Who Else Thinks Roe is Bad Law

The Dems have seized on a 20 year old job application by Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and his statements that the Constitution does not protect abortion. Various Dem Senators are running to the mics to declare Alito a radical, and to prepare the way for the filibuster to come.

However, Alito isn't the only one who thinks Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and is in fact bad law. John Fund in Political Diary has some interesting statements from those on the liberal side of the aisle:

Before liberals become overheated by the threat to Roe v. Wade, perhaps they should ponder what so many of their own leading thinkers have said to criticize its shallow Constitutional underpinnings. Tim Carney, a former reporter for syndicated columnist Bob Novak, has compiled a fascinating rundown of what honest liberals have said regarding Roe:

Take Laurence Tribe, the lead lawyer for Al Gore in the Florida recount controversy of 2000. He has written that "one of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the former legal counsel for the ACLU who now sits on the Supreme Court, wrote in 1985 that Roe "would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the court. ... Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict."

Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, chastised liberals only last month for clinging to Roe when he wrote that Roe "is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument... a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument -- but a bit of our soul as well."

And finally, Michael Kinsley, the former editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial page and the New Republic, wrote back in 1994 that "against all odds (and, I'm afraid, against all logic), the basic holding of Roe v. Wade is secure in the Supreme Court." He noted that the demise of Roe would not mean the end of abortion rights because "a freedom of choice law would guarantee abortion rights the correct way, democratically, rather than by constitutional origami."

Don't expect to read these quotes in the mainstream media when the hearings begin in January. It will be all Alito anti-abortion all the time.