Abomination in Our Nation

On Monday a draft opinion was leaked from the Supreme Court. Leaks from the Supreme Court are extremely rare, and in the past have been limited to someone saying what a final ruling outcome was going to be. There has never been a leak of a brief—in the entire history of the Court.

image of the Supreme Court leaked draft opinion
screenshot from Glenn Beck's Wednesday Special

 

The Betrayal of Trust

Justice Roberts verified on Tuesday that the leaked draft was authentic. He pointed out that it was still an early draft—it is from early February—and is part of how the Court works through their opinions; it represents neither the final opinion of any justice nor the final ruling. He also calls the leak a betrayal. There is speculation on what that means to the perpetrator when caught, but is likely to include firing at minimum, probably losing their law license for life, and possibly criminal charges for mishandling private court documents.

Law vlogger Robert Gouveia shared a couple of tweets that indicate the seriousness of this betrayal of trust. One is from SCOUTUSblog. It says,

It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.

Robert Gouveia shares a SCOTUSblog tweet
screenshot from here

The other tweet Gouveia shares is from @OrinKerr, passed on to him from @isamuel, who had clerked for Justice Scalia, who tells this story (which I found linked to here) of welcome day for new clerks:

But nothing will ever beat Justice Scalia on probably the first day that all four law clerks had started. He summoned us all in and said, “Welcome aboard. I’m really happy to have you. Here’s how I run my chambers. It’s an open door—if you need to talk to me about something, just come and talk to me.” And he said, almost with a hint of regret that he had to do this—obviously he was not that regretful, because he did do it—he said, “I want to just emphasize something, and I only want to say it once. If I ever discover that you have betrayed the confidences of what goes on in these chambers, I will do everything in my power to ruin your career.” Then he just let that hang there for a second, and moved on to other topics. It wasn’t said in a mean way, but it also wasn’t said in a way that admitted the slightest misunderstanding. He certainly did not sound like he was even a little bit kidding. Again, at the time, I’m a twentysomething-year-old lawyer. This is Justice Antonin Scalia. It does not require his power to ruin my career. The amount of power in his pinky finger was quite sufficient. So as a result, I was never tempted to betray his confidences and I doubt I ever will be. He only said it once, and other than that was quite a genial boss. But in that one moment, you really got the sense that he was serious.   

If each justice has about four clerks, the number of people with access to the document was quite limited. It should not be impossible to discover who leaked it. Trust is gone, severely limiting the normal functioning of the Supreme Court, until the leaker if found and removed.

Oddly, the story being talked about in media and by the Biden administration is ignoring this man-bites-dog level of out-of-the-ordinary leak. It is concentrating only on the contents of the leaked document.

 

The Pressure Campaign

The document is the draft majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, on the Dobbs case. That’s regarding the Tennessee law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks. Tennessee asked the Supreme Court to consider reversing Roe and Casey as they determine whether the Tennessee law was constitutional. The opinion is close to a hundred pages long, carefully and accurately detailing the wrongness of Roe and Casey.

This should be no surprise to anyone. First of all, the Court chose to take up the case; that showed a willingness to consider the issue. Second, we all heard the oral arguments in December. Third, we have known Alito to be a reliable conservative on the Court likely to go this direction.

The process of the Court is to circulate and exchange opinions. Then the other justices decide whether they concur in full or in part. They may like an outcome but prefer to emphasize a different line of reasoning. Or they may dissent, and then write their dissenting opinion based on refuting the arguments in the majority opinion. Or they could be persuaded by the arguments another justice makes and actually change their opinion.

What the leak has led to, however, is an opportunity for the pro-abortion crowd to stir up emotion, fear, and pressure—in the hopes of persuading a justice or two to change their positions—more out of fear than persuasive argument or even a sense that the country is against such a ruling. This includes fear for their lives and the lives of their families—which means that people whose goal is to kill as many babies in the womb as they possibly can might also be willing to kill older humans.

By the way, the American people may have some mixed ideas about whether Roe should be overturned, but they are definitely not in step with this pro-abortion-under-all-circumstances-up-until-birth mob that’s doing so much wailing and teeth gnashing. Stu Burguire shows some statistics on his show from polling. 

stats shown on Stu Burguiere's show
screenshot from here

more polling data shown on Stu Burguiere's show
screenshot from here

What If…

If Roe and Casey are overturned, what does that mean? It means that, because the Constitution is silent on abortion, it is a decision to be left to the states. I believe there is—and always has been—an argument on the pro-life side that the life of the pre-born deserves protection under the Constitution. There are places in law where that life is protected, and taking that life is punished as murder; but calling it abortion and pretending that it is a woman’s healthcare choice has muddied the clear understanding. So now it is better to give the decision back to the states than to dictate from Washington.

