David Brooks Is Talking Out His Ass (Again)

This morning, in his NYT Op/Ed piece, David Brooks says Harry Blackmun did us all irreparable harm when he wrote the US Supreme Court's majority opinion that a woman's decision to have an abortion was a matter between her and her doctor and not a matter for state courts to decide. To recap who was on the Supreme Court in January 1973 and who voted for what regarding Roe v. Wade: It was a seven-to-two decision. Those who were for it were Harry Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Chief Justice Warren Burger, William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Lewis Powell and Potter Stewart. Those who were against were William Rehnquist and Byron White. Six Justices wrote opinions on that historic decision: Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Justice Potter Stewart, Justice William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Justice William O. Douglas, Justice Byron R. White. According to David Brooks, the Supreme Court should have refused to hear the case. And the decision on whether a woman could have a legal abortion or not should have been left up to the legislators of 50 separate states. And, according to David Brooks, if each of our 50 states had the power to decide whether a woman owned her body or the state legislature owned her body, then we would have no divisive political uproar about abortion, and everything would be ducky. So in Texas, if a woman had an illegal abortion and the right-to-lifers wanted to jail her and sentence her to death, that would be fine, right Mr. Brooks? And in any pro-Bush, anti-abortion state, if a 12-year-old girl is raped by her father and gets pregnant, according to Brooks rules, she would have to carry the baby to term, just like the Roman Catholic Church says. But if she lived in a pro-choice state, she could get a morning-after pill immediately and not wait to find out if she was pregnant. Just the breaks of where you live, right, Mr. Brooks? Oh well. You can't talk sense to idiots. It's only a matter of time until it comes out that a high-profile anti-abortion loudmouth's daughter got an abortion because the loudmouth was faced with the reality of an unwanted pregnancy in a teen-ager. Wait for it.