Christian Nation by Frederic C. Rich

Author:Frederic C. Rich
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780393240115
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

SOON AFTER JUSTICE GINSBURG’S timely (for Jordan) death, things continued to break in favor of the new administration. Just one week following Justice Moore joining the Supreme Court, the court heard a petition for a writ of certiorari in the case of Gonzales v. Nebraska. The case had been winding its way through the federal judiciary for nearly four years since the Nebraska legislature, during the frenzy of state legislation following President Palin’s signing of the Constitution Restoration Act, had adopted a law constituting a full frontal assault on Roe v. Wade. The Nebraska statute simply outlawed abortion outright regardless of the time during pregnancy or other circumstances. With Roe still the law of the land, this seemed like an empty political gesture. The Nebraska statute, as expected, was promptly stayed by a federal district court and declared unconstitutional following a short trial. A year later, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. Had the cert petition been received two weeks earlier, it would almost certainly have been denied, but with Moore added to the court, acceptance of the cert petition signaled to the world that at least four of the justices were prepared to overturn Roe (this was because the informal “rule of four” ensures that a hostile majority cannot prevent cases from being brought before the court). When word leaked out from one of Justice Moore’s new clerks that five justices had voted to accept cert, abortion foes around the nation were overjoyed, believing that the era of legalized abortion in America was coming to an end. They were right. The case was heard and decided on an accelerated basis, and during a sitting in early June, the court’s decision in Gonzales v. Nebraska was released. The day both dreaded and longed for by millions of Americans had come. The court, with Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Cruz, and Moore creating the majority, simply reversed its 1973 finding of a right of privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment or otherwise and held that there was no constitutional bar to the Nebraska statute.

After the Gonzales decision, President Jordan released a short statement expressing his gratification that the dreams and prayers of millions of Americans had been answered. He called the short forty-four-year period during which abortion services had been widely available “our national nightmare.” He noted correctly that since 2009 more Americans had self-identified as pro-life than pro-choice and that finally the federal judiciary had stood aside and acquiesced to the will of the people. “This is a landmark day in America’s history,” he said. “We have in one day taken a first step in creating a more perfect democracy and at the same time removed one of the greatest sources of God’s displeasure with America.”

Later that night, in one of the first signs that the governor of New York, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, would emerge as a national leader in opposition to the Jordan administration, the governor announced that the Supreme Court’s decision was wrong and “unacceptable,” although he refused then to be baited into stating what that meant.

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