What it's about

..or who, I should say.

This link has been floating around for a couple of weeks, but I waited until today to post it, for obvious reasons.

It's graphic and beyond sad. It's why pro-lifers believe what they believe and do what they do. The opposition and a clueless media can speculate all they want, but until they understand that this about real people who are being brutally killed every day...they won't get it.

Warning: graphic

Inside a Chula Vista Abortion Clinic

Comments

[Todd]

Many of us would be moved speechless by viewing such a scene. My exposure to city violence, the stories of sexual and physical abuse from friends and family, and reading on the history and aftermath of human warfare was enough to steer me toward pacifism. Pacifism shored up my own beliefs against abortion.

However, many St Blog's participants continue to misunderstand and ridicule pacifism as a coherent and sound philosophy from which to operate as a Catholic.

The dynamic of abortion on demand is more complex for many people than witnessing graphic pictures and beocoming a convert. Likewise pacifism is far more than seeing violence perpetrated on innocent people and deciding to abjure rendering harm. Some commentators have difficulty getting around their perception of my "dissent," and it must be asked if pro-lifer extremists inflict their own damage to the cause by their actions or words. Sometimes those actions or words are enough to stop people before they get to the pictures.

[amy]

Todd:

I posted this link on this day as a way of memorializing the victims of abortion in a way that recognizes the truth about their deaths.

I didn't post it, really, as an opportunity for you to enter the thread and immediately try to direct it in the direction you see fit. You have your own blog for that, I believe.

Your disdain for prolifers, thousands of whom are out marching today, and all of whom understand perhaps even more deeply than you do the complexities of abortion and have their own difficult journeys that have taken them to a place of advocacy for the preborn, is tiresome.

For once, let's just think of others - the children lost, the children whose lives hang in the balance this very day, the girls and women who are wrestling with decisions, past, present and future...and resist the temptation to draw attention to ourselves. Deal?

[greg]

Wow. CV is my home town. I lived there for 30 years and my family is still there even though I'm in the midwest now. Unbelievable. I feel very old today.

[PM]

"One woman was afraid and said, 'Oh my God, please don't let it hurt, don't let it hurt.' Sonia answered, 'Ma'am, you leave God out of these things.'

In a very oblique, left-handed way, the piece contains embers of hope. They know they're doing something more momentous than pulling teeth. To wish to anesthetize your conscience, you need the vestige of a waking conscience in operation.

[Richard]

Hello Amy,

Thanks for that. I'm afraid I had to stop reading about halfway through.

But I feel an extra little jolt for the march today.

[Joseph R. Wilson]

Many thanks Amy. I will pray for your continued great witness; the souls of the slaughtered innocents; and also for the walking wounded who have been tragically involved in any way in abortionn. It is important for us that we love them all, as we are loved by our God.

[Jason]

>>>"To wish to anesthetize your conscience, you need the vestige of a waking conscience in operation."

Good point. Once your conscience no longer bothers you, you've pretty much entered a point of no return.

[Mary Pat]

Richard, Skip the short graphic part but definitely don't miss the rest. That's where the hope is.
Mary Pat

[Dan Crawford]

Thanks for the article, Amy. I do think you were a little harsh with Todd, since we ought to be very concerned with the many ways, from abortion clinics to bombs to land mines to sexual slavery to labor exploitation to child abuse in our families to (fill in the blank), we murder our children. Perhaps you and Todd have a history, but I am not offended by his remarks. I am grateful for the article since with reference to abortion, most of our media outlets have been more than willing to continue the lies of the abortionists and their supporters.

[deb]

Dan:

I'ts not just this blog, it's practically ever other major Catholic blog at which the issue is raised. Todd's been there, for two years or more, spinning the same line which contains truths in, of course, but the problem is that he persists in the fantasy that no one else gets these truths except him, which is just demonstrably false.

