23 December 2005 - 9:07am
No stealth candidate here, this Alito
The AP reports there's yet another memo in which Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito openly states his goal of stripping women's reproductive rights.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the ruling that legalized abortion should be overturned, a position certain to spur tough questioning at January's confirmation hearings.
In a recommendation to the solicitor general on filing a friend-of-court brief, Alito said the government "should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled."
The June 3, 1985 document was one of 45 released by the National Archives on Friday. A total of 744 pages were made public.
The memo contained the same Alito statements as one dated May 30, 1985, which the National Archives released in November - but with a forward note from Reagan administration Solicitor General Charles Fried acknowledging the volatility of the issue and saying that it had to be kept quiet.
And what does he say?
"While abortion involves essentially the same medical choice as other surgery, it involves in addition a moral choice, because the woman contemplating a first trimester abortion is given absolute and unreviewable authority over the future of the fetus," Alito wrote. "Should not then the woman be given relevant and objective information bearing on this choice? Roe took from the state lawmakers the authority to make this choice and gave it to the pregnant woman. Does it not follow that the woman contemplating abortion have at her disposal at least some of the same sort of information that we would want lawmakers to consider?"
Consistent with his previous writings, Alito said these arguments would be preferable to a "frontal assault on Roe v. Wade."
"It has most of the advantage of a brief devoted to the overruling of Roe v. Wade; it makes our position clear, does not even tacitly concede Roe's legitimacy, and signals that we regard the question as live and open," Alito wrote.
In his memo, Alito said the government, in its argument, might be able to nudge the court and "to provide greater recognition of the states' interest in protecting the unborn throughout pregnancy, or to dispel in part the mystical faith in the attending physician that supports Roe and the subsequent cases."
In other words, he's advocating for politicians to decide what is relevant information to be given to a pregnant woman, and it reveals a goal to establish requirements for what doctors can and cannot say.
Do we want politicians making medical decisions?
Do we want the State to have control over people's bodies?
Alito is at least consistent in this regard, considering his views on the strip-search case where he opined that police, without a warrant, have an inherent right to strip search 10-year-old girls in their own homes.
Alito seems to be the full-blooded anti-libertarian, who believes that the State should control everything. That approach didn't work out too well with Communism. But what should we expect from a man nominated by a president who regards American citizens all as suspects?
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The MYSTICAL FAITH?!?! WTF is this religious nut, this friend (if not member) of Opus Dei and the Catholic Right, doing talking about the doctor - patient relationship as "mystical"? This apparent adherent of the idea that gametes becomes "ensouled" at conception is calling the information provided by a trained professional "mystical"?!?!
What ... the ... fuck.
Worse, he seems to feel that the MIS-information provided BY religious nuts and their pet politicians trumps the knowledge provided by several years of professional training AND the ability of a woman to get a second opinion if she doesn't like what she's told. He also plainly assumes that women are STUPID (though with the increased dumbing down of our schools THANKS to zealots like Alito and his running buddies it's entirely possible she had little-or-no sex ed) and wouldn't think to ask any questions she might have.
Mystical my ass. SO fucking sick of these people.
"mystical faith" is indeed very revealing, and clearly marks him, in my view, as a dominionist.
to understand that these people are SO subsumed in their religious worldview that they see ALL other ways of "being" in the world as just competing (and heretical) religions. There is little or no understanding that science is a "no-man's-metaphysical-land" where everybody agrees to JUST work with what can be mutually understood in the NATURAL world using verifiable PHYSICAL methods of examination. WHY the natural world is, or does, what it does is not part of the game. A doctor may have some philosophical or religious beliefs that inform how he looks at himself and his patients, but if he's a professional, a SCIENTIST, that should have no bearing on the nuts-and-bolts of doing his job if he wants to maintain his professional standing (this is all, of course, not how it really works, but it's the IDEAL that science aims for). An atheist doctor should be able to discuss a case with a moslem doctor, a taoist doctor, a christian doctor and a hindu doctor. That's why the whole mess works (more or less) because it stays out of those ugly metaphysical trenches.
To a superstitious nut like Scalia, such a "middle ground" is impossible, so he projects "mystical" onto an enterprise that has been trying to be exactly the opposite of that.
The Age of Reason is anathema to them. Never mind that God (if their is a God, and as a human I can't say I'm any authority on the existence of supernatural omnipotent beings or their predelictions) "gave us brains to use them." Their tradition has been one of fighting reason -- by force, often enough. Because reason is what might be called "open source belief." When the support of one's conclusions is up for review, that makes it hard for a Patriarchal Authority to impose its will upon the people.
I am thinking that perhaps that's why certain religious enthusiasts invented "The Rapture" in the 19th century. Science and reason can offer Enlightenment, but religion offers Rapture!
Okay, I'm being cynical. But when it comes to the Christianoid radical right, they force it upon me. When I look at the Bible, I find it very very hard to imagine Jesus doing what they do. To me, their words and deeds seem to indicate that they're more Caesarean than Christian.