Of Roe and Rage

It has been an eventful session at the Supreme Court. Among other decisions, many of us were surprised to see Roe v. Wade reversed. We shouldn’t have been.

It is difficult to find a more glaring example of bad jurisprudence and garbled reasoning than the Roe v. Wade ruling—with its preposterous finding that the U.S. Constitution guarantees a woman’s right to kill her pre-born child—other than the Dred Scott decision.

If you haven’t read Roe v. Wade, I encourage you to do so. You can read it here. You’ll know what I mean.

But Roe v. Wade didn’t stand alone. It was one of a long chain of Supreme Court decisions that discovered novel rights and imposed prohibitions against laws and practices that had stood in some cases for centuries.

For example, at one point every state in the Union had laws forbidding abortion. Only a few years ago, no state permitted same-sex marriage. But then voila—a right to such is found in the Constitution.

What you can’t legislate—adjudicate. 

This has been the successful strategy of the secular Left for over a half century. This is the reason we hear cries these days to pack the Supreme Court. In that point of view, the task of the Court is not to interpret the constitution fairly, rationally, and impartially. It is to advance the Leftist agenda.

Look back at the track record.

1962: School prayer forbidden—a practice that had been a commonplace for 170 years.

1963: Bible reading in schools forbidden.

1965: A right to practice contraception was discovered in the Constitution and state laws forbidding it were struck down.

1973: Roe v. Wade.

1985: The Court struck down an Alabama law providing for a minute of meditation or personal prayer at the beginning of the school day.

1992: The Court forbade clergy led prayer at school commencement exercises.

2000: The Court forbade student-led prayer at football games.

2002: The court struck down existing state laws forbidding same sex relations.

2015: The Court discovered a right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution.

The point isn’t whether one agrees or disagrees with any of these particular decisions. It is that the Court hijacked the ability of the people to legislate concerning these matters, as the Left imposed its agenda upon the nation by judicial fiat.

What you can’t legislate—adjudicate.

The same thing is happening here in Kansas. The state Supreme Court has decided that the Kansas Constitution, written in 1859, forbids the citizens of this state from passing any laws restricting abortion. The faultiness of their reasoning is only exceeded by the overreach of their authority.

It must be understood that the secular space of our society doesn’t exist in a moral vacuum. It must be morally informed from somewhere. In the American past, biblical morality occupied that place. In the American present, freedom of individual self-expression is the presiding norm. Many Americans consider this to be the most sacred moral value—particularly with regard to sexuality.

As a result of the Court’s reversal of Roe, we have been promised that this will be a “Summer of Rage.” Why is rage the response? 

There are a number of reasons. 

Most obviously, due to this decision, abortion services are going to be more difficult to access in various locations. Some people are angry about that.

A second reason is that abortion is big business. Some abortion providers are facing declining, or even the elimination of their source of revenue, and are not happy about it. As the saying goes, if you want to understand, follow the money.

A third reason is that the decision struck a huge blow to the Left’s heretofore successful strategy of using the Court to implement its agenda. Radicals on the Left are outraged that their ideology will have to be tried in the court of public opinion and decided by the electorate, rather than simply being imposed on the body politic. This must have infuriated those who believed that the Supreme Court could always be counted on to advance the Leftist cause.

Next, many adult Americans have the emotional maturity of spoiled children. We’re all familiar with the “entitlement mentality.” If you’re told you can’t have what you want, throw a temper tantrum. Someone says something you don’t like? Pitch a fit. Things don’t go the way you’d like? Flail away in paroxysms of anger. Hence the rage reaction.

Yet I believe that all the above factors are overshadowed by a much more influential reason for the rage. This decision was a blow to the ideology of sexualism which has become both ubiquitous and triumphant in American society. Sexualism asserts that sexuality is the most fundamental, essential, aspect of human existence. No other aspect of our humanity defines us so vitally. Thus, as a corollary, nothing can be allowed to interfere with the sacred right to sexual expression—not even pregnancy. Allowing states to regulate abortion potentially complicates the unrestrained expression of sexual freedom, and that infuriates those beholden to the sexualist agenda.

It is indeed startling to behold the progression of the pro-choice movement from the Clinton-era “safe, legal, and rare” to the point where we now see protest signs saying, “I love abortion.” And we hear of women “celebrating their abortions.” Such can only be labeled for what it is—demonic.

The rage response can only be understood within the greater context of sexualism. As of this writing, a bill is advancing through Congress to codify same-sex marriage as the law of the land, in advance of any potential move by the Court to reverse that (bad) decision. The transgender agenda maintains the emphasis that sexuality is one’s most defining characteristic, and that discovering one’s “gender identity” is a critical element of one’s personhood. Our federal government actively promotes homosexuality. The push to sexualize children earlier and earlier in schools is unrelenting. Sexualist ideology is all-pervasive and inescapable.

Back in the 1950s and 60s the sexual revolution blithely furthered a popularized and somewhat misappropriated Freudianism that asserted “It’s all about sex.” Sexualism has progressed unchecked ever since to the monstrous status it has achieved presently. What is the response, then, when it is challenged in any way? Predictably, rage.