“Praise God!” -OR- “God Damn!”? You be the judge.

Today (June 26, 2022), the much-expected, leaked Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (19-1392) was publicly released on the Supreme Court’s website [see: https://www.SupremeCourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf], which the unjust Justice Samuel Alito summarized thusly:

“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, are overruled; the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

The 6 right-wing radicals similarly ignored the Constitution’s 9th Amendment, which is the statement that unenumerated rights exist:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Six Justices, including the Joker in Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and ultra-right-wing radical extremists Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett — all whom were nominated by Banana Republicans — overturned a very-nearly 50-year precedent.

By so doing, they made themselves out as liars, because ALL of the 6 in public testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, asserted that Roe v. Wade, a decision issued on January 22, 1973, was “settled law.”

• In 2020, Amy Coney Barrett was asked by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California: “So the question comes, what happens? Will this justice support a law that has substantial precedent now? Would you commit yourself on whether you would or would not?”

Amy Coney Barrett testified in response saying that, “What I will commit is that I will obey all the rules of stare decisis, that if a question comes up before me about whether Casey or any other case should be overruled, that I will follow the law of stare decisis, applying it as the court is articulating it, applying all the factors, reliance, workability, being undermined by later facts in law, just all the standard factors.”

During Day 2 of Amy Coney Barrett‘s confirmation hearing, South Carolina Senator and Chairman Lindsey Graham asked: “Let’s talk about Brown vs. Board of Education, because I know Senator Blumenthal will. I’m going to talk about that. You said in writings, it was a super precedent. What did you mean?”

Amy Coney Barrett: “Well, in my writings, so as a professor, I talked about the doctrine of Stare Decisis, and super precedent is not a doctrinal term that comes from the Supreme Court and I think maybe in political conversation or in newspapers, people use it different ways. But in my writing, I was using a framework that’s been articulated by other scholars. And in that context, super precedent means precedent that is so well established that it would be unthinkable that it would ever be overruled. And there are about six cases on this list that other scholars have identified.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota asked Barrett whether she considered Roe v. Wade as a “super precedent.” [NOTE: Use of the word “super” was unclear, whether it referred to something greater and overriding as in above, preceding, or prior to, or if it meant something immense, notable, exalted, grand or multitudinous, in that brief exchange.]

Klobuchar: Okay. Well, you also separately acknowledged that in a Planned Parenthood V Casey, the Supreme Court’s controlling opinion talked about the reliance interests on Roe V Wade, which it treated in that case, as super-precedent. Is Roe a super precedent?

Coney Barrett: How would you define super-precedent?

Klobuchar: Actually, I thought someday I’d be sitting in that chair. I’m not. I’m up here. So I’m asking you.

Coney Barrett: Well, people use super-precedent differently.

Klobuchar: Okay.

Coney Barrett: The way that it’s used in the scholarship and the way that I was using it in the article that you’re reading from was to define cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall in that category. And scholars across the spectrum say that doesn’t mean that Roe should be overruled, but descriptively, it does mean that it’s not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn’t call for its overruling.

• In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh was asked by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, “What would you say your position today is on a woman’s right to choose?”

He replied saying, “As a judge, it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. By ‘it,’ I mean Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. They have been reaffirmed many times. Casey is precedent on precedent, which itself is an important factor to remember.”

He further testified in his 2018 confirmation hearing in response to a question about whether he thought Roe v Wade was settled law, stating that, “I said that it’s settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis, and one of the important things to keep in mind about Roe v. Wade is that it has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years. Casey specifically reconsidered (Roe vs. Wade), applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it. That makes Casey a precedent on precedent.”

• In 2017, Neil Gorsuch was asked point-blank by Iowa Senator Charles “Chuck” Grassley: “Can you tell me whether Roe was decided correctly?”

Gorsuch testified that, “I would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed. The reliance interest considerations are important there, and all of the other factors that go into analyzing precedent have to be considered. It is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was reaffirmed in Casey in 1992 and in several other cases. So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other.”

• In the 2006 confirmation hearing for Samuel Alito, the now-late Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter asked the nominee about a memorandum Alito had written dated May 30, 1985 in which he stategized a path for overturning  Roe v Wade:

“What can be made of this opportunity to advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects? … I make the following recommendation. We should file a brief as amicus curiae supporting appellants in both cases. In the course of the brief, we should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of-whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled. Then, without great formal discussion of levels of scrutiny or degrees of state interest. we should demonstrate that many of the provisions struck down by the Third and 9th Circuits are eminently reasonable and legitimate and would be upheld without a moment’s hesitation in other contexts. … If abortion is a woman’s choice, as the Court has held, then surely the choice should be informed. It goes without saying that the woman is entitled to full information about what will be done to her and about the possible effects on her health. If only the woman is considered, abortion is like other surgery, and the states’ power to enact detailed informed consent legislation regarding general surgical procedures can hardly be questioned. … While abortion involves essentially the same medical choice as other surgery, it involves in addition a moral choice, because the woman contemplating a first trimester abortion is given absolute and nonreviewable authority over the future of the fetus. Should not then the woman be given relevant and objective information bearing on this choice? Roe took from state lawmakers the authority to make this choice and gave it to the pregnant woman. Does it not follow that the woman contemplating abortion have at her disposal at least some of the same sort of information that we would want lawmakers to consider? … I find this approach preferable to a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade. It has most of the advantages of a brief devoted to the overruling of Roe v. Wade: it makes our position clear, does not even tacitly concede Roe’s legitimacy, and signals that we regard the question as live and open. At the same time, it is free of many of the disadvantages that would accompany a major effort to overturn Roe. When the Court hands down its decision and Roe is not overruled, the decision will not be portrayed as a stinging rebuke.”

