Another "Jacques Brel is dead and in Hell" moment...

...or, Poor ol' misunderstood Harry Blackmun.

He did not really mean to sanction the murder of tens of millions of American children, including Democrass, Jewish, atheist, potentially homosexual, and black ones. Especially black ones.


Last year, on the fifth anniversary of Blackmun's death, the Library of Congress opened his papers to the public. His thick files on the abortion cases tell the little-known story of how Roe vs. Wade came to be. It is the story of a rookie justice, unsure of himself and his abilities, who set out to write a narrow ruling that would reform abortion laws, not repeal them.

It is also the story of a sometimes rudderless court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger. On the day the ruling was announced, Burger said, "Plainly, the court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortion on demand."

Blackmun proposed to issue a news release to accompany the decision, issued Jan. 22, 1973. "I fear what the headlines may be," he wrote in a memo. His statement, never issued, emphasized that the court was not giving women "an absolute right to abortion," nor was it saying that the "Constitution compels abortion on demand."

In reality, the court did just that.

Blackmun had said that abortion "must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician." So long as doctors were willing to perform abortions — and clinics soon opened solely to do so — the court's ruling said they could not be restricted from doing so, at least through the first six months of pregnancy.

But the most important sentence appears not in the Texas case of Roe vs. Wade, but in the Georgia case of Doe vs. Bolton, decided the same day. In deciding whether an abortion is necessary, Blackmun wrote, doctors may consider "all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age — relevant to the well-being of the patient."

See what happens when you play with words, kiddies? The bad guys'll take your playthings and kill kids with them!

The road to Hell is paved with...? Paved with what?

Good intentions.

It soon became clear that if a patient's "emotional well-being" was reason enough to justify an abortion, then any abortion could be justified.

Legal scholars have long pointed to the shaky constitutional basis for a right to abortion. Blackmun referred to the 14th Amendment, which says that a state may not "deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law."

In earlier opinions, the court had said that liberty included the concept of personal privacy. "This right to privacy … is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy," Blackmun declared.

Earlier this year, 11 legal scholars, led by Yale's Jack Balkin, tried to write a better opinion. Their book of essays, "What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said," proposed several alternatives, such as saying sexual equality for women required a right to abortion.

Oh, yeah. That sounds like a party and a half. Let's call the movie version The Dead Sophists Society.

Far less attention has focused on the all-or-nothing nature of the Roe vs. Wade ruling.

The whole article is worth reading. Thirty years late and depressing, but worthwhile. Thanks to the LA Times for this lesson in willful ignorance.

WARNING: If you aren't careful, you may be overcome by the noxious fumes from the excretions of William O. Douglas' pudenda.