If you’re looking for consistency and an overall philosophy linking the Supreme Court’s two big decisions this week, it’s fiarly simple.
“Once you’re born, duck.”
Yesterday, the Court released a ruling that said New York State didn’t have the right to make it more difficult for people to go out in public packing heat. New York has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, but the justices ruled that in this case, the rights of the state don’t matter.
And today, the expected other shoe fell on Roe v Wade when the Court did indeed overturn the nearly 50-year rights of women to choose to have an abortion. The ruling was that individual states did indeed have the right to limit or ban abortions.
Consistency?
Expecting consistency from right wingers isn’t smart. It’s a lot like expecting Donald Trump to be unselfish and honest — a fool’s errand.
First, let’s knock down the argument that the Second Amendment guarantees unrestricted rights to gun ownership. Into the 1970s, even the National Rifle Association didn’t claim an unrestricted right. In fact, for most of its existed up to then, the NRA was mostly a gun safety group that catered to hunters.
As for abortion, at least two of the votes against allowing Roe to continue came from justices who lied to the Senate in their confirmation hearings in supporting stare decisis and saying Roe was established precedent. And another justice said stare decisis itself was just lazy intellectually.
Then again, there are other problems with Clarence Thomas.
The sad thing in all of this is that the people who brag about being pro-life are actually little more than pro-birth. Try getting them to provide benefits for young mothers and infant children and they quickly become blind and deaf. After all, they don’t want to destroy their initiative or make them dependent on the government.
Both issues — abortion and guns — are among the ones with the greatest potential to split the country in half.
The Court is just sending us farther down the road to the country falling apart.
There is one good thing in all this.
It will be much easier for the babies to get guns.