The Sun is a Little Brighter, the Air a Little Cleaner
When the Supreme Court, in 1973, raised the issue of abortion from a state to state decision to a Constitutional one, it stained the Constitution and did violence to the concept of federalism. No matter what you may think of abortion as a practice or procedure, there is nothing written in the Constitution close to granting a Constitutional right to an abortion. Indeed, Roe v. Wade even perverted the concept of a “right to privacy,” also not in the Constitution but used to justify the invalidation of a number of state laws on a variety of different issues. Once again, no matter what my opinion of the policy of those laws may be, whether the Constitution bans them or not is a completely separate question.
That being said, today, the Sun is a little brighter, and the air is a little cleaner, as my daughter said to me in a text today. The stain of the federalizing of abortion law is dead, and, God willing, will stay that way. For me, it feels like 40 years of political activity has been vindicated. It was worth the effort to get to this point. Now the real fight begins.
For all of my time in the Legislature, most of my effort on the question of life… Read More