A few bad weeks for progressives, good weeks for the Republic – Stockton Record
John B. Hymes| Special to The Record
The last few weeks of June were bad for the socialist/progressives in America. On June 23, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that normal New Yorkers could carry weapons to protect themselves from the mayhem New York lawmakers unleashed in that state. The next day, the Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the most notorious, shoddily argued, and unconstitutional law since the Dred Scott decision in 1857.
Then on June 27, the Court agreed that football coach Joe Kennedy could pray with his players on the field. These three decisions are important moves for regaining personal rights lost, but Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization upending Roe, is the most notable for advancing the personal rights of a cohort ignored and unrecognized for 50 years…the unborn.
Unfortunately, the perfectly sound reasoning of the Dobbs case will be met with hysteria. Democrat elected officials are inciting the people with fears about the end of democracy and the failure of the Supreme Court. However, in deciding against Jackson Health, the Court found that the1973 Roe decision ignored three important themes: the obvious humanity of unborn children, leading to the extraordinary violation of the XIV Amendments equal protection clauseand the shameless usurpation of states rights against the principle of federalism.
Taking the last theme first, Democrat elected officials and media are doing the people a disservice by continually describing our form of government a democracy, America is a republic. The founders could have established a democracy, but, as John Adams wrote, …democracies never last long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. Democracies rule by how the majority feels about things; a republic is rule by law. The SCOTUS justices recognized that the Roe decision silenced Americans on the issue of abortion, so Dobbs returned their voice. This is a victory for federalism. The question can now be considered by the voters in the fifty states and they will decide just how much protection they are willing to accord the child in the womb.
In respect to that child, as poetically observed by the late Paul Ramsey, there is nothing we have genetically now that we didnt have when we were no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Nearly everyone intuitively knows this, anti-abortion and abortion-rights people alike. The science is perfectly clear, but we humans are amazingly adept in concocting language to support erroneous notions. It wasnt that long ago the unborn were described as blobs of flesh, clumps of cells, and nonpersons.
Recently, an educated man advised me that sentience, or the ability to feel something, determined human worth, and that the unborn child was only a potential person. The dialogue was instructive if the only thing I learned was that philosophy and ideology often trump medical science and common sense.
If the Dobbs Court had considered the humanity and individuality of the unborn child, they might have ruled that the 14th Amendment rightly grants them equal protection and then ban abortion nationwide. However, they did not: the Dobbs Court considered only the question of viability, or when a child can survive outside the womb.
Justice Alitos opinion points out that in 1973, none of the parties in the Roe case suggested viability, nor did they brief it, nor argue it; Justice Blackmun just made it up and it eventually became the heart of Roe. So, when todays justices considered the question of viability, there was no constitutional, logical, or scientifically based foundation, therefore, no federal constitutional right to abortion possible.
This Dobbs decision will hopefully cause American society to reflect and reexamine the effects of the hook-up culture, marriage, family life, morality, and ultimately the value of children. As to the undermining of democracy, we should be more concerned with urban terrorists masquerading as protestors, and politicians masquerading as representatives. Theres no warrant in our unique civil society for the President, Senate majority leader, and Speaker of the House to threaten justices, misrepresent their decisions, and stoke insurrection. This seditious behavior is the real threat to our republic and those people should be turned out of office ASAP.
John B. Hymes is a retired Stockton fire battalion chief and past Civil Service commissioner.
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A few bad weeks for progressives, good weeks for the Republic - Stockton Record