In today’s “Nobody Is Allowed to Hold Views at Variance with My Own” essay, Molly Olmstead demands in Slate: “Uh, Can the NYT Please Not Treat Catholic Reactionaries as a Fun Sexy Trend Story?” The gist of the piece is that the Times is wrong to let a First Things editor publish a piece that is sympathetic to conservative Catholics. Seriously, that’s pretty much it.
Olmstead asserts, with no obvious support: “There’s no denying the influence the religion has had in shaping the country: Just look at its role in the reasoning of the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.”
Really? What role would that be? The Dobbs decision is pretty plain in its argument: The Roe Court was not engaged in jurisprudence at all, but in lawmaking. The tender concern for democracy in Dobbs is not exactly 100 percent consistent with historical Catholic priorities.
Read it for yourself and see if you can tell me where the covert popery is to be found:
Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. Casey perpetuated its errors, calling both sides of the national controversy to resolve their debate, but in doing so, Casey necessarily declared a winning side. Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views. The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing it to the large number of Americans who disagreed with Roe. . . .
Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation. . . . Roe’s failure even to note the overwhelming consensus of state laws in effect in 1868 is striking, and what it said about the common law was simply wrong. Then, after surveying history, the opinion spent many paragraphs conducting the sort of fact- finding that might be undertaken by a legislative committee, and did not explain why the sources on which it relied shed light on the meaning of the Constitution. As to precedent, citing a broad array of cases, the Court found support for a constitutional “right of personal privacy.” . . . But Roe conflated the right to shield information from dis- closure and the right to make and implement important personal decisions without governmental interference. . . . None of these decisions involved what is distinctive about abortion: its effect on what Roe termed “potential life.” When the Court summarized the basis for the scheme it imposed on the country, it asserted that its rules were “consistent with,” among other things, “the relative weights of the respective interests involved” and “the demands of the profound problems of the present day.” . . . These are precisely the sort of considerations that legislative bodies often take into account when they draw lines that accommodate competing interests. The scheme Roe produced looked like legislation, and the Court provided the sort of explanation that might be expected from a legislative body.
For the 10,000th time: The fact that there are opinions in opinion journalism is not a license to ignore the facts of the case.