TRAGIC CHOICES

I am told that, if you want to be a writer, it is best to write about what you know.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision that held, by a 7-2 majority, that women in the United States had a constitutional right to terminate any unwanted pregnancies up to the point of fetal viability and that thereafter the state could regulate the exercise of that right to various degrees which increased as the fetus matured.

This is what I know.

I am a 66-year-old male.  I am a baptized Catholic.  I attended and graduated from a Catholic parochial school -- Our Lady Help of Christians -- in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, New York in 1970 and thereafter attended and graduated from a Catholic high school run by the Jesuits -- Xavier High School -- in Manhattan in 1974.

I am a lawyer.  I have practiced law since 1983.  I graduated from Yale Law School in January 1982 and clerked for a conservative Reagan appointee from then until May 1983.  I passed the bar in California and was an associate there from 1983 to 1986 and an Assistant United States Attorney in New Hampshire in 1986 and 1987.  I then returned to New York, passed another bar exam, and have practiced here ever since.

In 1992, I ran for Congress as a Democrat and won a primary to be the Democratic party nominee in what was then the 19th Congressional district.  I beat a woman who was pro-life.  In the general election, however, I lost to an incumbent who was also pro-life.

I am pro-choice.

I was then and am to this day.

During the 1992 campaign, I pasted a large yellow pro-choice sticker on my suit jacket's left lapel.  No one I met could have failed to see it, not the thousands whose hands I shook at train stations, shopping centers, in towns and at debates, not the local media (from both the suburbs that comprised the district and New York City) who covered the race, and in particular not all the Catholics who lived in the district.

About a week before the general election, the largest local paper in the district, the Gannet-owned Journal News,  ran a large editorial endorsing the incumbent in the race. Criticizing me, the paper wrote that, since I "couldn't label" my opponent, I "labeled" myself, and then proceeded to claim that my yellow-sticker apparently made me a pro-choice zealot to the exclusion of all else. They appeared to think this might  be a shame inasmuch as they noted I had "serious positions" on a whole host of other issues. 

But my labeling myself apparently overrode all of that.

Some of my friends, and at least one stalwart Democratic activist in the district, told me they knew why I had stuck the label on my lapel.  "You had to," said the activist. His thought, I think, was that I did not have a choice.

He was wrong.

I could have ditched the label.  I especially could have ditched it in those small conservative towns in Putnam and Dutchess counties with large numbers of Catholic voters.  

And undoubtedly when I ran into the nuns in Garrison.

But I didn't.

Not because I had to.

But because I wanted to.

I wanted fellow Catholics to know that I did not agree with the position of the hierarchs in our Church.  I wanted them to demand I explain my position and listen to the explanation.  I do not think embryonic cells are people.  I think it absolutely clear that the US Constitution protects the right to privacy, a right that gives us bodily autonomy and that, in particular, gives women the right to control their reproductive choices.  I thought Roe was right and  I did not want my fellow Catholics to be confused, to look at me -- my gender, my ethnicity, my grade and high school educations -- and assume  any pro-choice stuff was just a wink and a nod.

So I told the truth.

I didn't disguise it.

Unlike Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

The truth is not always pleasant.  

It doesn't always set you free.  

For me, in 1992, the editorialists who decided to insult me for "labeling" were the least of my problems. About two blocks from my campaign headquarters, a group from the local Catholic parish handed out mimeographs saying I was going to hell.  A friend from high school who was trying to raise money for the campaign was assaulted on the phone by the father of another of our classmates, who told him I was a "baby killer" and that he shouldn't be helping me either.  That same friend's wife received over 50 letters pretty much to the same effect.

The truth probably would not have been pleasant for Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch either. 

Before and during their confirmation hearings, each of them told the Senate that they respected precedent and were therefore loathe to overturn it.  Gorsuch noted that he had written a book on the subject.  And Kavanaugh -- an Irish Catholic -- was even more explicit. Here's what he said to Maine Sen. Susan Collins in a two-hour interview prior to his confirmation hearings: "Start with my record, my respect for precedent, my belief that it is rooted in the Constitution . . . Roe is 45 years old, it has been reaffirmed many times, lots of people care about it a great deal . . . I am a don't-rock-the-boat- kind of judge. I believe in stability and in the Team of Nine."

Today, Collins said she was "misled". Sen. Manchin said the same thing and Sen. Blumenthal was more explicit.  In his mind, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were guilty of "rank deception."

There was a lot of that going on in the Supreme Court last week.

On Friday Justice Alito told us that Roe was "egregiously wrong" from the get go. To believe that, we must now conclude that the seven justices who fashioned it in 1973 and the five who reaffirmed it in 1992 were ignorant, lousy lawyers and even worse judges. To believe that, we must also conclude that the right to privacy that protected contraception in the Griswold and Eisenstadt cases, gay sex in the Lawrence case and gay marriage in the Obergefell case are no longer valid.  As with abortion, each of them proclaimed a right that neither the history nor traditions of America affirmed and that, as a consequence, can no longer be deemed good law. Though Alito claimed none of those precedents were at risk, the analysis and logic of his decision makes plain that this was just another lie. Indeed, Justice Thomas said that quiet part out loud, noting in his concurring opinion that all those other cases should be reversed as well.

The day before Roe  was killed, the Court held New York's ban on concealed handguns unconstitutional and the day before that it did the same to Maine's statute precluding funding of private sectarian schools. In the first, it extended its erroneous ruling that the Second Amendment created an individual right to bear arms and in the second it continued to take down the wall separating church and state.

All of these moves by the Supreme Court, five of whose justices were appointed by presidents who were not popularly elected, either ignored settled precedents or extended prior cases doing so.  At the same time, they enshrined legal positions not remotely shared by the majority of the country. To the contrary, by reading privacy out of the Constitution  (though it makes no sense without it) and assault rifles and religion into it (where the text this Court claims to respect actually precludes it), they have allowed the radical right to veto the wishes of the national majority.

The consequence of these decisions is that women will die from forced pregnancies or botched abortions, cities will continue to be killing fields as guns continue to proliferate without sufficent regulation, and those who believe will be able to force their beliefs on the rest of us.

And there is a label for all of that too.

It's . . .

Tragic.