Paternalism on the Supreme Court

Ruth Marcus's rendering is must read stuff:

Kennedy [writes]: "While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained." No reliable data? No problem....

"It is self-evident," he adds, "that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form."

Therefore, "the State" can step in to assert the "ethical and moral concerns that justify a special prohibition." In other words, it can protect women from the consequences they may or may not experience as a result of the ignorance from which they may or may not be suffering.

The right constantly assaults people who are pro-choice for reducing what they call a human person to what they call an inanimate object or an inconvenience. But when a Reagan appointee is in the position of writing the majority opinion of a Supreme Court case banning an abortion procedure, they do exactly that. Can anybody imagine Kennedy issuing a similar ruling banning, say, the sale of a certain type of car on behalf of those consumers who don't understand what a DOHC is? Or that a rotary engine is harder to repair than a V6? Or because some people eventually come to regret buying a car at all? Certainly not. And nor should he.

But that's exactly the sort of transaction the court has vulgarly whittled this down to, even as the five men who comprise the majority certainly know that they ruled as they ruled because they think abortion is murder. It's more than clear--it's almost definitional--that they lacked the courage to use their beliefs--justifiable or not--as the basis for their ruling. And so, instead, Kennedy issued one of the most degrading and paternalistic opinions in the recent history of the Court.