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Abortion & Justice

Vic's View - Be Careful

Posted

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Right-wingers in state governments across the nation celebrated the death of the Roe vs Wade abortion precedent at the hands of a majority of the United States Supreme Court. It is a “states rights” issue, they said, and the majority agreed. Sending abortion back to the states created a mish-mash of state laws - and lawsuits.

Now these state lawmakers are seeing that their state justices also know the law, or other laws that pertain to this issue. And, since they are ruling in a way not pleasing to these lawmakers, now the movement is to “modify” the way justices are chosen. By extension, this means picking only justices who will vote the way we want them to vote.

Take South Carolina, for example - the most recent state to make National Headlines about abortion. The South Carolina Supreme Court majority has ruled that one law violates another law - that an after 6-months ban on abortion violates the state constitution’s guarantee of privacy.

That right to privacy was approved by the voters.

That abortion ban was approved by lawmakers.

The voters - the justices said - win out in this one.

Reaction was swift and brutal:  

“This bad decision will have immediate consequences for life:  the Court has just given South Carolina one of the most liberal abortion laws in the Southeast.  In so doing, the Court has opened pandora’s box and invited innumerable constitutional challenges to all sorts of social policy, challenges that never before have been entertained by South Carolina’s courts.  And the decision will almost certainly result in the politicization of South Carolina’s judges to yet unseen levels.  I look forward to working with other legislators and Governor McMaster to correct it.” - That’s Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey saying there’s going to be some “correction” here.

What he means to say is this: We in the General Assembly are going to correct this situation by taking privacy away from some people, so some other people can be protected from abortion.

Women lose their right to privacy - in this limited but slippery slope issue - so men can brag about passing an abortion-restriction law - again. It won’t be put to a vote, so that  51% of the popualtion can have a direct say on the issue of privacy/abortion. Instead, in a republic, the people we vote FOR will vote on our behalf. They won’t vote for a male vasectomy law, mind you, but they will settle once and for all the female abortion issue. At least until some gigantic foreign company says, “We cannot spend $992 Billion in your state - our female employees will quit in protest.” 

South Carolina won’t really care - now that we have become the green-new-deal, electric-cars- capital of America, we are rolling in money. And, that’s what counts.

Vic MacDonald is Editor of The Clinton Chronicle. In June, 2025, he will observe his 50th year in community journalism. Reach him at 864-833-1900.