By Donald A. Collins | 4 July 2022
Church and State

Start here with the thought that removing a Constitutional right to anything including abortion had never been done in our history. Then think about a legal concept known as Originalism as putting all matters of conscience and liberty in the hands of our Supreme Court’s conservative majority with full power to make binding legal decisions which ignore common sense and insure domestic chaos. That sadly is where we are thanks to Trump’s GOP.
The title of Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet Common Sense spurred American colonists to shuck off the British control and led the most famous articulation of democratic principles.
Read about his fascinating life here.
#OnThisDay in 1776 Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a 50-page pamphlet calling for American independence from Great Britain. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies and paved the way for the Declaration of Independence. https://t.co/Dovem4iWnj pic.twitter.com/VfmmT22fFX
— Encyclopaedia Britannica (@Britannica) January 10, 2018
As the American separation from Britain evolved into the revolutionary war and the creation of our Constitution in 1791, we started on a long history which, with many glitches, created the most amazing record of democratic governance in human history.
While the cancers in our system, slavery, and our ravaging of native-born residents on our continent, our considerable personal freedom for mostly white Americans staggered forward under the rubric that all men are created equal (skipping minorities and without give women the right to vote until 1922).
I often find the editorials in the Wall Street Journal off base on key issues, particularly lately on abortion, but on much else.
Gerard Baker’s June 28, 2022 piece, entitled The Urge to Overreach Outlives Roe V. Wade, after accusing women of violent protests—forget the antichoice folks’ record of clinic bombings and MD killings—he resorts to the standard criticism of the right fostered by Alito’s opinion: the right to abortion is not in our Constitution.
AR-15s hadn’t been invented in 1791, but the mass shootings primarily by young men failed to get legislators to raise the age of buying guns high enough.
Not mentioned in the 1791 Constitution was the fact our planet is in extreme danger of environmental collapse. Experts acknowledge Earth is on the fast track to climate disaster and these Justices are citing failure of our badly divided government to let more pollution prevail by stripping qualified government agencies of doing the work of managing our still far from adequate contributions to meeting global environmental damage.
This extremist Supreme Court is facing a legitimacy crisis. They've gutted the EPA's authority to rein in polluters. Empowered corporations more than ever. Overturned Roe. Weakened gun laws.
They're substituting their personal views for the law while Americans pay the price. pic.twitter.com/gwxwfkkotv
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 3, 2022
We are only outdone by China as polluters as you can read here.
Following up actions with the Roe decision will bring a bonanza to lawyers, but even a more dangerous division to our staggering democracy.
Of course, religion does come in for SC mention, about that football coach kneeling in prayer at a football game. The first amendment in our Bill of Rights might give him the option, but you decide, as my affection for religion after the misapplication of the 5 Justice’s personal religious beliefs to secular circumstances as with Roe is jurisprudence at its most vicious and dangerous.
Read the confusing article here.
As the WSJ tells us, if you are conservative, the SC never has a better term; read here.
"I don’t think Justice Thomas has ever had a better term on the court. Many of this term’s rulings seem like they're joined at the hip in terms of really trying to restore things to first principles, text, history and tradition," said Paul Clement. https://t.co/iLsZ1ufr49
— Jason J. McGuire (@revjmcguire) July 3, 2022
The poignant plight of young women without Roe needed non legal presentation which the attached film certainly offers:
This is the true story of a 27-year-old Texas woman who recently overcame a challenge that millions of other girls and women in the U.S. now face: getting an abortion in a state where lawmakers are closing off access to the procedure. https://t.co/14tw1wX9kK pic.twitter.com/wczVLGR0Zu
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) July 1, 2022
By the way medical abortion although very safe, as this film tells us, can be very painful and stressful.
Finally let’s get to Originalism. I attach a thoughtful article for you to read.
A partial definition of Originalism from this article:
Originalists—advocates of originalism—believe that the Constitution in its entirety has a fixed meaning as determined when it was adopted and cannot be altered without a constitutional amendment. Originalists further believe that should the meaning of any provision of the Constitution be considered ambiguous, it should be interpreted and applied based on historical accounts and how those who wrote the Constitution would have interpreted it at the time.
Originalism is usually contrasted with “living constitutionalism”—the belief that the meaning of the Constitution must change over time, as social attitudes change, even without the adoption of a formal constitutional amendment. Living constitutionalists believe, for example, that racial segregation was constitutional from 1877 to 1954, because public opinion appeared to favor or at least not oppose it, and that it became unconstitutional only as a result of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Originalists, in contrast, believe that racial segregation had been forbidden since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.
Our SC now runs legislation since the Congress can’t, because the non-governing GOP won’t legislate to abide by the majority will of the people, putting issues like Roe, gun control, climate crisis, and religion in the hands of Trump nominees, an historically dangerous disaster. Losing that unique Constitutional right was a heresy we must quickly eradicate.

“What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”: https://t.co/fHuh0CG6JD
“We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”: https://t.co/TA4j7cp1tE
“From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”: https://t.co/lkC2t3E1A9 pic.twitter.com/bQsL2mLBcO— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) November 1, 2021
How the Anti-Abortion Rights Movement Took Down Roe
The significance of the Supreme Court’s rulings on abortion and religion
U.S. Supreme Court deals blow to climate change fight
How The Supreme Court May Threaten Democracy
The conservative movement transforming America’s courts
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