Gregory Kane: Bad court decisions have lasting consequences
By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
September 10, 2009
Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell has been referred to, disparagingly, as a "culture warrior." Here's why that's a good thing.
Please forgive this use of a second-hand anecdote to drive home my point, but I have no doubt that the incident one of my former students told me about is absolutely true, social conditions in Baltimore being what they are.
She was 21. Her parents emigrated to the United States from Pakistan. She came from a strict Muslim family, and in the strict Islamic tradition, as it is in the similar Judeo-Christian tradition, pre-marital sex is a no-no.
So it was with perfect innocence that she told about four middle-school girls she tutored - in the 13-14-age range - that she was a virgin. (They were the ones who brought the subject up.) She was stunned to learn that all of them not only admitted having had at least one sexual encounter, but that they also seemed proud of it. They boasted about it.
"But don't you worry about getting pregnant?" she asked the girls. Their answer? If they got pregnant, they'd just get an abortion.
That, dear readers, is what American culture has come to: Girls barely into their teens who think so little of life and sexual activity that they just dismiss the chances of getting pregnant with a cavalier "I'll just get an abortion."
And such young women have many enablers in this society, specifically those who insist that laws allowing female minors to have abortions without parental consent are absolutely necessary.
This is precisely the direction where McDonnell saw us heading when he wrote his now-controversial thesis in 1989 in which he excoriated gays and working women. He also, according to some news reports, had the gall to criticize the Supreme Court decision that legalized the sale and use of contraceptives for unmarried couples.
That would be Eisenstadt v. Baird of course, and McDonnell was right to criticize it. In fact, he could have taken on its precedent, Griswold v. Connecticut, and been just as on point. I've said for years that the problem with abortion didn't start with the Roe v. Wade decision. It didn't start with Eisenstadt v. Baird either. The real culprit is the Griswold decision.
A brief recap may be in order. The Supreme Court ruled on the Griswold case in 1965. By a 7-2 vote, the justices struck down a Connecticut law that made it illegal to sell or dispense contraceptive materials to married couples. Justice Potter Stewart called the law "uncommonly silly," but he and fellow dissenter Justice Hugo Black both knew, better than the seven in the majority, what their jobs as justices were.
And it wasn't to overturn every uncommonly silly law the 50 state legislatures passed throughout the country. The high court would have to be in session 24-7 for that. Stewart and Black understood that it was the job of the electorate to vote uncommonly silly legislators out of office, and that, in Griswold, the Supreme Court had exceeded its power.
Black said as much in his dissent. "Use of any such broad, unbounded judicial authority would make of this Court's members a day-to-day constitutional convention," Black wrote. The result would be "a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which will be bad for the courts and worse for the country."
Worse turned to worst on Jan. 22, 1973, the day seven Supreme Court justices severed rights from responsibilities. When they struck down laws outlawing abortions in those states that had them, the seven justices who voted in the majority did more than just uphold what was then called a "right to privacy," but has since morphed into "a woman's right to choose."
They ushered in America's "culture of whoopee." Roe v. Wade became the have-sex-and-avoid-the-consequences card for an entire nation. You can bet there were many horny men who picked up the paper on Jan. 23, 1973, read the headline about the Roe decision, and then pumped their fists in the air while loudly whooping "Way to go, Supreme Court!"
Some of those grown men are the very ones having sex with girls like those Baltimore middle schoolers. Such is the culture. If that's the culture McDonnell is going to war against, I wish him Godspeed.
Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
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