Griper Blade: Republicans Don't Stand For Things, They Stand Against Things

It may be the most insulting decision of our time. Speaking for the majority of the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of the abortion procedure intact dilation and extraction, "It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns ... what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child." [full decision here (PDF)]

In other words, women can't possibly understand what a doctor tells them. Somehow, right wing conservative magic will set in later on down the road, giving women a brief flash of the superior understanding usually reserved to Republican men, and they'll be overcome with grief to learn that they had an abortion.

It's the sort of ruling that reeks of being written in his head long before he heard the case. It's not an opinion about abortion or law, it's Kennedy's opinion that women are children and incapable of informed decisions. The line of reasoning comes not from the last century, but from the century before it.

Meanwhile, Kennedy's -- and the majority of the court's -- pre-suffrage mindset creates real world problems with real world consequences. Ironically, Kennedy may come regret what he's done -- but I doubt it. That would require wisdom...

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