We're all tired of Todd accusing us of caring only about babies before they're born, etc., etc., not getting the bigger picture...because we do. Todd's inability to just focus on the unborn...for once..is trying.

[cathy]

Thanks for the article link on this saddest of days.

I don't think you were too hard on Todd either.

[Matt C. Abbott]

A very sad sign of the times, indeed.

[Nerina]

It's sometimes easy to paint "pro-lifers" with a broad brush. I'm accused of being concerned ONLY with babies. I have to remind people that it is because of my views on the value of human life AT ALL STAGES that I support pro-life charities along with volunteering in an inner-city school, contributing financially to groups like CRS and CMMB (Catholic Medical Mission Board) and work as a nurse with the elderly. Before I was convicted (thanks be to God) by the Holy Spirit of the value of life, I never volunteered or donated to such groups. Once you truly appreciate the sanctity of life, the rest follows naturally.

P.S. Amy, your rebuke of Todd was necessary.

[Dudley]

It's cold and snowing in Wilmington, Delaware. Along 202 - the busiest throughfare north through the suburban shopping strips - were about 20 people quietly holding signs. Because it was snowy, cars were travelling slowly. The one that struck me most was a photo of a fetus at eight months. I didn't expect to see people out at all and particularly on a day like today and I was very moved by their effort.

[Meggan]

That was one of the most powerful things I've read. Thanks for posting it.

[Steve Skojec]

This is the most real, unafraid, and disturbing testimony I have ever read. It resounds with truth, and is remarkably unflinching. Most people would run from this horror, and yet, this young woman was able to face it for so long, every day, even seeing it for what it was. That she could do that bothers me, though I am gratified by her departure from the business and by her fear of God.

I think, however, that it is quite telling about why our culture tolerates this scourge so willingly - a culture that does not witness abortion in all its horror like the subject of this piece. If Yeni, repulsed by the gruesome reality what she saw, could stay for $8.50 an hour, how much more willing our hedonistic society must be to endure this largely unseen (on their part) blight for the sake of convenience?

I want to find hope here, but I'm struggling. At least these girls got out...

[James Kabala]

Every American should read this article. I don't see how anyone can read it and still be "pro-choice." (But then again, as Steve pointed out, this woman actually lived the life, and look how long it took her to get away from the horror.) The most affecting part for me was the mention of babies who breathed on their own outside the womb, long before "viability."
God bless Mr. Vasquez for writing this article, Jim Holman (uncle of a college friend of mine) for publishing it, and you for linking to it. Pray for the unborn, and for these two nearly lost souls and all others like them, that they may find their way toward the truth.

[Kathleen]

I think that I might speak to Todd on some of what he mentions. I had a very unexpected exchange with my sister this last year. I don't even remember exactly what we were talking about as a group (family, her in-laws etc. But it related to the election and there were heated words). I was ashamed of myself for being so upset and not explaining why abortion was at the top of my list concerning who I would vote for in any election.

Later she responded by saying, "You people all go to that march and hold the signs and walk away afterwards. Do you realize that these young girls only know that they screwed up and they need to fix it?"

I said, "That's the problem, they need to know that there are other options than abortion to solving the problem."

She said, "You people go the March and she's left with the decision."

I said, "There are Crisis pregnancy centers all over the country that will help her financially and otherwise to have the baby and keep it, or give the baby up for adoption and the people who hold the signs and pray at clinics are the ones who run them, or volunteer for them with little or no compensation."

She said, "I don't see them in my Church and they aren't spoken of."

And I said, "Then what are you going to do about it? It's your job to get it on the bullien board, in the CCD class (age appropriate of course) and in your Church bulliten."

I then proceeded to pull up a list of over 15 Crisis pregnancy centers in the Portland, Maine area.

Her view was that all MFLers march and pray but do nothing otherwise. This in part because most of us have voted republican in the last two elections. She also believed that because of other circumstances in the woman's life that Pro-lifers don't care about those circumstances and try to understand that the abortion decision is difficult for women and that these circumstances (poverty, rape, etc.) were addresses by our leadership and us, that many women wouldn't choose to abort.

