Get Past the Kavanaugh Abortion Debate

The fervor regarding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court and what this “might” do to abortion in this country is seriously cracking me up.

His nomination hearings with the U.S. Senate are set to begin right after Labor Day on Tues., Sept. 4. Democrats keep calling for a halt to the pending hearings; key Republican leaders have met with Kavanaugh this past week in an attempt to get an inside scoop on how his presence on the court will affect law in this nation.

Alaska’s very own Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-AK meet with the judge on Aug. 23 and called it “an important step” according to the Washington Post, but she remains silent on whether she will or will not support his nomination with a yes vote when the time comes.

In the meantime, an insane amount of money is being foolishly spent on the topic.

According to the Aug. 16 online edition of USA Today, at least $15 million has been pledged for this fight. The Judicial Crisis Network, a right-leaning lobby group formed in 2005 for the specific purpose of promoting then President George W. Bush’s SCOTUS nominees, is chipping in with $10 million. Demand Justice, a group formed just five months ago to represent left leaning political thought, is well out of the gate with $5 million.

To both sides:

What a serious waste of money.

So incredibly sad.

This entire hubbub about whether Kavanaugh will be the swing vote that turns the tide against abortion rights – a term I use loosely based on my personal conviction that abortion in America today in most of the cases represents legalized murder – is completely unnecessary from a judicial procedural standpoint.

Keep reading all of your abortion fans; my reasons why Kavanaugh isn’t a threat has nothing to do with my personal distaste for the status of abortion in America today.

From all I have read about him, Kavanaugh isn’t the type of judge to just willy-nilly change long held precedent without a damn good reason. He isn’t going to outlaw abortion with the wave of his magic wand.

There’s been plenty of constitutional reasoning dictated by the nation’s leading legal minds as to why Roe v Wade, the 1973 landmark legislation that abortion promoters wear as a permission badge, was derived from some highly flawed judicial thought and ought to be overturned.

This sort of thing happens in the history of our great American experiment. If Roe was to be overturned, it wouldn’t be the first. It won’t be the last time our judicial system made a mistake and after several decades corrected itself.

Even supporters of legalized abortion aren’t super thrilled with how it came to be.

John Hart Ely, a leading Harvard Law professor who died in 2003 after a distinguished career spanning nearly three decades ranking him with the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes, made no qualms regarding his support for a woman’s right to choose.

But in regards to the constitutional legitimacy of Roe v Wade, Ely wrote several sharply critical legal essays and repeatedly said, “Roe is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

He even said that the fetus in question ought not be automatically denied its rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Okay, so granted, it would be fair to say all of this legal beagle stuff is well beyond me.

That’s okay.

How about we rely on the people whose careers and livelihoods exist to serve this nation’s judicial system? I am thinking it is not well beyond them. Plenty of these types have plenty of problems with Roe v Wade. Take the time to delve past the mainstream media and their hysteria that abortion is in jeopardy and take some time to read the rather plain English summary explanations available online written by scholars who put their own bias to the side to honestly examine the constitutional standing of Roe v Wade and the track record of Kavanaugh. If you are honest with yourself and your brain, you too very well may come to the revelation that this obsession regarding Kavanaugh and abortion is amusing to those in the legal know. They see it as a distraction designed to keep the American populace from grasping the full extent to which Kavanaugh seeks to fulfill every dot of the law. To them, he is a judge’s judge. He is a legal hero. He is the guy they all aspire to be.

I am not convinced Kavanaugh will or will not play a role in a potential overturn of Roe v Wade.

I am however, convinced, that if he is, it won’t be for reasons of personal preference but rather a decision he comes to after thoughtful preponderance of whether his legal conscious will allow him to ignore the precedent of abortion on demand that Roe v Wade has created in America.

You see, as I have learned in researching his record, Kavanaugh is rather picky when it comes to overturning long-held precedents.

The fact is this: He doesn’t overturn precedent unless he can see that the precedent under consideration was arrived at via significantly flawed reasoning. But even this isn’t enough for him. He then looks at how overturning a precedent that is culturally accepted would impact the majority. Is this a precedent whose change will have a tremendously negative impact on the whole society?

This type of reasoning is simply too complicated for our instant gratification society. This approach takes lots of thought; it requires pondering. The demand for headlines by the morning doesn’t allow for this process.

Thus, it is much simpler – at least in the short term – to pander to the emotional aspect of the abortion issue.

The television ads we Alaskans are being subjected to now results from the fact that our darling Murkowski apparently is on the fence regarding Kavanaugh. She’s been an ardent supporter of women’s reproductive rights, yet she continues to pitch her camp near enough to the conservative enclave that her outright disapproval of Kavanaugh is also a move she may not be politically willing to risk. This is based on the reality that other aspects of Alaska life Murkowski touts on our behalf do require support from her fellow federal legislative colleagues to achieve.

That’s just how it works, folks. Politicians have to measure each decision in light of its effect on all the others.

And lobby groups will continue to create noise touting half-truths.

Here are examples from both sides of this discussion.

“Kavanaugh will take away a woman’s right to choose.”

“Kavanaugh will destroy women’s health care.”

“Kavanaugh will stand up to the people indiscriminately killing babies.”

“Kavanaugh this and Kavanaugh that.”

Barf.

This type of paranoid pandering only serves to keep Americans angry and stupid.

Rather than being equipped to learn how the judicial process actually works, this targeted advertising – on both sides of the issue – only keeps us emotionally ramped up, but certainly not educated.

And more importantly, the advertising fuel being spilled on this fire isn’t doing anything to help solve the true crisis situation that much to their credit abortion supporters do take action to attempt to fix.

