No. of Recommendations: 9
Arizon's Supreme Court ruled 4-2 to uphold an 1864 law that predates Arizona's statehood that bans all abortions, except those required to save the life of the mother. That means no exception for rape or incest and it means any doctor performing such abortions would face jail time.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the AZSC's ruling is that they put their own ruling on hold and sent the case that drove it back to the appellate court to review the 1864 law's constitutionality. That seems to make ZERO sense. At both the state and federal level, trial courts judge facts, appellate courts judge mis-interpretations of the law in trial court against historical interpretations of the laws involved with the case and the state/federal supreme court has the latitude to ALTER existing interpretations of prior laws or synthesize new applications and interpretations of existing law based on evolving concepts of justice. In this case, if the AZSC believes the constitutionality of the law they are resurrecting is doubtful, THEY ARE THE SUPREME COURT IN CHARGE OF MAKING THAT DETERMINATION. Why waste the time sending the issue back for litigation at the appellate level? An issue of (state) constitutionality can ONLY be decided by the (state) Supreme Court itself.
This ruling and the subsequent "hot potato" reluctance to be seen having a hand in it or its impacts perfectly represents the hypocrisy on the issue of abortion on the part of conservatives. There is certainly a small portion of the American population that fervently beieves abortion is wrong and eliminating abortion is
THE most important issue. I can respect their point of view, even though I do not share it. But there is a much larger contingent of "conservatives" who co-opted abortion as the perfect unwinnable leverage issue in politics to drive fundraising and turnout.
Prior to Roe, family planning and abortion rights were pretty much bi-partisan issues, with equal support from mainstream Democrats and Republicans. While Eisenhower opposed government funding of family planning and abortion as President, by 1964 Eisenhower and Truman served as hnorary co-chairs of Planned Parenthood in an effort to generate support. As the Roe case was making its way to the Supreme Court in 1972, access to abortion was a volatile issue in a Presidential election year and Nixon advisor Patrick Buchanan suggested President Nixon court Catholic voters by adopting a "pro-life" stance. Nixon of course despised Catholics as much as he despised any other demographic but was so eager to win a landslide, he adopted the stance which helped cement that landslide he wanted in November 1972. When the Roe decision was issued in January 1973, Republican Party support for "pro-life" became a fixture in its platform. At that time,
By 1972, Gallup pollsters reported that 64% of Americans agreed that abortion should be between a woman and her doctor. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans, who had always liked family planning, agreed, as did 59% of Democrats. https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinion/column... At that time and ever since, Republicans have viewed abortion as a perfect wedge issue. Perfect because the issue drives passion. Perfect because the issue drives donations. Perfect because no one thought abortion would be removed as a right after having been granted via
Roe v Wade five decades ago so the issue could always be mined for money and angst.
That larger contingent of opportunistic conservatives could not imagine the success that would be found stuffing the US Supreme Court with actual anti-abortion fanatics, via both the luck of the draw in Supreme Court vacancies and blatant, unethical manipulation of that draw by blocking appointments in the last year of the Obama Administration. Now those fanatics made the dream of the fanatics reality and have thus exposed the opportunistic conservatives for the moral hypocrits they are. Those opportunistic conservatives are now stuck holding the bag on a fiercely unpopular outcome that is bringing this issue to a boil in a Presidential election year that may result in conservatives not only failing to regain the Presidency but failing to hold the House as well.
WTH
