A Bad Omen For Pro-Lifers

David French, who is a seasoned litigator and a pro-life conservative, has a bad feeling about yesterday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court about abortion jurisprudence. He’s basing this on the questions the justices asked in the arguments yesterday. French points out that you can’t predict with certainty how the justices will ultimately rule based on the questioning during arguments, but it’s nevertheless a pretty good indication. He concludes:

In practical terms, it appeared that Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts were open to upholding an admitting privileges law only when it placed a de minimis burden on abortion rights. There was no serious discussion of distinguishing Whole Women’s Health if it had a substantial impact on abortion access.

In the decades since Roe, pro-life voters and activists have exerted a staggering amount of political energy in the effort to elect presidents who nominate justices who are willing to reverse Roe. Abortion rights activists have responded with their own intense efforts, and the public debate is white-hot.

The judiciary has in fact been remade—at least to a degree—but America’s judicial transformation has perhaps affected abortion rights less than any other contentious area of American constitutional law. Put another way, the most activist energy has yielded the least constitutional impact, and if today’s oral argument is any indication, then that dreary stability looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. Pro-life activists are not likely obtaining the outcome they seek.

Read the whole thing. 

If he’s right about this — and we’ll know in June — then it really will be a blow to conservatives who vote Republican in large part, or wholly, over the abortion issue. If we vote Republican to get justices on the High Court who understand what a moral and constitutional travesty Roe v. Wade is, and after all the decades of fighting, and marching, and donating to pro-life causes, and to pro-life politicians, we get the “dreary stability” that French fears, then how motivated will pro-lifers be to get out to vote this fall? Especially if voting for Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, is already a hard, hard ask?

If French proves correct, then I think the most reasonable conclusion will be that Supreme Court justices, as members of the elite (de facto), have interiorized the fact that the single issue that women of their social class believe in more than any other, is protecting abortion rights.

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