obergefell. Loving. Brown v. Board. Privacy. Voting. Birth control. But rest assured, it is a threat to everyone in the long run. Don’t think so? Read:

Neither respondents nor the Solicitor General disputes the fact that by 1868 the vast majority of States criminalized abortion at all stages of pregnancy. See Brief for the Petitioners 12-13; see also Brief for American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians as Amicus Curiae 27-28 & nn. 14-15 (conceding that 26 out of 37 States prohibited abortion before quickening); Oral Arg. Tr. 74-75 (respondents’ counsel conceding the same). Instead, respondents are forced to argue that it “does [not] matter that some States prohibited abortion at the time Roe was decided or when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.” Brief for Respondents 21. But that argument flies in the face of the standard we have applied in determining whether an asserted right that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution is nevertheless protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Wonder what other protections weren’t around in 1868. Wonder what else was criminalized.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg). Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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