Time to grow up
I do not see myself getting all worked up over the Roberts nomination.
This is hard for me to admit to myself or maybe just to my younger self. When I was in my early twenties, I marched in a lot of pro-choice rallies & volunteered at NARAL. I was once assaulted for doing nothing more than walking home from a rally with a coat hanger in my hand. (I was not hurt and the guy got probation). I spoke at catholic hospitals considering no longer offering their patients terminations even if the patient's health was in jeopardy. I lobbied the Yellow Pages to get them to do a better job of ensuring the abortion providers listed where legitimate. Once I even infiltrated one of these fraudulent abortion providers in order to collect evidence for a lawsuit that NARAL was preparing. A friend and I were locked inside an "exam room" while a video played on a TV over and over. We never saw a doctor or nurse although there were white coats hanging on hooks in the waiting room. It was a pretty horrifying experience and I was only pretending to be in trouble and in need of medical attention that I could afford.
I was more committed then, probably because I could so easily see myself as the kind of woman who would be impacted by the loss of Roe. But a lot has changed for me and for all of us since then.
Bush was pretty clear about the kind of jurist he would nominate. So Roberts is the kind of jurist the majority of my fellow citizens believe is best for our nation. Many, many young women voted for this. I disagreed and voted accordingly. But this is what happens when your side loses elections.
I want abortion to remain private, safe and legal but not because the Supreme Court says so by some slim margin that will eventually be flipped, but because my fellow citizens believe in that right.
My only wish now is that Democrats will use this confirmation process to delineate how a appointment by a Democratic president would have been different. This is a "teaching moment."
It is time to grow up.
Eric Alterman says it better than I...
Anyway, the Roberts nomination seems to mean we should plan on saying goodbye to thirty-two years of life under Roe which is not entirely a bad thing, even for pro-choice advocates. After all, Bush did terrific with unmarried women without college educations. It would be helpful, politically (and democratically) for them to learn just what it was they were voting for. There's a much longer argument to be made here, about how judicially-created and enforced liberalism has weakened its cause and alienated its potential supporters while not gaining terribly much in real world terms.
The whole post is at
Mission Accomplished - Altercation