LIBERTY:
Rights & Tolerance | October 31, 2005
THE
NUCLEAR
QUESTION:
ARE
WOMEN
CHATTEL?
By
Douglas Drenkow, Editor of "Progressive
Thinking" As
Posted in "GordonTalk",
"Comments
From Left Field", &
"OpEdNews"
It
is as incendiary as it was inevitable. About
the only people left in the country who loved George Dubya Bush
-- pummeled by Katrina, Fitzgerald, and Iraq (not to mention the
political fallout of three-buck-a-gallon gasoline and record
energy company profits) -- were in the Rabid Right; and then
even they
turned on him after he nominated for Supreme Court his uber-crony
Harriet Miers, the stealth candidate that backfired (for daring to
suggest that very
personal decisions are very personal matters). Bush
has his back to the wall, and there is no one more dangerous than
someone who is paranoid ... especially when the whole world
actually is out to get him. Undoubtedly
egged-on by as yet unindicted Karl (Official
A?) Rove, Bush played to his base -- and the baser instincts
of the country -- by nominating as replacement for swing-voting,
Roe-upholding Sandra Day O'Connor Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. -- "Scalito"
to those familiar with his Scalia-esque ideology. The
chain of events leading inexorably to the Nuclear Option has thus
been set in motion. Unlike
John Roberts and Harriet Miers, whose paper trails were as short
on specifics as Bush was in courage
by resorting to such stealth, Judge Alito has a
considerable record to review -- a record that, to say the
least, gives progressives
pause and regressives
delight. One
ruling says it all to me, not just about this particular nominee
or any specific issue but also about this historic conflict
overall -- and make no mistake about it; we are not simply
considering a litmus test or two but rather an entire direction
for our country, as adjudicated from the highest court in the land
for generations to come. I
focus your attention on the infamous case of Planned
Parenthood v. Casey. In that landmark test of Roe v. Wade, the
Third Circuit of the US Court of Appeals overturned a lower
court's decision and reinstated provisions of Pennsylvania law
that among other things required minors seeking abortions to
receive consent from their parents or the courts, and adult women
seeking abortions to wait at least 24 hours after receiving
certain information before being allowed by the state to undergo
the medical procedures. All
three of the justices on the Third Circuit court agreed to uphold
those provisions, widely recognized as some of the most severe
restrictions on a woman's right to choose as guaranteed by Roe v.
Wade. But
one judge went even further: Judge Alito agreed with another
provision -- deemed unconstitutional and unduly burdensome by the
other two, highly conservative judges -- stating that except under
extraordinary circumstances, the state would not permit an adult
woman to obtain an abortion unless she first informed her husband. Which,
I suppose, begs the question: does the body of a woman belong to
the state or to her husband? It obviously, by Judge Alito's
ruling, does not belong to the woman herself. Over
the weekend, even Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), an
opponent of abortion rights (Remind me again how he got to be our
leader), cautioned President Bush not to nominate Judge Alito, a
warning rebuked by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the Gang
of 14, of "centrist" members of both parties, who
had crafted the compromise in which the Republicans promised not
to invoke the "nuclear option" -- in which, most likely,
Vice President (and unindicted Plame co-conspirator) Dick Cheney
would violate
Senate rules to change Senate rules, to end filibusters by
simple majority vote -- as long as the "centrist"
Democrats promised to vote for cloture, to end any filibusters, on
judicial nominees except under "extraordinary
circumstances." Well,
"moderate" Democrats and Republicans, upon whose
judgment this judicial nomination hangs, is this not an
"extraordinary circumstance": seating for life on the
Supreme Court of the United States a judge whose rulings would
turn back the clock on women's rights not only to the days of
backstreet abortions but effectively to the ancient age when women
were treated as mere possessions of their husbands? There
is no more "middle
ground": the moment of truth has arrived. Either we stand
up for women's rights -- and all other human rights -- or every
last one of us will indeed be reduced to chattel. P.S.
Although the news of this nomination has displaced much of the
coverage of the Plame investigation -- Heaven forbid poor Ms.
Miers was set up as some sort of "straw man," to be
predictably knocked down, at a very convenient moment (That would
be positively Machiavellian ... or Roveian) -- part two of my four-part investigation into Cheney et al. is forthcoming.
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