Here’s how that Times story I mentioned earlier, the one on the history of abortion in the U.S., closes:
Professor Ziegler questioned how Justice Alito could dismiss the notion that abortion restrictionists in the 1850s were motivated even in part by bigotry, while citing claims that it was a motivation of some 20th-century supporters of abortion.
People on both sides of the issue, she said, were driven by a mix of motives. “The idea the Court thinks it can weed out the nativist impulses” on one side, while emphasizing those impulses on the other, she said, “is historically implausible.”
Ziegler is taking a cheap shot unsupported by the text of Alito’s draft. The justice treats the motives on both sides exactly equally. He notes that some supporters of Roe have argued that the historical motivations for anti-abortion laws included racism and sexism, says that the presence of such motivations among some supporters of the laws should not determine the court’s judgment, notes that some supporters of abortion have had ugly racist views as well, and concludes that the presence of such views should not determine the court’s judgment either. His discussion of this point concludes: “For our part, we do not question the motives of either those who have supported [or] those who have opposed laws restricting abortions.”
Ziegler is presenting her own view as much more sophisticated and even-handed than Alito’s when it is in fact the very same view, and the Times has failed to check her self-congratulation.