With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy and nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to take his place, liberal academics and commentators are panicked, so sure are they that a more conservative Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. Believing as we do that Roe was a moral and constitutional abomination, we can only hope they’re right.
In their agitation, liberals have come up with some pretty awful punditry on the subject of abortion and Roe. Take, for instance, a July 7 piece by Carol Sanger in the New York Times: “Reversing Roe Could Hurt the G.O.P.” Sanger, a professor at Columbia Law School, suggests that conservatives enthused by the prospect of overturning Roe should be careful what they wish for. How’s that? “Getting rid of Roe,” she argues,
This is especially true now that fewer targets are available for Republican moral outrage. It used to be that you could always count on anti-abortion and anti-gay hostilities to stoke the base. But gay people and certain gay rights have become more familiar. There is now a right to marry the adult partner of your choosing. To be sure, there has been a presidential full-court press aimed at replacing gays with immigrants as the new subverters of the American way. Yet the last few weeks have revealed that mistreatment of immigrant families can cause popular, religious and legislative blowback, including from conservatives.
The sheer nastiness of this critique is something to behold: Republicans only oppose abortion, she’s saying, because they can raise money and get votes from it. Has she pondered the possibility that some people may think unborn human lives deserve protection for the same reason born ones do? But leave that aside and consider her suggestion. She wants conservatives to do what liberals want—preserve Roe v. Wade—because it’s in conservatives’ interest to do so.
We’re put in mind of Tom Sawyer, who famously persuaded his dimwitted friends to give him their treasures for the privilege of whitewashing a fence for him. The Scrapbook may not be very bright, but we’re pretty sure that leaving Roe in place is what liberals want, not what conservatives want. We’ll pass, Professor. But thanks all the same.