If states are to be able to make the decision, they will make varied decisions—as do most of the nations in the world, only a few of which (the ugliest regimes, as it happens) allow abortion as freely as the US has.

We know much more about the growing fetus than was known at the time of Roe. That it is a life, well before viability. Viability is getting ever earlier. And, in fact, there’s already a heartbeat as early as six weeks. Logically, biologically, there is a growing person with their own identifiable DNA from conception on. Growth is a sign of life. And the DNA shows it is not only human life, but a unique individual person.

Casey set aside the 3-trimester/3-rules system invented in the Roe decision, giving a nod to the viability standard but mostly ignoring the “when does the life of a baby become important?” question and switched to the “undue burden” standard. States could regulate abortion—as long as they didn’t create an undue burden on that woman who was planning to kill her pre-born child.

Without Roe and Casey, states where people value life will become free to limit or eliminate abortion. States where people want to keep killing the pre-born will be able to do that. California has already volunteered itself as an abortion destination, with free flights to their state to kill your baby. New York is likely to continue killing more babies than are born. No one will be more than a two-hour plane trip from an abortion clinic. And you can assume there will be nonprofits willing to pay for those trips. So, all those cries of desperation and deprivation for women are unfounded.

It's hard to say whether this change will prevent any abortions. It certainly won’t prevent any of the determined ones. But maybe it will prevent some of the hesitating ones—the ones where a young woman is scared and uncertain and asks for help and relief, and instead of getting good information and encouragement to seek alternatives, she is pushed into having an abortion. Those might be prevented.

When the mobbing crowds show up with their coat hangers and printed posters to protest in front of the Supreme Court, they’re hyperbolic and emotional—on purpose. For what a Disinformation Governance Board ought to see clearly as disinformation, but of course won’t.

Elizabeth Warren, in a raging rant about Roe,
made the rounds, but I go this screenshot
from Glenn Beck's Wednesday special

What was Elizabeth Warren so suddenly upset about in her major meltdown? She has known since early December that something like the Alito draft would be circulating within the Court, and that a ruling could go that way. She’s not shocked. The outrage is dialed up on purpose.

There’s a larger goal. Use this issue. Use it to try to push forth legislation to “codify Roe.” That’s the claim, although they’re throwing out that “viability” standard entirely and planning to enforce abortion up to the moment of first breath outside the womb—or maybe beyond. They’ll push that through by claiming it’s about a woman’s body—ignoring the little person whose life they’re snuffing out. And they will need to eliminate the filibuster in order to push through something so at odds with what most of the American people want. And, since they’re eliminating the filibuster, then they can push through other things, like court packing; i.e., adding more partisan justices to the Supreme Court.

They already have the legislation ready for a vote next week. That doesn’t mean they’ll get it. But it does mean they had this planned for a while and were waiting for the right moment.

Yesterday the ACLJ mentioned on their podcast that Politico, the outlet that leaked the memo, had given the administration a heads up about their plan days ahead of Monday. Probably they were asking for comment for their article. But that advanced notice is why you could see printed signs and large crowds appearing outside the Court building almost immediately after the news came out.

 

The Ruling Is Just the Beginning

If the SCOTUS ruling goes through as we hope, then the battle—or rather many more local battles—will begin in the states. In some states that means outlawing most or all abortions. Here in Texas we have a trigger law, saying that, if Roe is reversed, abortion is illegal in Texas except to save the life of the mother. This trigger law wasn’t actually necessary, because Texas law prior to Roe is still on the books, and that outlawed abortion in the state.

Some other states may limit abortions and regulate clinics. Other states, unfortunately, will allow them under all the conditions they have been doing them for some time—or maybe worse.

But it would take the condemnation for this abomination off the American people as a whole. Some states would remain condemned by God. But some states—and the people in them—could fight successfully for the life of the not-yet-born. And we could fight for the souls of women in crisis, who don’t want to be Moloch worshippers, but are led to that path with the lie that it’s easy and there’s no other choice.

Glenn Beck shared this tweet and image of Moloch on his
Wednesday special. Moloch worship meant they could
engage in any debauchery they wanted, and all they had
to do was sacrifice their children. Sounds familiar.

Pro-abortion people are not pro-choice. They do not want any state to make a different choice. They do not want any woman to get the information that might cause her to make a different choice. Pro-abortion people want to force their depravity on all of society—and coerce society to pay for the abomination with their taxes. This is an all-out war of evil against good. Spoiler alert: Good wins. But in the meantime there’s going to be a crazy amount of evil thrashing around in desperation. That’s what we’re seeing.