Senator Specter asked Alito, “Do you agree with that statement today, Judge Alito?”

Alito replied, “Well, that was a correct statement of what I thought in 1985 from my vantage point in 1985, and that was as a line attorney in the Department of Justice in the Reagan administration.

“Today if the issue were to come before me, if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed and the issue were to come before me, the first question would be the question that we’ve been discussing, and that’s the issue of stare decisis. And if the analysis were to get beyond that point, then I would approach the question with an open mind, and I would listen to the arguments that were made.”

Specter followed up by asking, “So you would approach it with an open mind notwithstanding your 1985 statement?”

Alito replied saying, “Absolutely, senator. That was a statement that I made at a prior period of time when I was performing a different role, and as I said yesterday, when someone becomes a judge, you really have to put aside the things that you did as a lawyer at prior points in your legal career and think about legal issues the way a judge thinks about legal issues.”

• In 2005, when John Roberts was nominated to be Chief Justice, in his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the now-late Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, asked him: “In your confirmation hearing for circuit court, your testimony read to this effect, and it has been widely quoted: ‘Roe is the settled law of the land.’ Do you mean settled for you, settled only for your capacity as a circuit judge, or settled beyond that?”

Roberts replied, “It’s settled as a precedent of the court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. And those principles, applied in the Casey case, explain when cases should be revisited and when they should not. And it is settled as a precedent of the Court, yes.”

• In 1991, Clarence Thomas was asked by the now-late Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who recollected testimony given by women who were maimed by “back-alley abortionists” stating that he was “terrified if we turn back the clock on legal abortion services,” asked the nominee, “I want to ask you once again, of appealing to your sense of compassion, whether or not you believe the Constitution protects a woman’s right to an abortion?”

Thomas testified saying, “I guess as a kid we heard the hushed whispers about illegal abortions and individuals performing them in less than safe environments, but they were whispers. It would, of course, if a woman is subjected to the agony of an environment like that, on a personal level, certainly, I am very, very pained by that. I think any of us would be.”

But not only that, by so doing, by giving false testimony, by being deliberately deceptively evasive, by lying, all 6 also defiled the institution of the court, turned it into an open mockery and public laughingstock, redefined it as a political weapon, made themselves as politicians, and the court as a battlefield upon which they could manipulate law to serve their self interests — NOT the interest of justice.

It only took those 6 radicals 18,051 days from the start date to the end date, included, or 49 years, 5 months, 3 days, including the end date, to overturn settled precedent.

Perhaps they’ll next seek to overturn Brown v. Board of Education (in which the court ruled that racially segregated schools are un-Constitutional), because it’s only been in effect for 6826 more days, or 18 years, 8 months, 6 days longer, before Roe was decided.

And, Texas’ GOP U.S. Senator John Cornyn recently REMOVED ALL DOUBT about what the GOP’s ultimate objective is, when he tweeted this response to former POTUS, Mr. Obama — America’s FIRST Black POTUS:

Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education. https://t.co/hrUYCcIq8Y

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 25, 2022

Plessy v Ferguson, of course, is the “separate but equal” ruling the court rendered in 1896.

But, I get it, I understand that some are opposed to the idea of abortion based upon religious convictions. And, I respect their RIGHT TO CHOOSE.

But (and perhaps the reader may already suspect where I’m headed with this), it is WRONG to FORCE one’s beliefs/convictions, religious, or otherwise, onto others. And, as our nation’s Constitution states, respect of religion & religious tests are illegal, which essentially means that laws based upon religious exercise or religious opinion are UNCONSTITUTIONAL & illegal. And opposition to abortion is 99.9% a religious matter, having been started by Catholics, and adopted by Evangelicals.

The Didache, a non-canonical anonymous 1st century Christian doctrinal document, which some consider as having been written by an Apostolic Father, that is, to have been authored by an early disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, may perhaps be the first, or even most, well-known document specifically identifying abortion as being an act that one should not perform. It is from that document almost exclusively that Catholic teaching concerning abortion arose.

And, it wasn’t until relatively recently in medicine, that we have become all topsy-turvy in our thinking.

Until the advent of modern medicine, we allowed the dying to die with grace & dignity, often at home in the presence of their loved ones. Now, we fight like hell the inevitable — death — pretending that somehow, some way, we can cheat the Grim Reaper, when the only thing we’re truly doing is to briefly delay death, or worse, prolong suffering.

