Palin and Biden on Roe

The gotcha interview by Katie Couric on Sarah Palin finally gets around to the big "A" (abortion), when Couric asks Palin and Joe Biden about their views on the subject.



Palin does a poor job handling the legal questions Couric asked her. It's clear that she hasn't spent three years in law school like Joe Biden (who did poorly, but none the less passed). Nor has she spent years on the Senate Judiciary Committee discussing the nuances of these cases.

Worse than Palin's wishy-washy answers, which should be expected from a non-lawyer, are Biden's gross errors with regards to abortion law. As Karl notes at Patterico's Pontifications, the trimester system that Biden lauds from Roe v. Wade was struck down as unworkable...in 1989. In fact, this was the first case that the term "undue burden" was presented as a constitutional reason for striking down a portion of a law. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor would constantly use the "undue burden" argument in future abortion cases to strike down a variety of restrictions.

So, which is worse: Palin's obvious discomfort discussing the legal underpinnings of abortion or Biden's ignorance of the current state of abortion law? I'll take the misunderstandings of someone not trained in these arguments over someone who is supposed to know the issues and obviously does not.

FWIW, Palin should have told Couric that her disagreement with Roe is that Roe is, in fact, poor law based on achieving a particular result rather than interpreting the Constitution. Palin should then have pointed out that even lawyers who agree with the results of Roe say that it was a terribly written, incoherent and rambling opinion that showed the Supreme Court at its worst. She then could have made the argument about federalism: states were slowly adopting abortion rights and abortion would most likely have been legal nearly everywhere within a decade had the Court not decided by fiat that everyone had to accept it. It's not overreaching to say that Roe v. Wade gave birth to the pro-life movement.