My bottom line problem with that (and this is not Todd's exact position) is that the pro-lifers that I meet in the MFL are doing these things. The Crisis pregnancy center movement has evolved specifically to address these other needs.

People assume so much about pro-lifers, especially if they think that we are more republican than Catholic. None of it is true. The pro-life movement is so grassroots and had tried to respond to every circumstance that results in a decision making moment, that I have a hard time when people assume that pro-lifers don't without checking out the facts and when they buy into an assumption about "pro-life radical religious people".

I think pro-lifers and Catholics respond to these needs in a profoundly christian way. And we are not federally funded either. It's from sheer chrisitian conviction that we do so.

I read this article this week also. It reminded me of why I got off the couch from simply being against abortion to being an active pro-lifer. I came home on a Friday night and a buy into cable channel showed a documentary, the name of which I can't remember, that showed a D&E second trimester abortion. Little ribs, and feet and hands in a bucket of blood. I spent the next twenty minutes in the bathroom. (cont.)

[Kathleen]

(cont.)

I've been a sign-holding, voluneering, praying at abortion clinic pro-lifer ever since.

Don't think I don't care about the circumstances that bring a woman to the choice of whether or not to abort. And I can witness to the fact that most of the pro-lifers I meet don't take the circumstances that bring a woman to that choice lightly and they do act in whatever way they can to change those also.

[Patricia Gonzalez]

As other commenters have said, a very powerful and disturbing article. It's horrifying that some women consider the taking of a human life on the same level as a facial or a manicure. At the beginning of my first pregnancy, I knew there was a child growing in my womb even before the pregnancy test confirmed it, and there was no way in Creation I was going to harm him or let anyone else do so! Being pro-life does indeed mean respect for the totality of human life, and it's sad that so many people still don't "Get it". May God have mercy on us all. Amy, please give your newest little one an extra hug from me next time you tuck him in. My guys are "too big" for that now! Reading that article made me want to hug them close, and when the oppotrunity arises, they'll definitely get hugged!

[Sean Gallagher]

I'm glad that I read the article. I only regret that I read it just before going to bed.

I and lots of other Catholics and Christians live within a very short drive to two 'clinics.' What are we going to do about it?

[Donald R. McClarey]

On Monday I will be at the monthly board meeting of my county's pro-life crisis pregnancy center. There, as we do at all of our meetings, we will pray to God to lift the scourge of legal abortion from our land. Then we will go about our work to help women to give birth, and to aid them with their babies in very difficult situations. We will be fortified in our knowledge that across America there are thousands of other organizations also about this important work. This type of work is not glamorous and the press rarely covers it, but it is precisely this type of pro-life action that is winning this struggle, one person at a time. God, in His good time, and may it be soon, will bring this great evil to an end, and it is our task and privilege to aid in bringing this about.

[Susan F. Peterson]

The March for Live in D.C is being held Monday, the 24th. I think this is so it will be when legislators are in town, although I am told that it is rare to find them there...or at least that their staff will admit they are there.

So if anybody lives near DC, please come. I used to go when I lived in Maryland, but have never done so since I moved to New York. But this year it occurred to me that my kids aren't little any more, I am not in school, I don't have a nurse job where you can't get a day off; I really don't have any reason I can't go. So I am getting on a bus just before midnight Sunday night...will get back just before midnight Monday night. Some people I think will ride for several days to go to the march.

When I used to go, it was in the late 70's....I wouldn't have thought it could still be necessary over 20 years later.

SFP

[amy]

God love you all and your compassion - and passion - for life.

[Jill]

I often hear people who march and picket abortion clinics say they are as concerned about the women they're confronting as they are the unborn babies and that they are also concerned about fixing the problems that cause women to choose abortion.

