Reflection on Dobbs

I will admit that I thought the Roberts approach would win the day--even after the leaked draft hit the media. But reading Alito's opinion, with its brazen comparison of Dobbs to Brown v. Board, was truly shocking. The outlawing of abortion will disproportionately affect the poor who, in the United States, are disproportionately people of color. The majority sitting on the court clearly have no sense of historical context or present exigencies, much less irony. And how about Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion? Thomas, who Sen. Joe Biden helped into Justice Thurgood Marshall's seat despite the objections of Anita Hill, strikes me as unhinged and should be removed from the Court....We should recall that Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee to the Court, wrote the majority opinion in Roe--an opinion that I have always thought a model of "judiciousness." There is no judiciousness in Dobbs. Instead you have ideologues out for revenge. But this is what you get when you treat an 18th century document as Holy Writ and then put highly privileged, narrowly educated, politically motivated, and morally stunted individuals in the position of interpreting that document--interpretations that have the force of law. The fact that this decision came as a surprise to me tells me that I still harbor some small faith in the workings of the judicial system. I'll see what I can do to remedy that.

On Roberts.