According to an early story from CitizenLink, the e-newsletter of Focus on the Family – and hence, an exceptionally untrustworthy source – during his second day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Judge Samuel Alito had an enlightening interchange with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).
"Alito told the Pennsylvania Republican that although he respects precedent, it is not an 'inexorable command' that it must be followed in all instances," CitizenLink "judicial analyst" Bruce Hausknecht wrote. "He respects privacy rights of people against unreasonable searches in their homes, in their papers and in their persons, but he did not go beyond that and adopt the 'general' notion of privacy which led to Roe v. Wade."
"He criticized the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision by testifying that the Supreme Court should not hang on to prior precedent (i.e., Roe v. Wade) so that the 'legitimacy' of the Court could be maintained. Alito stated that the Court should do what the law requires in all instances, and 'not sway in the wind of public opinion at any time'."
"In a further blow to Roe, he refused to support Specter's notions of 'super-precedent' -- observing that it sounded more like a large box of detergent than a legal principle."
That "large box of detergent," of course, would be the constitutional privacy right of women in the U.S. to end an unwanted pregnancy, and although we hesitate to make a blanket statement without seeing a full transcript of the day's testimony, enough other news sources have also reported on Alito's rejection of "super-precedent" that it's clear that Alito thinks that there is no prior decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that couldn't be overturned – including abortion.
Porn starlets, of course, have become pregnant, though most often not in the course of their work – but the effect of an overturning of the federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion could easily lead to state-by-state prohibitions of that right as well – and that would lead to a situation that can only recall the horror stories women from the 1950s and '60s would tell their children: Furtive arrangements, often at exorbitant prices, made with "abortion providers" who often were not licensed physicians; operations performed in small rooms off back alleys with unsterilized instruments and no anesthetic; and too often, botched procedures, leaving heavily bleeding victims to attempt to crawl toward medical help – which too often arrived too late to save the woman's life.
Starlets: If you don't believe this ... ask your grandmother, or better yet, look up the statistics online. Then contact your senators and demand that they vote against confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.
