From the The Daily Camera, Boulder, Colorado, January 21, 2001:
GOP will attack abortion rights
By Warren Hern
As a physician whose life and work hangs in the balance with each Supreme Court decision concerning abortion, I
was alarmed by the partisan tone of the court's intervention in the Florida case. I am even more alarmed
by the prospect of former Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft as
Attorney General.
It is not just that the justices George W. Bush will appoint to the Supreme Court are like those who formed the
radical core of presidential election decision. It is the anti-democratic, statist philosophy that allowed a "strict
constructionist" and supposedly states-rights alliance within the court to abandon its own doctrine in an
expedient collaboration for the sake of expanding its
power. It is the specter of an authoritarian cabal at the center of our governmental institutions that willfully
ignores disagreeable facts in favor of the suppression of a tedious democratic process.
This is a court that I cannot trust to protect either my rights as a citizen and as a physician or the rights of my
patients to have the medical care I offer.
I am not reassured by the recent Nebraska and Colorado decisions in which the court purported to decide in favor of
abortion rights. In the most critical case, Stenberg vs. Carhart, the counterpoint in the Court's narrow 5-4
decision was Justice Kennedy's inflammatory
anti-abortion rhetoric.
If the court's radical anti-abortion minority is reinforced, abortion rights will be among the least consequential
freedoms that will be lost. The majority of this court does not believe in the democratic process. It is too messy.
The court's willingness to stop the counting of votes in
Florida betrays a startling indifference to the most precious right and possession of a citizen, however poor
÷ the vote. This ultimate expression of freedom and conscience is at the heart of our democratic society.
From my vantage point, the Republican party has shamelessly exploited the abortion issue and the fanatic
fundamentalists' opposition to abortion in order to gain power during the past 25 years. It has been a remarkably
successful formula. It has helped elect three presidents, it helped the Republicans gain control of the Senate in
1980, and it helped the Republicans win control of both houses of Congress in 1994.
Those who hate and oppose the work I do for the women who seek my help now control all three branches of the
federal government. The naked partisanship and ruthless abuse of power wielded by the Supreme Court in
determining the presidential election reveals some of the true and intended consequences of that 25-year
campaign: the Republican goal has been pure, unrestrained power. House majority whip Tom DeLay
chortles that his right-wing agenda now has an "unfettered" path. Those struggling to protect reproductive
freedom have not often recognized or admitted that the abortion issue has been merely one of the strategic chess
pieces in this power struggle.
I have known for a long time that I am not completely protected from the violence of
anti-abortion terrorism by the laws and the Supreme Court. But the court's recent
action rips away the gauze of impartiality that gives the court its moral authority to deter that violence, and it
exposes a willingness of the court to sacrifice constitutional authority for raw power.
Roe vs. Wade will be overturned during the Bush presidency. Bush owes this result to his principal
constituency. The radical core of the current Supreme Court will overturn Roe with the first opportunity when it
gains one more ally in a new like-minded justice.
The Republican leadership of both houses of Congress is committed to suppressing a woman's right to choose an
abortion. These leaders have an ignorantly cruel indifference to the suffering they cause among the women
who would seek this service. They will now have a powerful ally in John Ashcroft as Attorney General, whose
history of zealotry against reproductive freedom will encourage the most radical opponents of abortion.
With Ashcroft as Attorney General, I will expect no enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic
Entrances law and no federal protection from anti-abortion violence. If he becomes a Supreme Court Justice, I will
fear the worst.
For Republican leaders, opposition to abortion is merely a hammer and tongs to power. It works. It has happened.
Bush, a man who exudes mediocrity and a bewildering unfamiliarity with meaningful thought, will be an effective
tool for the most repressive forces in American society. The Ashcroft nomination is a case in point par
excellence.
Women will suffer, certainly. The real danger is to freedom itself.
January 21, 2001