In my view, the main problem with Justice Alito’s leaked SCOTUS opinion is that it suffers from a lack of compassion. The five justices in the majority chose to harden their hearts and close their ears to the suffering of women faced with unwanted pregnancy. It demonstrates a “coalition of callousness and authority.”
His opinion argues that judicial precedents did not support the arguments on which the Roe decision was based. But his underlying assumption – that human rights could be abandoned to political processes in state legislatures without protection from the United States Supreme Court – uses the guise of judicial restraint to advance the moralistic intentions of the Court’s majority.
Life is sacred and being pregnant carries responsibilities. But to allow State legislatures (“the political process”) to prioritize “motherhood” and a “right to life” without protecting mothers living in a society rife with inequities uses simplistic assumptions to resolve complex dilemmas. The majority opinion says the Constitution does not protect against State legislatures shaming and judging (“At the end of the day, we know best”) over trusting the dignity of an individual woman’s struggles (“At the end of the day, we trust you”).
The personal, ethical, social, cultural, economic, political and spiritual issues that surround the debate around abortion rights are difficult and legion. To judicially pronounce that the US Constitution does not protect the principle of a woman’s right to privacy in pregnancy – to punt the decision to state legislatures – fails to stand ground on principles even more basic than those contained in the Constitution: that human rights matter and that compassion should bend the arc of history toward justice.