{"id":5182,"date":"2006-01-23T14:14:04","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T14:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/roe-at-33.html"},"modified":"2006-01-23T14:14:04","modified_gmt":"2006-01-23T14:14:04","slug":"roe-at-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/roe-at-33.html","title":{"rendered":"Roe at 33"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NRO Editors<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The Court would be perfectly justified in concluding that its attempts to micromanage abortion policy have failed, in regarding this failure as an indictment of its pretensions to have any special expertise or authority to do so, and in scrapping Roe<\/em>. In Casey<\/em>, the Court argued that many people have relied on the availability of abortion in the event of contraceptive failure, and that this fact was a reason to continue to protect a right to abortion. But legislatures are perfectly capable of deciding what weight to give to that fact.<\/p>\n

The justices may prefer to move incrementally. They may decide, when they again rule on partial-birth abortion later this year, to rule narrowly: to cede just enough legislative authority back to legislatures to let them prohibit partial-birth abortion. Little by little, they might restore democracy in this area.<\/p>\n

Roe<\/em>‘s twin fortifications are there to protect each other’s weaknesses. The alleged popular ratification of Roe<\/em> is invoked to cover its legal implausibility. But a truly populist constitutional law would allow prohibitions on late-term abortions and substantial restrictions on early-term abortions, so the majesty of the law and the authority of the court have to be invoked against this threat. The only way to keep the game going is through sleights of hand, diversions, and illusions: Roe<\/em> creates only a limited right to abortion; everyone loves Roe<\/em>; it is settled law; repeat as necessary. <\/p>\n

The pro-abortion activists are right to be alarmed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

John Derbyshire on pendulums and the confidence that there’s no going back from Roe.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NRO Editors The Court would be perfectly justified in concluding that its attempts to micromanage abortion policy have failed, in regarding this failure as an indictment of its pretensions to have any special expertise or authority to do so, and in scrapping Roe. In Casey, the Court argued that many people have relied on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRoe at 33 - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/roe-at-33.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Roe at 33 - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The NRO Editors The Court would be perfectly justified in concluding that its attempts to micromanage abortion policy have failed, in regarding this failure as an indictment of its pretensions to have any special expertise or authority to do so, and in scrapping Roe. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}