Justice Antonin Scalia

The death of Antonin Scalia this past week was not just sad news, it was scary news.

Scalia was a strong personality who sat firmly on the conservative side of the court. If President Obama succeeds in getting a nominee appointed to the court it will have a disastrous result in future decisions such as abortion, immigration, and gun control. But I doubt any of these would be the worst outcome of this turn of events.

The worst consequence would be in how the courts interpret the constitution. We have already seen a trend toward redefinition. But with the majority of justices moving in this direction we will see every one of our freedoms reduced to the solidity of Jello. Freedom of religion will be replaced by freedom of gender identity. (That is already moving foreward.) Freedom of the press will be replaced by a puppet media that promotes viewpoints instead of reports facts. (Oops, that one is already in the works, too.) Freedom of speech and the right to vote will be crippled first with poor information and later by constraints put into place to protect specific peoples. This will be closely associated with similar restrictions being put upon the right to assemble.

Scalia addressed this transition, already taking place, rather colorfully saying, “The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”

Prior to that Abraham Lincoln put it this way, “The people—the people—are the rightful masters of both the congresses, and courts—not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.”

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Abortion Industry Priorities

One of the battles taking place in the courts is whether or not abortion clinics need to be held to the same standards of medical cooperation, safety and cleanliness as other surgical centers. It boggles my imagination that the industry which successfully portrays itself as the protectors of women and women’s rights would not always be in favor of the highest level of protection for their clients.

How many of us remember that one of the arguments commonly quoted in the old days, in favor of legalizing abortion, was to avoid having women visit illegal and unsanitary back alley clinics? Why is this industry that is supposed to save women from dirty back alleys now campaigning for the right to practice their medicine in the same unregulated ways?

The answer is that the abortion industry is more about profit than about women, their rights or their safety. If this were not true than the laws currently being challenged would never have been necessary. Instead every abortion provider would have been in cooperation so as to allow them to admit any patients that had complications in a nearby hospital. If they really cared more for women than for their dollars, they would not be advocating saving money, and profits, by operating in less safe and less sterile conditions.

Priorities are seldom revealed by words. Words can be twisted. Priorities are revealed by actions.