Where are the marches for adequate health care and education for single mothers, or adequate day care? Where are the marches for battered women? Where are the posters addressing these issues at Right To Life Marches? All I've ever seen are pictures of aborted fetuses and living babies. I've never seen a picture of a starving woman in a third world country or a woman with three children, a poverty-level income and no health care at those marches.

I've seen prayer services for the unborn who've been aborted, but I've never seen a prayer service or candlelight vigil for the women facing that choice.

Just sayin'....

[Lynn]

Bless you for going to the march, Susan. There will be people there from Florida; those of us who can't go will be praying for a peaceful march in which God opens the hearts of pro-abortionist to the beauty of human life and the evil that would destroy the least among us.

[Lynn]

That wasn't a very good sentence, but you get the gist...

[amy]

Jill:

Do you frequently march on health care issues or for third world women?

Just askin'

Prolifers are people who work with women. All the time. Every day. If you were involved in the movement - as many of these posters seem to be - you would meet people who are, on a daily basis, working for women, many of them poor, most of them single - working to find them medical care, employment, housing and child care. That's what Crisis Pregnancy Centers do. That's what Catholic Charities does. That's what other social service agencies connected to other pro-life churches do.

You might want to check out the After Abortion blog for more on this ...for a bigger picture of what the prolife movement is all about.

And if you're really interested...go down to your local Crisis Pregnancy Center and give some time like the good folks on this thread are doing..

giving time..to women.

[Kathleen]

Jill:

Do you really believe that pro-lifers don't care about adequate health care and poverty? If so why? Where's your proof?

Most pro-life ministries are not funded by the gov't, they are funded by donation. Most food pantries are funded privately, not funded by the gov't.

There are numerous, federal programs for single mothers to provide a vocation or funding for education. My understanding is that for most people, they don't know how or where to gain access to those programs. How about Catholic and Christian hospitals and research centers. Yes they are partially federally funded, but let's just say we all just dry up, then where who will you pick at and where will you go? Answer how federally funded programs and a culture that destroys family life so that auntie Kathleen isn't nearby enough to help her sister Mary with her kids is not responsible, in part for the ills you mention? What are you going to do about getting my tax dollars in aid to millions of starving women, who are abandoned with three starving kids, while corrupt governments pocket the money and buy homes in St. Johns?

Abortion fixes that? I don't think so. It subjectates women to further povery and passes that right along to their kids.

There is a documentary, it might have been the one I saw, mentioned in my post above, called Eclipse of Reason. A tiny beatimg heart, a unique little human being sucking her thumb in utero, she frowns, smiles, kicks her feet, rolls around, in this tiny protected place, maybe. If he/she is born he might solve one of the problems you mention. But not unless he/she is given the chance to live a God given life.

The objections you raise are like Todd's. You want to say that pro-life people are all talk and not walk. Prove it. Just try. Better yet, tell me how all of the services of Catholic charities, Catholic ministries for the poor, Catholic day care centers or Catholic scholarships don't figure into your argument.

Elipse of reason indeed.

[Richard]

Hello Kathleen,

Great great post (the first one). Actually, both of them were great.

I met a great living refutations of Jill's impression yesterday at the march: Dr. Villarosa, just about the only pediatrician in the desperately poor migrant worker town of Immokalee, Florida. He and his staff are working (and praying for) women and their children every step of the way - before and after birth. And often for very little or no money.

best regards

[Jill]

Whoa. I sleep over one weekend a month as a housemother in a home for young women who are pregnant and who have chosen not to abort, and I coach inner city girls, which may not seem like it's related, but it is given that the lack of afterschool supervision and afterschool activities for young women often leaves them vulnerable to finding self-worth through young men who are pressuring them into sexual relationships, plus many of these young women haven't learned how to set goals and work towards them, another factor in their vulnerability.

I don't think whipping out credentials is necessary, and I wasn't asking anyone else to whip out theirs.

