The Row Over Roe
Charles Krauthammer is one of my favorite conservative columnists and his Judicial Insanity piece in the Washington Post takes a fairly balanced look at Tom DeLay and others' recent foaming at the mouth concerning judicial activism. Until the sixth paragraph, when he finally gets down to Roe vs Wade. He's still balanced, but I think he's wrong.
He asks “What other advanced democracy would radically legalize abortion by judicial decree rather than by democratic will expressed through legislatures or referendums?”
Well Charles, one answer to that is that it’s always been the duty of the courts to represent those who are unable to get a fair hearing by other means. Legislatures for the most part control access to referendums. Abortion legislation has been unrelentingly stopped dead in the male dominated state and federal legislatures by male dominated religious institutions. There is not even a particle of doubt that if men bore children this legislative access to abortion would have b…