Roe v Wade Draft, Connecticut Rumbles

Opinion writing in Connecticut tends to drive everything left, including common sense, which used to preside over reasoning.

A Connecticut opinion writer has made in The Day a strong case for voting against Governor Ned Lamont. He writes that he doesn’t “like the way Gov. Ned Lamont has presided over Connecticut.” Lamont was “born rich and entitled, and that alone might not be something to hold against him, except that it explains a lot about the prince-like way he has governed, contemptuous of laws meant to ensure open and transparent government.” Lamont’s management style is “arrogant,” and “he has presided blindly over what appears to be a government of monumental corruption, with senior administration managers, who didn't heed warnings about no-bid contracts, jumping ship as federal authorities probe literally hundreds of millions of dollars in state spending.”

But, the commentator argues, “… given the news this week from the Supreme Court, I'll probably vote for him again.”

Why so?

Because, the commentator asserts, “the dishonest Supreme Court Justices, who swore under oath that Roe v. Wade is settled law, have, with their leaked decision on abortion, shaken the world and turned much of settled U.S. politics on its head, especially here in Connecticut."

The commentator predicts, “The Justices, if they proceed to strike down Roe, will almost certainly push fence-sitting Democrats who dislike Lamont into voting for him, even as we hold our noses.

By this generalized “we”, the commentator identifies himself as a Democrat. In solidarity with other Connecticut Democrats, he writes, “I doubt I am alone among Democrats or Independents who may have flirted with voting for a Republican, who will now recoil from anyone or anything the Connecticut GOP puts forward."

Summing up, he writes, “It's pretty clear that the extremist religious high court they've created, once it has toppled Roe, will use the same flimsy legal foundation for eliminating a range of modern rights Americans have come to take for granted, from the use of birth control to gay marriage.”

Republicans, as well as some Democrats and unaffiliateds, may not be inclined to take such commentary too seriously.

It may be what Mark Twain called a “stretcher” for a self-identified Democrat commentator to say that his “flirtation’ with voting Republican this election year is other than journalistic jabberwocky. Such flirtations rarely lead to dates, not to mention marriages.

Assuming the leaked draft is not materially changed and is affirmed by a majority of the court, the decision will change little in Connecticut. The court ruling removes decision making power on the matter of abortion from courts and invests it in state legislatures. It by no means abolishes abortion, especially here in Connecticut, whose Democrat dominated legislature has further strengthened the prospect of abortions by, among other measures, making the state a sanctuary for women who may be denied an abortion before quickening in other states.

The draft decision striking down the sometimes irrational architecture of Roe v Wade has nothing to do with Christian theology. Neither was the Roe v Wade decision grounded in religious precepts. The initial Roe v Wade decision, even liberal Justices such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg have said, was poorly drafted. It is a great pity Ginsberg died before she could tell us whether or not she agreed with the recent draft decision.

In a 1992 lecture at New York University, Ginsberg noted, “Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication. Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable. The most prominent example in recent decades is Roe v. Wade… Suppose the court had stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as the court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force. A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the extreme Texas law and went no further on that day, I believe and will summarize why, might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy.”

The following passage, which in part recirculates Democrat campaign talking points, is particularly striking: “In striking down Roe, the Supreme Court will become a nightmare come to life for Republicans who have created such an incongruous voter base, mixing tax- and regulation-cutting business leaders with evangelicals, Trumpists, white supremacists, even insurrectionists.”

These are all poorly defined bumper-sticker or twitter taunts.

One wonders how many “tax and regulation cutting business leaders in Connecticut” are “Trumpists, white supremacists, even insurrectionists.” To be sure, there are many whites among business leaders in Connecticut, as elsewhere all across true-blue New England, but how many of the white business leaders who have contributed generously to Democrats throughout New England are “white supremacists?” How many white supremacist Connecticut business leaders, male and female, were summoned to give testimony as possible “insurrectionists” before the January 6 investigating committee? Have prominent progressive Democrat ethicists in Connecticut purged their campaign contributor lists of business men and women who argue plausibly that high business taxes are incompatible with economic growth and yet deliver contributions to progressive Democrats?

It may not be the best idea to vote against a governor “born rich and entitled” who is, the commentator insists, “arrogant,” “princely in his manner of governance” and “contemptuous of laws meant to ensure open and transparent government” because the Supreme Court has apparently decided that the matter of abortion, contentious ever since the court had first ruled on the issue in Roe v Wade in 1973, should be decided by states rather than the Supreme Court.