from Amazon
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Thank you Justice Kennedy for your chivalry
Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post:
How nice of Justice Kennedy to look out for me.
Goodness knows, if I didn’t have the justice and his buddies hovering, I might make a terrible mistake. I mean, I’m so impulsive and muddle-headed, I sometimes don’t know what’s in my own best interest.
Luckily, the Supreme Court does.
...
“It is self-evident,” he adds, “that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.”
Therefore, “the State” can step in to assert the “ethical and moral concerns that justify a special prohibition.” In other words, it can protect women from the consequences they may or may not experience as a result of the ignorance from which they may or may not be suffering.
...
This is a dangerous ruling, but I have some hope that its effect will turn out to be limited. Kennedy was horrified by the partial-birth procedure, no doubt sincerely. That emotional response may not carry over into his assessment of other abortion laws.
He may, poor dear, have been so overwrought he simply wasn’t thinking straight.
If men were biologically able to conceive, men would have invented abortion procedures before they invented the wheel. There is nothing more arrogant than one person telling another person what to do, without that first person ever being able to step into that second person’s shoes.
“Let’s free some country!” (Uhh, do those residents know how many of them are going to die? Maybe they don’t like our plan?)
“Let’s save the fetus!” (Uhh, do you realize that women undergo a metamorphosis the like of which you can’t possibly comprehend?)
Of course someone should speak for oppressed people. Of course someone should speak for the fetus. Of course any and every single entity who doesn’t have the liberties that others have should have an advocate. But the advocate is not a judge, but a stakeholder. The advocate can’t simply apply his own principles to the entity in question. He has to be immersed with the entity in question.
Should a liberation force stay or go? How do I know. And who cares what I think anyway. If a group of people doesn’t want an occupying force, the occupiers need to leave. Even if the “child” doesn’t know any better, and even if the “parent” will be worse off for it. Or, admit that you are an invading and occupying force, not a liberating one.
What rights does a fetus have? How do I know. And who cares what I think anyway. There are enough women in the world (3 billion, last I checked), that you can easily find 1 million women who can represent that group to debate and decide the liberties and rights of the fetus and the mother. Women are plenty smart to decide this particular course of humanity. If you are not a stakeholder, admit that you want to assert your power over women.
Yes, perhaps everyone should have every important personal decision double-checked by Justice Kennedy, just in case His Honor happens to notice us doing something that he thinks we might regret later.
Hey, if it turns out I am smarter than Justice Kennedy, am I allowed to veto his personal decisions as he is mine?
Because it is self-evident that a judge who comes to regret his choice to marry an average looking wife (like Judge Kennedy did) must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when he learns, only after the event, what he once did not know: that he’s rich and famous enough to score a supermodel.
Geez.
This is one of the most moronic things I’ve heard a judge argue in a long time. And I live in Canada, where our own Supreme Court decisions are usually at least twice as idiotic as yours.