Patterico's Pontifications

9/26/2005

Los Angeles Times: O’Connor the Swing Vote on Abortion

Filed under: Abortion,Dog Trainer,Judiciary — Patterico @ 8:37 pm



The L.A. Times reports:

This might sound familiar: President Bush may decide this week on whom to nominate to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the court’s swing vote on issues such as abortion, affirmative action and religion.

Very clever. We’ve been through this before: the constitutional right to abortion will remain at 6-3 (at best) even after the confirmation of John Roberts. Justice O’Connor is most certainly not the “swing vote” on whether abortion will remain constitutionally protected. But if you pressed the authors and editors of this article, I’m sure they would claim that they never meant to imply that she is. They would tell you that they meant simply that Justice O’Connor is the swing vote on certain abortion restrictions, such as a possible ban on partial-birth abortion.

Of course, they could have said “certain abortion restrictions” instead of “abortion,” but that’s two more words, and one of them is kinda long, and newspapers have space issues, dontcha know.

It just so happens that phrasing it this way allows them to fool unsophisticated people who aren’t following the issue closely into thinking that O’Connor is the only thing standing between Roe v. Wade and oblivion. But I’m sure they didn’t mean for anyone to take it that way. Right?

9 Responses to “Los Angeles Times: O’Connor the Swing Vote on Abortion”

  1. What about this Patterico? Assuming this is accurate, 5 to 4 sounds close to me.

    In a 5-4 vote in the case Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), the Court struck down the ban, finding it an unconstitutional violation of Roe and Casey by failing to include an exception to preserve the health of the woman and by imposing an undue burden on a woman’s ability to choose an abortion. (from http://www.crlp.org/crt_roe_jbroe.html)

    Before you guys try to tar and feather me for being pro choice, I am more conservative than the law (or litigation?) is currently on Roe. Partial birth abortion is horrible and should only be done to save the life of the mother. On the other hand, calling a fertilized egg a human being is like calling “an acorn an oak tree.”

    Tillman (1cf529)

  2. Stenberg is a particular restriction on abortion, which 4 justices were willing to allow; it was not a vote on abortion per se. Kennedy is willing to allow more restrictions on abortion than are the 5 justices in the Stenberg majority, including O’Connor, but he is not willing to overturn Casey and allow a state to ban abortion outright. Which is what “the swing vote on issues such as abortion” means.

    Milhouse (dcec4f)

  3. I’m sorry Patterico, I should have read your column more carefully since Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) was about limiting abortion rather than taking the right away completely. So never mind – fair play I guess then since you explain that.

    Tillman (1cf529)

  4. Gee, the mainstream press oversimplified something and got it wrong again. Hardly news anymore.

    Dana R. Pico (8d0335)

  5. Actually, let’s look at the big picture about this though.

    – Republicans convinced the majority of Americans that Hussein had something to do with 9/11 when there wasn’t a shred of evidence to back it up. (Nice trick, that was.)

    – Republicans have some kind of political machine making a lot of entertaining, partisan emails that get circulated widely.

    – Republicans made talk radio all the rage.

    – Republicans have their own, whole network (namely, FOX news).

    – Republicans have the Presidency and the majority in the House and Senate. Correct me if I’m wrong – but I believe that Republicans have the majority of Governor’s seats as well.

    ‘Looks like people are getting the Republican message somehow then, aren’t they? So when you complain about the supposed liberal media, forgive me if I don’t “feel your pain” about it very much. The poor, little mistreated conservative routine may have been successful back when the Republicans were a minority; but at this point, it doesn’t quite fit the picture anymore.

    [Translation: lies and distortions are A-OK if they undercut the message of the party in power. — Patterico]

    Tillman (1cf529)

  6. Tillman,
    Is minority status the only thing you understand? The complaint here isn’t that conservatives are a downtrodden minority.

    It is that the press lies constantly and loudly. Surely a lie is bad no matter how many people it affects.

    ***
    And you seem to think that politics is about “messages” that come from the elite, to the poor stupid masses.

    The reason that the GOP is winning in elections is that they reflect what people actually do want, instead of trying to tell them what they should want. Correct me if I am wrong, but the Democratic party makes itself dizzy worrying about how to “frame” the issues.

    How about listening to the voters for a change?!

    Bostonian (34df6e)

  7. Tillman,

    President Bush never said that Saddam Hussein directly had anything to do with 9/11/2001. He did say, correctly, that Saddam Hussein had connections with Al-Queda (Salman Pak) and other terrorist groups like Hamas (paying bounties to suicide bombers); and as such we couldn’t wait until he supplied WMD to these groups. We know Saddam had WMD, because he had used them before. We know that he had resurrected his WMD program precisely because he didn’t show verifiable proof of dismantlement of the same. We also know that Saddam was buying his way out of the sanctions because of the newly built palaces, which was confirmed by the Oil-for-Food scam.

    How many 400,000 square foot bunkers are there in Iraq? What was in those trucks seen on sat photos crossing into Syria? What about the chemical weapon warhead ready munitions that were found and destroyed? What was in those drums found in the Euphrates and/or Tigris rivers?

    Charles D. Quarles (5d11c1)

  8. [Translation: lies and distortions are A-OK if they undercut the message of the party in power. — Patterico]”

    No, I don’t intend for that to be my point. Patterico, if you are so interested in truth, then how is it that you only find bias in favor of the left? Surely there are plenty of examples where the media has a conservative spin too.

    Reading about liberal bias – and yes, of course it is out there – without concurrently acknowledging conservative bias encourages people to believe that all of the media is biased toward the left. In light of this misguided war in Iraq, I don’t think you have much to worry about since it looks like “party in power” has a death grip on the media from where I’m standing. When most of the public is convinced the war is justified, taking a country to war on false pretenses is one powerful move.

    Bostonian, I don’t think of the public as the “…poor, stupid masses.” But don’t you acknowledge that the public can be misinformed? All too often, all we know is what we are told by the media and there are no means of verification.

    “The reason that the GOP is winning in elections is that they reflect what people actually do want, instead of trying to tell them what they should want.”

    You are so right about that Bostonian – excellent criticism.

    “President Bush never said that Saddam Hussein directly had anything to do with 9/11/2001.” – Quarles

    Charles, you are correct. But don’t you see that Bush didn’t have to claim that – it was cleverly packaged so that the public would conclude that themselves. (Cheney helped accomplish that feat by talking about Iraq and terrorism in one breath. So people naturally jump to conclusions and Rove knows that.)

    Tillman (1cf529)

  9. Tillman, if you actually showed any grasp on the reasons we removed Saddam Hussein, I’d talk with you. But you don’t. The people who voted for GWB, by and large, do understand the reasons, and they’re not this straw man that the Left is unable to let go of.

    Bostonian (a37519)


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