As if determined to supply a concrete punchline for a joke that has been hanging, half-formed, in the air since late Monday night, the New York Times’ Bret Stephens has penned what might best be called the Conservative Case for Keeping Roe v. Wade. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, Stephens proposes, it will be making “a radical, not conservative, choice.” Why? Because, per Stephens, “conservatism” is “the conviction that abrupt and profound changes to established laws and common expectations are utterly destructive to respect for the law and the institutions established to uphold it,” and because nixing Roe would represent such a change. “Justices,” he concludes: “Be prudent.”
Properly understood, conservatism does indeed demand some respect for the status quo. But it does not require its adherents to oppose all change — especially when that change simply restores the status quo ante — and it certainly does not demand that they accept pernicious lies in perpetuity simply because those lies have managed to survive for a few decades. Roe and Casey are lies. They were lies when they were written. They were lies ten years after they were written. They are lies today. There is nothing remotely un-conservative about wishing to expose them as lies and remove them summarily from our law.
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