The Supreme Court stepped up to the plate, the State of Mississippi delivered a batting practice fastball belt high and by a vote of 6-3 the Court swung, missed, and hit itself in the head with the bat.
That’s our Supreme Court. That’s Abortion. The two don’t go well together. It’s not the first time our Court has taken an easy case, way overreached and split the Country down the middle assuring blood in the streets.
They did it in 1973, Roe v Wade. They took an easy case from Texas, with the most draconian anti abortion regimen imaginable and instead of giving relief on that case and “putting their pen down,” they went off on a frolic and detour legislating a grand new world where any reason was a good reason to terminate a pregnancy and any time was a good time.
Did they think the country was going to join hands and say “thank you?”
That is my thinking, and more importantly, that was the thinking of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before she was nominated and confirmed for a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg actually used the expression that, in Roe, the Court should have given relief to Roe and “put the pen down” before going off and turning Roe into what it became famous for.
What Ms. Ginsburg was getting at was that the Court was, and is, in the business of deciding cases that come before it, not making pronouncements about their idea of a brave new world that exists in the imagination of the Nine Members of the Supreme Court. We elect people to imagine brave new worlds; they’re called Legislators and Presidents. We appoint people to determine whether individual measures enacted by the Congress and the President are consistent with the Constitution AND STOP THERE.
According to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court in Roe should have decided the case in front of it and stopped there.
Using her thinking, the Court in the Mississippi Case should have decided THAT CASE on its merits and “put the pen down.” Leave Roe alone, “for what its worth.” Which some will see as gospel and others as excess verbiage not necessary to decide the case in front of it. I seem to recall they used to call such language, “dictum.”
So, there. In honor of the late great Ruth Bader Ginsburg, let me honor her dictum by recognizing when it’s a good time “to stop writing.”
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