Gonzales v. Carhart: One Year Later
Letting the People Decide

By Denise M. Burke
Vice President & Legal Director, Americans United for Life

One year ago, the public debate over abortion was irrevocably altered. In the landmark Gonzales v. Carhart decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and, more importantly, abdicated, at least in part, its role as the “National Abortion Control Board.”

In its decision, the Court signaled an increasing willingness to blunt attempts by abortion extremists to use the courts to unilaterally impose their radical agenda on the American public, and an increasing willingness to let the people decide abortion policy. The immediate reaction of activists, state legislators, and the public confirmed this critical shift.

While abortion extremists hastily recycled the hyperbolic rhetoric of the 1970s, legislators and the public increasingly considered prudent responses to the mounting evidence of the negative impact of abortion on women. [more]

I was in a meeting this week on Capitol Hill with Congressman Pitts of Pennsylvania. We were discussing judges, and he made the great point that six justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are over the age of 70. Five of those justices are in favor of Roe v. Wade and the current culture of death in America.

The next President will likely nominate multiple justices to the Court. Do we want a President who will nominate justices who pass an abortion-rights litmus test or one who publicly states that their nominees be in the style of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas and strictly interpret the Constitution rather than continue this atrocious legacy of legislating from the bench?

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Human Life Review. Used by Permission. For a free sample issue of Human Life Review, call 212-685-5210 or visit www.humanlifereview.com.

A Lack of Prudence
by Clarke D. Forsythe
President, Americans United for Life

In June, certain anti-abortion activists bought full-page newspaper ads featuring an “open letter” criticizing James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, for his “approval” of the Supreme Court’s April 18 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the constitutionality of the federal Partial- Birth Abortion Ban Act (PBABA) of 2003. The crux of the criticism seems to be that the Gonzales decision was “brutally wicked,” because the Court didn’t prohibit all abortions (or at least D&E abortions). The impact of the “open letter” was multiplied by newspaper reports about the letter in the Washington Post on June 5 and the Los Angeles Times on June 6.

The letter’s criticism of Dobson (and other organizations) for publicly supporting the Court’s decision contained innumerable misstatements, including misunderstandings about the proper role of the Supreme Court, how the Supreme Court operates, why the PBABA was written, the limits of the PBABA, the Court’s abortion doctrine, the records of Justices Scalia and Thomas, the language of the Gonzales opinion, and the future implications of the Court’s decision. Since the “open letter” was published for millions to read, its numerous misstatements deserve a public correction.

Continue Reading . . .

Monday’s Wall Street Journal carried an outstanding opinion piece (subscription required, unfortunately) by Steven Calabresi, who is a professor of law at Northwestern and a cofounder of the Federalist Society. As the Supreme Court starts its new session, Calabresi weighs in on the best way to evaluate the Court’s work.

the proper basis on which we should evaluate the Court’s performance in this term and in the future is not whether it reaches “conservative” or “liberal” results in constitutional cases, but whether it reaches results that are faithful to the Constitution as written and understood at the time of it’s adoption.

Why? Calabresi gives three reasons, the first of which is perhaps the most obvious and compelling.

the long-accepted rule for interpreting legal texts is to construe them to have the original public meaning that they had when they were enacted into law. This is the way we interpret statutes, contracts, wills and even old Supreme Court opinions.

He goes on to explain that both the rule of law and the allocation of powers require originalism. It’s unfortunate that the article is available by subscription only, because it deserves a much wider reading.