Now that Roe v. Wade is dead in our second-largest state, thanks to the Texas Taliban’s bounty-hunter law that was blessed the other night by five Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court, there’s plenty of blame to spread around. Progressive purists who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton and the progressive court she would’ve crafted, abortion-rights supporters who’ve long assumed that Roe was safe and have thus lacked the fervor of their opponents…it’s a very long list.
But there’s a special place in Hades for “moderate” Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who’s currently furrowing her brow about the new Texas law that offers a $10,000 award to any vigilante who successfully sues anyone who abets any abortion performed after six weeks of pregnancy. Collins is, as she likes to say, most disappointed. She says the law is “extreme and harmful,” and wishes that the high court had not allowed it to take effect.
How ironic. Because she’s one of the reasons why millions of Texas women – and anyone who tries to help them – are now officially under siege. She’s one of the reasons why other red states, mindful of the high court’s back-door trashing of Roe, are already jonesing to pass their own bounty-hunter laws. Florida, naturally, could be next.
A swing vote this week in the anti-abortion majority was Brett Kavanaugh. The same guy who played Susan Collins for a sap.
She played a pivotal role squeezing Kavanaugh onto the top bench in 2018. She did so after being assured that he would respect judicial precedent and leave Roe alone. That’s what he told her, and she said she believed him. Either she knew deep down that he was full of it and cynically voted for him anyway, or she was the woefully naive.
Here’s what she said on the Senate floor after pondering her decision for an inordinate number of days:
“There has also been considerable focus on the future of abortion rights based on the concern that Judge Kavanaugh would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. Protecting this right is important to me. To my knowledge, Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article 3 of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent is not just a judicial policy, it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent. In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration. It is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances. The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance and fairness…
“(S)omeone who believes that the importance of precedent has been rooted in the Constitution would follow long-established precedent except in those rare circumstances where a decision is grievously wrong or deeply inconsistent with the law. Those are Judge Kavanaugh’s phrases. As the judge asserted to me, a long-established precedent is not something to be trimmed, narrowed, discarded, or overlooked. Its roots in the Constitution give the concept of stare decisis greater weight simply because a judge might want to on a whim. In short, his views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.
“Noting that Roe v. Wade was decided 45 years ago and reaffirmed 19 years later in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, I asked Judge Kavanaugh whether the passage of time is relevant to following precedent. He said decisions become part of our legal framework with the passage of time and that honoring precedent is essential to maintaining public confidence…When I asked him would it be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed that it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said ‘no.’
“(M)y fervent hope is that Brett Kavanaugh will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court…so that public confidence in our judiciary and our highest court is restored.“
Her best line is worth repeating: “His views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.” The entire bounty-hunter law is an exercise in stealth, and Kavanaugh has trashed precedent by blessing it. What a surprise that a certain somebody got duped.
You’re excused for feeling nauseous. Susan Collins is the best advertisement for Dramamine.