The recent Gonzalez v. Carhart decision upholding the federal ban on partial birth abortion has created some interesting arguments.
Among the silliest is the notion that the majority voted the way they did because they are Catholics, not because they think the law is constitutional. Dana had a post discussing the anti-Catholic bent of liberal dissent from the decision.
Now there is this nice post at Prawfsblawg discussing this acceptable Catholic bashing.
My point here is not to vent about the "last acceptable prejudice" . What's irritating, to me, as a lawyer, about the cartoon is the claim that it is as Catholics -- i.e., because they are Catholics, and not because they think, as intelligent and engaged lawyers, that the Constitution does not disable legislatures entirely from regulating what most people (not just Catholics, fideists, and sexists) regard as a particularly gruesome abortion procedure -- that the five Justices who voted to uphold the ban.
Not only that . . .
More striking, and sad, for me, is what the cartoon suggests, and reveals, about the state and future of debate about moral questions. Look at the faces of the dissenting Justices -- quizzical, sad, bewildered, as if to say, "what are these guys talking about?" -- while the majority are smug and complacent. And why shouldn't they be? They didn't have to think or reason; only to put on their mitres!
It is, increasingly, thought to be enough to discredit an argument or position -- any argument or position -- merely to note that the person who makes it is a religious believer, and to write off any moral argument with which one disagrees as "religious." (This practice, of course, does not run both ways: arguments against torture, the death penalty, race discrimination, and income inequality are "secular"; arguments against partial-birth abortion or the creation of embryos for research are "religious.") It appears, increasingly, that arguments whose trajectory is not in line with the standard liberal / autonomy / choice line are not only rejected, but declared not to be permissible arguments.
And now, apparently, even words whose use suggests the embrace of certain premises are out of bounds. In Justice Ginsburg's dissent, she took the time to complain that there was something improper, and threatening, about the majority's use of words like "abortion doctor" and "unborn child"; but, of course, the use of these words represents an argument. To rule out the words is to rule out, as illegitimate, the argument they reflect.
I have long understood that many (most, probably) of my friends -- decent, intelligent, thoughtful people -- disagree with me about abortion (and constitutional law). This is true, I understand, of many of my co-bloggers and Prawfsblawg readers. I don't think, though -- at least, I try hard not to think -- that their disagreement is merely a product of their funny-hat choice.
You see quite a bit of this semantic argumentation on lefty blogs. Virtually every one I visited whined that "partial birth abortion" isn't the medically accurate term for the procedure, and that calling the doctor an "abortion doctor" is inflammatory rhetoric.
But as one commenter pointed out at a blog, if I tell you I have strep throat, you know what that is. Just because one doesn't use the medical term for the condition doesn't mean it isn't describing the same thing, only in layman's terms. The same can be said about partial birth abortion. If we use "intact dilation and extraction," there are plenty of people who wouldn't know what you were talking about. Whereas, if you call it what it is--partial birth for the purpose of abortion--people know exactly what you're talking about.
The fact that one's constitutional philosophy could be guided by one's moral principles shouldn't preclude the philosophy. Somehow, our friends on the left believe that moral principles are only acceptable if they are sufficiently tied to secular ideas rather than religious ones.
UPDATE: Mollie at GetReligion has an excellent post about the semantics used by reporters in covering this Supreme Court decision.
Most reporters chose to portray the ruling in the language you might hear from those who advocate for abortion, rather than more neutral language or the language you might hear from those who oppose abortion. By that I mean that we were told the ruling was a loss of rights for women or abortionists rather than an expansion of protections for unborn children or the mothers who carry them. The write-ups also followed the lead of those who oppose abortion in shying away from the use of the term “partial-birth abortion” — although the very law the court upheld used the term.
I’m not arguing that the medical term isn’t “intact dilation and extraction” (so called because the child is removed from the womb via the cervix and then killed). Such bias against the language and rhetoric of abortion opponents is so expected these days that it’s almost become the norm, but we should remain diligent. The issue won’t stop being contentious, so reporters should redouble their efforts at neutrality.
Mollie also points out that some press reports simply lie about when the procedure is used--that it is only used "when the fetus poses a danger to the mother's health"-- and that Linda Greenhouse, who definitely not objective where abortion is concerned, wrote the New York Times' article on the decision.
Mollie also points out that none of the news coverage of this case discussed the fact that the vast majority of Americans favor a ban on this procedure, and that a majority of Americans want more restrictions on abortion. I realize it drives the moonbat fringe crazy to hear that, but shouldn't reporters mention when most Americans agree with the Supreme Court?
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