Nor do I think holding the view that banner waving, marching and protesting are not the best way to go about changing the face of the abortion mentality means a person supports abortion in any way.

My point is that marches are nice, but they mostly tend to focus on either one side of the issue or the other - on either the life of the child, or the humanity of the child or the rights of the mother and the supremacy of her body. At this point, all the arguments have been heard and I don't think most people are even listening anymore. I bet most non-participating people's reaction to marches and rallies is a sigh of resignation and mentally cursing the participants for screwing up traffic.

If you took all the money raised and gone into hiring buses and providing picket signs and banners the money individuals spend on hotel rooms and food and hot coffee and the like at these big marches, you could provide medical care for a lot of women, or you could provide safe shelter for a lot of women, or you could provide private job training for a lot of women.

I know people who go are also actively involved in helping women. I know that government funded programs for almost anything are never all that effective, but isn't money spent on these marches also money down the drain when it comes to any one, individual, living, breathing pregnant girl who is only minutes or hours away from making the decision to abort or not?

I'm not questioning people's motives. I personally think marches are time, energy and money that could be better spent. But, if you're going to march, especially in the nation's capital where you are trying to affect government decision-making, why not shift the focus from either the woman exclusively (that's directed towards the pro-choice marchers who might be reading) or the unborn exclusively to the woman and her unborn child as an inseperable unit?

[Steve Skojec]

I think that Jill makes a good point. I've been going to the March for Life pretty regularly over the last decade. As time has gone on, I've become increasingly concerned that the March has lost it's focus; it has become more spectacle than practical action.

I just moved from D.C. to Phoenix and no longer have access to the March. But I was growing increasingly unconvinced of its efficacy. The lawmakers certainly weren't listening. And to make matters worse, I saw factions beginning to arise within the march. There was conflict.

I was particularly irritated with those who stood along the route march holding large posters of aborted babies shouting angrily that abortion was murder - but the signs were pointed at the marchers. Last year, I sarcastically commented as I passed one, "It's a good thing you showed me that, because I didn't know what abortion was. I couldn't figure out why I was here marching and you made it clear..." There was a ripple of laughter in the immediate crowd within earshot. Everyone seemed uncomfortable with being accosted by people who were there for the same reasons.

The March for Life strikes me as having morphed from a grassroots effort to politically protest abortion to a big attention contest. No one involved seems particularly interested in whether what they are doing is having an impact. It certainly doesn't seem to be. Nothing that I know of has changed as a result of the March.

Justice Scalia commented in Planned Parenthood Vs. Casey:

...We are offended by these marchers who descend upon us, every year on the anniversary of Roe, to protest our saying that the Constitution requires what our society has never thought the Constitution requires. These people who refuse to be "tested by following" must be taught a lesson. We have no Cossacks, but at least we can stubbornly refuse to abandon an erroneous opinion that we might otherwise change - to show how little they intimidate us.

...In truth, I am as distressed as the Court is - and expressed my distress several years ago, see Webster, 492 U.S., at 535 - about the "political pressure" directed to the Court: the marches, the mail, the protests aimed at inducing us to change our opinions. How upsetting it is, that so many of our citizens (good people, not lawless ones, on both sides of this abortion issue, and on various sides of other issues as well) think that we Justices should properly take into account their views, as though we were engaged not in ascertaining an objective law, but in determining some kind of social consensus....

His argument goes on to say that if the court continues to make value judgements then it would be right for the justices to be voted in as representatives of the people. But as it stands, they are not the proper targets of our protest, for it is not within their constitutional purview to subject themselves to the will of the people, but rather, the strict interpretation of the law.

I'm rambling here, but I just think that the March is sort of a misallocation of resources. I don't know that we can just up and stop doing it without appearing defeated. But it could be a far more spartan affair, less pep rally, more somber show of conviction, and be more effective. And, as Jill says, the fundraising efforts directed at the March could be far better appropriated to real pro-life apostolates where the rubber-meets-the-road.

