“The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes and examines him,” Proverbs 18:17.
Friday, June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court declared abortion made legal with the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 to be unconstitutional. In the wake of that decision the culture of death that governed life in the womb that had become so ingrained in our culture generated vulgar responses and violent protests all over our nation.
The Court was right to overturn Roe v. Wade as being unconstitutional because abortion is not even mentioned in the Constitution. Activist justices created a right that does not exist in the language of the Constitution. Only a person who is a hypocrite, illiterate or ignorant of the language of the Constitution can disagree with this decision.
Of course, this does not stop the practice of abortion; it merely returns the issue to the states where it was before Roe v. Wade, which is in keeping with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. But what is clear from the reaction to this decision is many within our nation do not care what the law says if it does not say what they want it to say.
I used the above verse a couple of weeks ago to make us aware then as now we need to carefully “examine” some of the issues raised since this decision was handed down.
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor has said overturning Roe v. Wade calls the legitimacy of the Court into question when it ignores the principle of stare decisis, a Latin term meaning to ‘stand by the decision’ or to follow the precedence of prior decisions; she is almost fifty years too late.
The Supreme Court of the United States is charged with interpreting the language of the Constitution of the United States, it is not permitted to create supposed rights that do not exist in the constitutional language itself. The Court’s legitimacy started being questioned in 1973 when it began making up rights not in the Constitution.
One commentator said our Supreme Court’s authority is not “normal” compared to similar courts in other countries. Other countries are not governed by our Constitution, which created the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government creating a system of checks and balances. No one was saying the Court was exercising abnormal authority in 1973 when it made abortion legal, it is just hypocritical to say it now.
A young woman from another country, some sort of celebrity, said she does not understand why we feel constrained to follow the Constitution, a document over two hundred years old.
Here’s a news flash, the Constitution and the first Ten Amendments to it, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, protect basic freedoms. Freedom of speech is just as relevant today as it was more than two hundred years ago, as is freedom of religion, freedom of the press and the others. Also the right to life, liberty and property which cannot be taken without due process of law and extends to the life in the womb.
This is why Americans live by a Constitution that is more than two hundred years old and why other people flock to this nation to enjoy those same freedoms and the prosperity predicated on those freedoms. Human rights and freedoms do not have an expiration date.
But what has become increasingly clear is that there are those within our society who do not respect the law if they do not like what the law says. The late James J. Kilpatrick, an astute observer of the Supreme Court, said, “The Constitution is not what it says; it is what those nine black-robed justices say it says.”
That is true in a sense; if the justice is a constructionist he believes in interpreting the Constitution as it is written, if on the other hand, the justice is a re-constructionist they believe the Constitution should be interpreted according to what they claim it implies and not what it explicitly says. This is when the Court begins to lose its legitimacy, when the justices interpret the Constitution according to their own views.
Supreme Court decisions have been overturned before when it was clear an egregious error had been made by a previous Court. The Roe v. Wade Court hypocritically said they could not determine when human life began and thus constitutionally protected. It is a well know scientific fact that human life begins at conception.
The Roe v. Wade Court said human life did not begin till birth, it ignored the scientific evidence. The current Court simply made the point that the Constitution does not address the issue of abortion invalidating Roe v. Wade. It was not a theological decision, it was not a political decision, it was not a scientific decision; it was a legal decision, it was what the Supreme Court is supposed to render, legal decisions.
We will see more of these.
Gary, ONCE AGAIN, you did an excellent job. I often envy you in the way you’re able to lay out – and clarify – facts.
Thank you Sheryl!
While my articles are written for everyone to show ours is a reasonable faith, they are at their essence a defense of the Christian worldview in answering the secular arguments that attack our faith. So, my main purpose in writing is to show my brothers and sisters in Christ that what we believe is reasonable and practical. In pursuit of that goal, factual clarity is essential.
Jesus told His disciples “for I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute,” Luke 21:15. The reason the ‘cancel culture’ does not like, and tries to suppress what believers write, is because the logic is something they cannot refute. The secular media has relied upon misinformation and misdirection to manipulate public sentiment for so long neither they nor their audience can think clearly about the issues or articulate a sensible argument. Sadly, they can only respond with vulgarity and protests.