Blumner: Thou shalt not gore my sacred cow

That Wheel of Fortune style spinner came up "Abortion" this week when it came time for Robyn "Blumñata" Blumner to write her weekly editorial.

If you're looking for a new twist don't get your hopes up. Same old same old.

I had a conversation with a seemingly smart woman recently who thought that Roe vs. Wade would never be overturned regardless of who wins the presidency. Though deeply pro-choice, she said she has voted for a Republican as president in the past since she likes the concept of local control and thinks Republicans represent that ideal better.

If one is concerned about Roe v. Wade suffering rejection by the SCOTUS, then McCain certainly fuels that concern more than Barack Obama. But that outcome isn't particularly likely even if McCain wins simply because adherence to stare decisis gives Roe v. Wade a degree of protection, whether deserved or not.

You can probably file this week's column under "Vote for Obama if for no other reason than to protect a woman's right to choose!"

A President McCain, if given the opportunity to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court, would have to get his choice through a Democrat-dominated Senate. Who's to say that McCain's choice won't be more Souter (George H. W. Bush appointee) than Scalia (a Reagan pick)?

But back to Blumner's little tale:

Now, had she said that she's willing to forgo abortion rights for other Republican political values, that would be one thing. (Although President Bush's imperial presidency stands starkly inapposite to her stated interest in decentralized power.) But she couldn't even contemplate a world without Roe's protections. She was horrified by the prospect, and yet through determined denial she was willing to be an instrument of the ruling's demise.

Blumñata's pal should take heart in the conservative principle she favors. Let's suppose that Roe v. Wade was overturned. That leaves legislating abortion law to state legislatures, where there is a good chance that abortion would remain legal in most instances. In short, there's no good reason for her to quake in fear respecting the demise of Roe v. Wade.

And what of the decision itself? Many liberal legal scholars admit that Roe is bad law since it stands as the creative invention of the SCOTUS rather than as a solid extrapolation of Constitutional principles. Blumner's dealing with the issue tend to make clear that she has long regarded the Supreme Court as just another political organ. And in this case she prefers that it remain outside the reach of the will of the people. If there is no mass appeal to legalized abortion in the United States then let the cloistered minority in the Supreme Court chambers proclaim it. For all her criticism of the "imperial Bush" Blumner herself favors an imperial arrangement with liberal justices proclaiming the law of the land.

Blumñata shows greater concern for McCain's supposed inconsistency, however:

In case you missed his recent appearance before the evangelical audience of pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, McCain was asked: When is a baby entitled to human rights? His emphatic response: "At the moment of conception." (Add wild applause here.)

Think about this.

Were this view to come to pass and a single-cell zygote were imbued with 14th Amendment rights to life, liberty and property, not only would abortion rights go away, but infertile couples would lose the option of in vitro fertilization. It would also mean the end of all embryonic stem cell research.

Blumner notes that McCain's view on using existing embryonic stem cells for research appears to trample human rights. That's a fair observation in some respects, but it oversimplifies the issues since rights often come into conflict in our system of law. A constitutional ban on in vitro fertilization no more follows from the Constitution itself then does the right to abortion, albeit the former would constitute a stronger argument in legal terms. Rather than leading to a constitutional prohibition on in vitro fertilization, the McCain view leads in the right direction: leaving the issue for democratically elected legislators.

The concluding paragraph contains some nifty weasel-language:

Pro-choice Republican voters are deluding themselves if they think Roe is eternal no matter who wins the White House. If McCain is president he promises to grant human rights to microscopic cells and he very well may succeed.

McCain did pledge to act as a pro-life president, but as Blumner notes he is not radically pro-life as evidenced by his stance on stem-cell research. There is no "promise" from McCain as Blumner describes, leaving us to suppose that she may be using "promises" in a sense other than as a type of explicit pledge from McCain, akin to "This August day promises to be a scorcher." But even that is a stretch worthy of Reed Richards, since the most likely scenario in terms of limiting the currently recognized right to abortion is the aforementioned unlikely reversal of Roe v. Wade.

It's been a while since Blumner regaled us with a tale of the Republican tendency to use scare tactics with an election approaching, by the way. Expect the spinner to give us one of those very soon.