And for those same eons, thousands upon thousands of years, for the entire history of humanity, life was understood, and acknowledged as beginning with the FIRST INDEPENDENT BREATH — the proverbial “breath of life” — NOT some “fetal heartbeat” poppycock.

You see, if THAT is the case — that “fetal heartbeat” defines life — then we should excise it from its captivity, the very source source of its life, and SET IT FREE, to be independent.

Then as a logical consequence, we should, and would be required to, change the DOB (Date Of Birth) on ALL birth certificates to more accurately reflect the “TRUE” date of the beginning of life (the date of detection of a “fetal heartbeat”) — NOT emergence/expulsion from the womb in conjunction with independent breath. After all, babies can be, and are, born dead.

There’ll be NO MORE 9-month pregnancies. They’ll be mandated to be declared OFFICIALLY ALIVE at 12 weeks — a mere 84 days, or about 3 menstrual cycles, each consisting of 28 days.

Following that, those who suffer the experience of a “miscarriage” — properly known as a spontaneous abortion — can be charged with murder. Suddenly, the judicial system & prisons will be clogged with women, for science tells us that most pregnancies are NOT carried to term, being (because they are) spontaneously aborted.

See how absurd that all is?

And then, that brings about another preposterously absurd, but nonetheless real, corollary which logically arises from it, which is “personhood,” and rights. Rights, of course, have corresponding & complementary responsibilities… which is a concept that we seem to have forgotten.

With the advent of modern medicine, we have also, in a sense, lost our minds, attempting to “save” preemies — those yet unborn, which are NOT TOTALLY, NOR FULLY DEVELOPED, which body systems WE KNOW will later in life cause inevitable, horrible long-term disease, such as COPD, cognitive injury, cardiac malfunction, circulatory problems, and more — SIMPLY BECAUSE WE THINK WE CAN “save a life” — one that, left to nature & natural processes (something for which the Catholic Church ostensibly advocates, at least in dying, which they call a “natural death”), would die, simply because it CANNOT survive independently at such a prematurely early stage.

“Viability” has been pushed back further and further. But to what advantage, or to whose benefit?

The physician? The foetus? The mother? The state? Exactly whose benefit?

Further, in the United States, we have DENIED COMPASSION — the veritable “milk of human kindness” — which are the human services of healing & health, to THE LIVING.

So essentially, once you’re born, you’re own your own. Good luck!

Consider also that the Internal Revenue Service also recognizes children BORN – NOT conceived – when granting deduction status. Here’s their official response to a question about claiming a deduction for a child born who lived only 40 minutes after being born: https://www.irs.gov/faqs/earned-income-tax-credit/qualifying-child-rules/qualifying-child-rules-1

Our U.S. Constitution does NOT support the notion that a fetus is a person because – and as the Catholic Church has long taught – life begins at birth, NOT conception. AND, the Scripture clearly states that the Almighty breathed the “breath of life” at which point “the man became a living being” into Adam. So we see clearly from that Judaic scripture (the Genesis account) that breathing is equated with life, not conception.

For if life began at conception, then “personhood” and citizenship is imbued at that moment (of conception).

What that would effectively mean, is that a fetus conceived overseas (to an immigrant couple, for example, who later became naturalized American citizens before giving birth), the conceived fetus would be a citizen of wherever it was conceived… EVEN IF the child was delivered/born in the U.S.A. Clearly, that is contrary to established U.S. law, and other legal precedent which states that citizenship is granted to a child when it is born, and the child’s citizenship is of the nation in which the child is born – NOT in which it was conceived.

As well, the U.S. Department of State has a form which is required to be completed for children born overseas to American citizens if the child is to have American citizenship. It’s called a Consular Report of a Birth Abroad (CRBA, aka Form FS-240), and MUST be completed by the parents to give American citizenship to the child. If it is NOT completed within a certain time frame, the child will NOT be an American citizen, and by default, will be a citizen of the nation where it was born.

As an example, consider Ted Cruz, who was born in Alberta, Canada to a Cuban father and American mother. There is NO EVIDENCE that his parents completed the CRBA, and his birth certificate is Canadian. He is therefore, by law, a Canadian citizen -NOT- an American. Note that Ted is also in violation of US law concerning his U.S. Senate status, which the Constitution states must be held ONLY by U.S. citizens. “No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”

As further proof of that fact, that Ted is a Canadian, note that Ted also OFFICIALLY renounced his Canadian citizenship 14 May 2014 on an official Canadian form – the Certificate of Renunciation of Canadian Citizenship. In effect, Ted Cruz is quite literally, a prime example of “The Man Without A Country.” See also: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1863/12/the-man-without-a-country/308751/

Note also that Ted’s father (Rafael Bienvenido Cruz) was granted political asylum in the U.S.A., then moved to Canada, became a Canadian citizen, and did NOT become an American citizen until 2005, LONG AFTER he had moved to the U.S.A. when Ted was a child in 1974.

Actions have consequences, and this activist, radicalized right-wing Supreme Court has gone off the rails on a crazy train.