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| Blumenthal and his financing arm |
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that passed the fiery abortion ball back to the states – where, some Constitutional scholars have argued it always belonged – a strategic rift has opened between U.S. Representative Jim Himes, perceived by some in Connecticut’s chattering class as a moderate, and U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, a leading progressive Democrat.
The High Court decision will
not affect the availability of abortion in Connecticut. In fact, abortions in
the state will become more not less prevalent, owing to a push by progressive
Democrats such as Governor Ned Lamont and many Democrats in the state’s General
Assembly to provide abortion seeking refugees from other states a “safe harbor”
in Connecticut, where they may seek abortions without being molested by their
own state’s restrictive abortion laws.
The Himes-
Blumenthal rift concerns political strategy on the matter of abortion following
the Supreme Court finding. If both politicians were Caesar, whose God-like word
was law in post-Republican Rome, the abortion discussion would be mooted by a
show of imperial force.
Part of the Supreme
Court decision rests on the notion that abortion frisson in the nation could
only accelerate if, in a Constitutional Republic, laws were enforced – and in
some cases created from whole cloth – by courts rather than legislators.
A rigorous review by
the High Court of an earlier decision that had stripped states of decision-making power in the matter of abortion, depositing what should have been a
legislative function at the feet of the judicial department, found – not a shocking
surprise to many Constitutional scholars – that the earlier court decision was deeply
flawed.
The reshuffle, from judicial
departments to state legislative bodies, will now allow states a measure of
statutory freedom that had been rudely aborted -- pun intended -- by the Court’s
earlier Roe v Wade decision.
In a Constitutional
Republic such as ours, voters are sometimes distressed to find that their
elected representatives are often quite happy to allow courts to decide
legislative matters. By such means, campaign shy legislators escape sometimes well-deserved
whippings at the polls. Politically, the High Court decision already has moved
protests, pro and contra, from federal courts to state
legislative buildings.
Himes, according to
a piece in CTMirror,
“floated an idea at a private Democratic caucus meeting last Wednesday about
voting on individual components of a bill that would broadly
protect abortion access. He suggested voting separately on provisions that
would preserve abortion rights for women whose lives are in danger and those who are survivors of rape and incest
(emphasis mine). Himes’
remarks at the meeting and proposal were first
reported by Politico.”
Having huddled with
poll watching political strategists in the the Democrat Party, “The congressman
said the party’s suggestions for messaging when they’re back home in their
districts — including blaming the Senate as the cause for inaction and telling
people to vote for more Democrats — are ‘pretty ineffective.’”
The Himes strategy,
the Congressman said, “…grew out of the thought that the recommendations we
were getting were landing flat in my district. Let’s take advantage of the
alignment [and] the opportunity to save some lives.”
Let us not quibble –
abortions, successfully performed, do not in most cases involve saving either
the life of the prospective mother or that of her unborn fetus – and focus
instead on the politics of Himes’ strategy and Blumenthal’s very different
strategy. Both Catholic and Jewish orthodoxy permit abortions to save the life
of the prospective mother, life-taking in such cases being the exception that
proves the rule that giving birth is preferable to aborting life.
Blumenthal’s take on
the strategic utility of Himes’ strategy is unambiguous and wholly political: “When
asked about Himes’ strategy, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he’s skeptical
of voting on smaller pieces of legislation and, like some others in his party,
worries this will let Republicans off the hook.
Blumenthal told CT
Mirror during a Friday event with abortion rights advocates, “Generally, the
slimmed down versions of protecting women’s reproductive rights fail to do the
job. Proposed alternatives are filled with gaps that swallow the protections.
These exceptions swallow the rule. I’m very leery of so-called substitutes that
give Republicans a pass.”
Blumenthal’s rule is
simple and inviolable: There can be no restriction whatever on abortion. That
rule is, at the very least, wildly ironic coming from a politician who, for two
decades as Connecticut’s Attorney General, bullied his way into public prominence
by imposing restrictions upon quite a few Connecticut businesses and state
employee whistleblowers who sought to alert the public that all was not right
in some state financed agencies that he, as Attorney General, was statutorily
obligated to defend in court cases. It is, most jurists will agree, impossibly
self-serving to operate both as defense attorney for whistleblowers and a
prosecutor of parties open whom whistles have been blown.
Of the two
strategies outlined above, Himes’ is the more practical and moderate. Democrat
pragmatists should post above Blumenthal’s Washington DC office, the note Dante
plastered over the gates of Hell in his Divine
Comedy: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
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