Rigidity with Roe, Guns, Religion Threatens Common Sense! It’s Called Originalism Which Can Mean Death

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

The US Supreme Court is more pro-religion than at any time since the 1950s against the backdrop of an increasingly diverse and secular nation. (Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

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.

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.

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.

The poignant plight of young women without Roe needed non legal presentation which the attached film certainly offers:

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.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote” and “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”.

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

Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here