I am very close to a young woman who had an abortion as a teenager. She'd never heard of the March for Life and she'd also never heard of a Crisis Pregnancy Center. If I had my way, I'd much rather make sure she had heard of the latter.

[James Kabala]

I'm going to dissent a little bit from the general thrust of this article. I admire all the good work that has been mentioned, and I hope that increases a thousandfold, but I think that the claim that this is a necessary part of being pro-life plays into the pro-abortionists' hands. As Amy said in the comment below, the fact that abortion is a gigantic mass murder should, "in a rational world," be enough to convince people of the wrongness of it. It seems to me that a post like Jill's, however well-intentioned it is, is almost saying that being pro-abortion is excusable and that it's pro-lifers fault that abortions occur, because not all of them have the resources to devoted giant amounts of time and money to pregnant women.
A friend of mine once wrote that it is a form of "holding the child hostage" to agree that a woman pregnant out of wedlock has the right to make demands for (as he put it) "an apartment and daycare and food and so on....I want it all, and I want it now." He also wrote that groups like Feminists for Life are deficient because they never mention the word "family." At the time I thought his comments were too harsh; he definitely has a penchant for no-nonsense statements of this type, which people like me who are more wishy-washy and conflict-averse tend to avoid agreeing with. After reading this thread, though, I wonder: It is undoubtedly true that many posters here talked about the concern for "the woman and her unborn child as an inseparable unit," or mentioned that "pro-lifers are people who work with women," or even touted "numerous federal programs for single mothers," but, as my friend would have predicted, no one mentioned the family. A Martian who read this thread wouldn't even know that there is such a thing as a father, or that a family is the proper place for a child to be raised.

[Martha L.]

Jill,

You could organize one of those kinds of marches.

[Jill]

Except that my real point is that marches are a waste of time, money and effort...

If such a march were held, the truth is no one would come because it's easier to weep for innocent little souls who are already dead and in the presence of God than it is to weep for not-so-innocent, messy, unattractive, needy people who are right here in front of us and who require material goods from us in order to resolve their problems.

[Amy Pruss]

Jill,

The March for Life is big, but I don't think the per-marcher costs are very high. Many people come in early in the morning and leave that night by bus, others who come from further away bunk in college dorms or in the crypt of the National Shrine. You could easily come up with this sort of money by skipping coffee for a month or two.

For many people, the March is their only opportunity to publicly demonstrate their opposition to abortion, in the course of a year of working for pro-life causes outside the public eye. For many younger people (like myself several years ago), the experience of attending the march cements their commitment to the cause, and they go home energized and radicalized to do many of the things that you would like them to do.

I would like to remind you that going to the March for Life in Washington DC in late January, freezing and standing in slush while listening to long speeches, and then waiting an hour or two for your turn to march, is not a very comfortable way to spend a day. Not to mention the discomforts involved in getting on a bus at 4 a.m. or sleeping on the floor of a church. (Although I live within close range of the March, I am not going to be going, because the physical rigors involved will be too much for my toddler and a pregnant woman like myself.) There is no need to choose between private acts of generosity to pregnant women in need and public witness to the evils of abortion, any more than the slavery abolition movement as a whole needed to choose between the underground railway and public agitation for emancipation. We who understand how evil abortion is have the responsibility to bear witness, and to do everything (licitly) in our power to stop it. I have no particular illusions about the political efficacy of the March for Life, but I am sure that if it stopped, or if the numbers dropped off sharply, it would be a very bad sign with regard to the health of the movement.

[James Kabala]

I just re-read my previous post and realized that in the first sentence, I wrote "this article" when I meant "this thread." That certainly alters the meaning (although the rest of the post should have made my true meaning clear.

[Todd]

"People assume so much ..."

Liam pointed out his problem with my post above, and I see his point. Amy's criticism was well-placed (so I feel chastened), if not entirely accurate. I don't ever recall "accusing (people) of caring only about babies before they're born," though I think we all know some people think that about us, collectively.

