He’s qualified, he’s conservative but not a raving nut, and if he were a woman, I’d be quietly content with the decision to nominate Joseph Alito to the Supreme Court.
As it is, I can live with it.
So far, it’s predicted that the Dems and the Left will base their opposition to Alito on his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which four provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982 were being challenged as unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood in 1992, but in that ruling, Sandra Day O’Connor, whom Alito would replace, was the swing vote.
I for one am fed up with both the non-Religious Wrong and the Lefties for making the big A one of their touchstones.
So long as adoption is not touted as the only or even the best alternative to abortion, my sympathies are pretty much with the “Right to Life” gang, with the big exceptions on which most of us agree: rape or where the health of the mother would be impaired.
Both adoption and abortion rest on the same premise: that a solution deemed to be “best” for adults is also “best” for a child. The first pretty much guarantees emotional instability, and the second guarantees, well, death.
Some choice.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey was a challenge to a state law requiring married women to notify their husbands before they got an abortion.
And, the problem with that is ….?
I am sympathetic to women in bad, abusive marriages, I really am. But it seems to me that if you’re engaging in behavior that leads to pregnancy, both of the people involved should have a say in whether that baby gets to be born.
And in my book, one “yes” is a majority.
I believe that any woman who stays in an abusive marriage because she has more kids than she could support is an idiot – that’s right, an IDIOT, and a manipulator to boot. A husband isn’t a meal ticket, dammit, a wife isn’t a punching bag, and this whole Republican-inspired fantasy that American marriage = submissive wife + surrogate federal grantor husband is an equation that has no basis in reality.
Which is to say that I don’t believe that the Congress of the United States, or the Supreme Court, should be wrapped around the pole over the lifestyle choices of idiots, wife-beaters and manipulators.
There are enough people out there with other causes, concerns and grievances who need the attention of our elected and appointed officials.
I’m tired of the abortion debate. I wish everyone would move on to other legal issues that are and will be on the Supreme Court’s docket.
So, if anyone in the public arena is unhappy with Alito, let them find some reason other than the man’s position on abortion. That’s a windmill that’s been tilted at for altogether too long.