That is the state of women’s health care in this nation.

The squishing of “the girls” in that medieval machine to check for cancer and or fibrous tumors and the placing of feet in the stirrups is economically out of reach for far too many women – especially for the 11 percent of women (10.5 million) who are uninsured and the millions more that are under insured with co-pays requiring them to choose between diapers for junior or their own health care.

Here is another alarming statistic: One-fifth of Alaska women giving birth in 2015 did not receive pre-natal care during that first critical trimester when fetus development is rapid and includes accelerated heart and lung development.

If mama isn’t healthy, how is baby supposed to be?

Perhaps rather than being consumed by “our rights,” perhaps the conversation needs to a make permanent shift toward the notion of putting resources (money) toward providing services.

I am thinking the $15 million already in the Kavanaugh fight kitty could go a long way to cover the $200 per pop (pun not intended) per Pap smear for women who don’t have insurance coverage.

It certainly could buy a whole bunch of condoms and other contraceptive devices to bring down the rate of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

Here’s some cost analysis. According to Planned Parenthood, one of the nation’s leading suppliers of abortion services at 300,000 per year plus, the procedure to remove a fetus at 16 weeks of gestation ranges from $765 to $1,050. Compare that to the $14.99 a box of 24 Magnum Bareskin large size condoms will set you back if you just simply be a bit responsible about your activity and plan ahead.

Now before my dear liberal friends and readers get all uptight and start the finger-pointing because I am pro-life and because I view this focus on Kavanaugh and Roe v Wade as a smokescreen distraction to keep our general population emotionally charged and thus unprepared and unwillingly to actually understand the intricacies of the judicial process, let me just state the medically obvious.

Abortion is indeed a highly specialized medical procedure that should be performed by an experienced, skilled and thoughtful medical professional in the type of venue at which a woman’s physical condition throughout the procedure can be properly monitored and safeguarded. Good grief, people, it sort of is on par with a major surgery. However, far too many of the clinics performing this procedure simply do not meet the above basic requirements.

In 2012, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement saying: "Abortions are necessary in a number of circumstances to save the life of a woman or to preserve her health. Unfortunately, pregnancy is not a risk-free life event."

Yes, there are indeed medically defined cases in which abortion is not just the appropriate, but also valid, option.

Here is another aspect in which Roe v Wade gets this issue correct. The landmark ruling stated that the decision to conduct an abortion is something that should be made by a patient in conjunction with her doctor.

Duh.

I would add to that one other caveat: The father of the child ought to be involved in this decision-making process as well. Only in cases in which his behavior toward the mother and pending child is detrimental should he be excluded.

But moving on, Roe is correct in that the decision to end a pregnancy – to value the mother’s life over the life of an unborn baby – is an excoriating personal one that the government has absolutely no business deciding.

Unfortunately, the above circumstances as tragic as they are, are also not what surround the overwhelming majority of abortion cases happening even as you read this column.

It’s more along the lines of: Oops, we got pregnant and this just isn’t convenient. Let’s go down to the local clinic and have that tissue sucked out and disposed of. Never mind that tissue represents a human life that ought to have some rights as well and never mind that well, yes, the potential birth mother is way healthy enough to give that baby life.

Just because abortion is a valid medical procedure doesn’t mean our nation’s current use of it is acceptable.

It isn’t.

It is perhaps one of the most anti-feminine things that can happen to a woman. Like it or not, women were designed to birth babies. The unique parts of the female body, while certainly valuable and enjoyable in terms of sexual activity, are also the “how” in the continuation of the human species. Women are given an incredibly special gift in being the gender that facilitates gestation. Having a developing baby ripped from the uterus is an attack on femininity. The fact that our society tolerates this under the guise of “rights” is obscene.

And that is the gist of why I view the current drive to evaluate Kavanaugh solely by the potential abortion-oriented rulings he could make – remember he will be only one of nine on SCOTUS – to be such a frightening proposition. There are so many, many other issues that the members of SCOTUS are responsible for. To shine the bright spotlight on only one is a disservice to all Americans – pro-choice and pro-life. Kavanaugh cannot overturn Roe v Wade by himself. Even if he does become one of a majority of conservative leaning members, it is flawed logic to assume he will ride in to court on a white colored pro-life horse waving a sword ready to strike down all that the pro-choice factor holds dear.

That isn’t his professional past and I doubt he wants it to be his professional future and legacy.

The Kavanaugh uproar is a waste of resources.

It is spending money on the pointless – that very well is a well-developed American pastime – as no one is going to get any real lasting, life-changing benefit from continued focus on Kavanaugh’s abortion stance, which again, is only a small portion of the docket he will have to interpret.

Here are issues connected to the overall abortion debate that the monies currently being spent in Alaska to court Murkowski aren’t going to help:

Educate our youth regarding the complicated emotions surrounding sex and provide them with guidance that directs them toward better choices and the proper usage of a condom.Help single mothers pay for diapers.Provide affordable gynecological care for women.

Show me some fuss regarding the above things. Wave some signs for that. Put on your marching shoes and demand that SCOTUS rulings translate our nation’s complicated legalese in to meaningful and useful guidance framing solutions for those things versus the current scene which keeps American emotionally charged and unreceptive toward truly learning and understanding the judicial principles at stake with each SCOTUS nomination.

Besides, people, seriously wake up and be realistic. Even if Kavanaugh is not approved, Trump is not going to nominate another judicial candidate with a warm and fuzzy approach to abortion. He made a campaign promise, remember?

Reach Amy Armstrong via email at: authoramyarmstrong@gmail.com.