Ed Whelan takes to the pages of the National Review to discuss the importance of the Supreme Court as it relates to the election and warn that “the survival of the historic American experiment in representative government will be in serious jeopardy if Barack Obama is our next president.”
Whelan helpfully explains that everything you think you know about what might happen to the Court under either an Obama or McCain administration is mistaken:
If you’ve been paying attention to the media’s scant coverage of the impact of the presidential election on the Supreme Court, you’ve been hearing that we currently have either a “conservative” Court or a Court delicately balanced between its “liberal” and “conservative” wings. Electing Obama as president is unlikely to change anything, you’re told, because he’d probably just be replacing liberal justices. The real threat, Obama himself tells us, is that John McCain would appoint justices who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and thereby (supposedly) make abortion illegal.
Wrong on all counts.
So McCain wouldn’t appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade? Well, that is a relief. Oh, wait:
I hope very much that a President McCain appoints justices who will help to overturn Roe v. Wade, and although it won’t be easy to get good nominees confirmed by a heavily Democratic Senate, I think that it’s definitely possible. Overturning Roe, of course, wouldn’t make abortion illegal. Rather, it would restore to the citizens of each state the power to establish abortion policy through their elected representatives — and to revisit that policy over time. That’s the system our Constitution established, and it’s the system that all citizens faithful to our Constitution should welcome. The democratic processes may at times be messy and contentious, but they offer the only real hope of working out a consensus on abortion policy.
Roe v. Wade has corrupted and distorted American politics and Supreme Court decisionmaking for 35 years. All Americans, irrespective of their positions on abortion policy, should welcome its long-overdue demise.
I see. McCain will appoint justices who will overturn Roe but that is okay because it is a bad decision that has “corrupted and distorted American politics” and “all Americans” will rejoice when Constitutional protections for reproductive choice get eliminated.
And Obama’s claim that McCain would appoint justices who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade is wrong, how?