It struck me a lot of false assumptions were made of Jill. I don't agree with her opinion of public protest. Such an event is a community ritual, and as a Catholic liturgist, I cannot argue its efficacy for inspiring participants.

Jill does have a good point about flashing credentials, and it's worth consideration. We can agree that abortion is so prevalent, it will take a great deal to turn the tide. A more effective pro-life movement will include all of the ideas mentioned here: protests, prayer, publicity, personal conversations, and probably a few other things nobody's bothered with yet.

I think a good start would be to suspend distrust of people who don't like to march, counsel, blog, volunteer, do things the way I/we do, etc.. I might not like the ideas I'm reading or hearing, and my bs detectors might be buzzing, but it's probably best to set aside suspicion and assume a person who claims to be pro-life actually is. Then treat them as if they're on the same team.

[deb]

Todd:

you are the king of unintentional irony. The only person who enters threads judging other prolifers is you.

[Steve M.]

I was struck by Justice Scalia's phrase about his fellow justices quoted in a post above: "We have no Cossaks" to shut down the pro-life voices on the steps of their building. How hard is it to imagine that the pro-abortion forces would use the modern equivalent of Cossacks if they could? With the growth of restrictions on free speech at the entrances to mills, it is not hard for me to imagine a future for Cossack-equivalents--in the name of keeping good public order.

[Matteo]

The whole argument that "you pro-lifers don't care about anybody after they're born!", is completely spurious, whether or not the "not caring" premise is true. A simple response would be, "So, if we did start caring more about born people to your satisfaction, then you'd be for outlawing abortion, right?" Of course, 99.9% of the time the answer is "no". To which the proper response is, "Then why do you bring up an emotionally manipulative red herring? That's quite dishonest." If the answer were instead, "yes", then the proper response is, "So your position is essentially, 'Be nice or we'll kill the kids?'" Either way the argument is entirely empty.

Of course I realize the real world is not a logic class, but it always helps to know the truth...

[c matt]

I often hear people who march and picket abortion clinics say they are as concerned about the women they're confronting as they are the unborn babies and that they are also concerned about fixing the problems that cause women to choose abortion.

Where are the marches for adequate health care and education for single mothers, or adequate day care? etc.

Come on now, be honest, who jumped into the thread accusing whom?

If Jill had stated her points without the accusatory preamble, I doubt she would have gotten the same reception.

[c matt]

Scalia's comments do disturb me a bit. But if he thinks the public's opinion has no place in pressuring the SCOTUS, maybe the SCOTUS should stop making value judgments rather than legal ones.

[c matt]

Scalia:

Yeah, let's just stick to an erroneous legal opinion that costs millions of lives, because we are too pigheaded and egotistical to admit we are wrong when caught with our pants down (or skirt up, I suppose). Real brilliant, Tony. Sure raises your esteem in my eyes - not that you care, of course.

[c matt]

Actually, by Scalia's own logic, the public protest HAS had an affect. The truly neutral response would be to change the erroneous opinion, whether public opinion demanded it or not. To admit you are being stubborn because of how the public reacts shows you are not neutral or immune to public protest.

If the public clamored to overturn Dred Scott would Scalia have refused in order to show the public who is boss?

[Todd]

deb, prove it, please.

[James Kabala]

C. Matt: Scalia was mocking the position held by the Casey majority. The part about "we can stubbornly refuse to abandon an erroneous opinion... to show how little they intimidate us" is his sarcastic parody of the mindset of O'Connor, Souter, and especially Kennedy, not his own views. The second paragraph(beginning "In truth...) represents his own views. Here he does say that the Court should not be swayed by public opinion, but he wants Roe oveturned precisely because it was a "value judgment" rather than a legal one.

[c matt]

Thanks James, that does clear it up. I misconstrued his paraphrase of the majority's opinion for his own.