With the opening of the new Supreme Court term today, the newspapers are full of articles explaining that the future of the Court will depend on the outcome of the election, especially on the issue such as reproductive choice:
Every four years, defenders of abortion rights proclaim that the fate of Roe vs. Wade hangs on the outcome of the presidential election.
This year, they may be right.
Through most of the 1990s and until recently, the Supreme Court had a solid 6-3 majority in favor of upholding the right of a woman to choose abortion. But the margin has shrunk to one, now that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is retired and has been replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
And Justice John Paul Stevens, a leader of the narrow majority for abortion rights, is 88.
“Clearly, Roe is on the line this time,” said Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen, a former lawyer for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “It is quite clear they have four votes against it. If the next president appoints one more, the odds are it will be overruled.”
But for Religious Right activists who just can’t wait to see how it all turns out, there is a new movie opening through which they can live out their fantasies as they watch students at Patrick Henry College (and co-starring its founder, Michael Farris) convince the Supreme Court to finally overturn Roe … or at least win a moot court competition or something:
It is the first Monday in October and a future U.S. Supreme Court tackles the reversal of Roe vs. Wade in a dramatic new pro-life movie, COME WHAT MAY (CWM). The controversial film has received rave reviews from preview audiences nationwide, drawing large crowds in Oregon where 800 moviegoers filled the Grants Pass Performing Arts Center to capacity. Six distributors are vying for CWM, including the company currently distributing the new Christian blockbuster, FIREPROOF.
“What’s remarkable is that COME WHAT MAY, a 2008 Redemptive Storyteller Award winner, was largely produced by over 40 homeschooled students mentored by only a handful of professionals,” according to Mac Nichols, a tax attorney who plays one of the movie’s U.S. Supreme Court Justices.
Advent Film Group (AFG) produced the micro-budget movie in association with Patrick Henry College (PHC), a true-to-life powerhouse in collegiate debate and moot court competition. The movie’s legal argument is solid, claims George Escobar, founder of AFG. Dr. Michael Farris, PHC founder and chancellor, wrote the film’s legal framework. Farris, a constitutional attorney, has successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
