Psssst! Plan B is now in effect! Kennedy has been activated!
Posted on 04/26/2007 1:13:19 PM PDT by Rutles4Ever
— - The Supreme Court's landmark abortion ruling last week has triggered an anti-Catholic backlash, with critics pointing to the Catholic faith of the five justices in the majority and suggesting their religious views influenced their decision in the case.
The allegations have outraged Catholic organizations and conservative commentators, who have called the criticism bigoted and intolerant.
In the days after the court's 5-4 decision upholding the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, a number of liberal commentators homed in on religious views of the justices in the majority who had voted to uphold the act.
Talk show panelist Rosie O'Donnell was among the first to make the point.
"You know what concerns me?" O'Donnell asked last week on ABC's "The View." "How many Supreme Court judges are Catholic?"
"Five," said host Barbara Walters.
"Five," O'Donnell said. "How about separation of church and state in America?"
Walters counseled against drawing conclusions, saying, "We cannot assume that they did it because they're Catholic."
But O'Donnell had more to say.
"If men could get pregnant," O'Donnell said, "abortion would be a sacrament."
The comments sparked immediate outrage. Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Laura Ingraham has led the battle against O'Donnell, urging listeners to e-mail ABC to protest what she calls O'Donnell's "anti-Catholic bigotry."
"'The View's' Rosie O'Donnell continues on her tear down the path of the Rich and Unhinged, this time with an anti-Catholic rant against the Supreme Court," Ingraham wrote on her Web site. "Could she ever get away with denigrating the Muslim faith this way?"
O'Connor's Retirement Changes Outcome
At issue in the court's decision last week was the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which Congress passed in 2003 with bipartisan support. In all, 17 Senate Democrats voted for it, as did 47 Senate Republicans. Congress passed the law after the Supreme Court in 2000 struck down similar laws in about 30 states.
Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired in 2005, cast the deciding vote with liberals in the 2000 case. Replacing her with Justice Samuel Alito made the difference in last week's decision, which said the legislature -- expressing the will of the people -- could seek to protect and promote the life of the unborn.
Alito became the fifth Catholic on the court when he took O'Connor's place in early 2006. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also are Catholic, as is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the decision.
Kennedy emphasized in the decision that the justices were interpreting a federal law that would not prevent any abortions. Congress concluded the partial-birth procedure was never medically necessary, because other procedures were available to doctors performing abortions.
Reaction to the decision immediately focused on whether the newly constituted court was poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that gave women the right to choose an abortion to terminate a pregnancy.
Kennedy, however, suggested the court was not in a position to overturn Roe. He refused to overturn Roe the last time the court considered it in 1992, and his decision last week indicated he had not changed his mind on that broader issue.
'Venomous … Anti-Catholic' Cartoon
O'Donnell wasn't the only one to suggest religion had influenced the justices' approach. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a cartoon Friday entitled "Church and State" that featured the five Catholic members of the court wearing bishop miters.
Joseph Cella, president of the Catholic-based organization Fidelis, called the cartoon "venomous, terribly misleading and blatantly anti-Catholic."
"The Supreme Court did not 'follow marching orders' from the Vatican or the bishops in the United States," Cella said. "Instead, the court deferred to deliberative judgment of the people's elected representatives protected by the Constitution."
But academics, including the former dean of the University of Chicago Law School, also have said the Catholic faith of the five justices influenced their thinking in the case Gonzales vs. Carhart.
"All five justices in the majority in Gonzales are Catholic," wrote Geoffrey Stone, now a professor at the law school, in a faculty blog. "The four justices who either are Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent. It is mortifying to have to point this out. But it is too obvious, and too telling to ignore."
Stone said it was "sad" that the justices in the majority had "failed to respect the fundamental difference between religious belief and morality."
University of Chicago Law School professor Richard Garnett wrote a critical response, saying Stone "misses the mark" in suggesting the justices imposed their religious views on people who do not share their beliefs. Garnett earlier had strongly criticized the Inquirer cartoon.
Garnett said what troubled him was the claim that the justices voted to uphold the ban because they are Catholics "and not because they think, as intelligent and engaged lawyers, that the Constitution does not disable legislatures entirely from regulating what most people (not just Catholics, fideists, and sexists) regard as a particularly gruesome abortion procedure."
The woman sees she's made a huge mistake and was too drunk.
The man says, "Well if you have to abort it, I guess you have to."
Thinks to himself, "Whew, that was close!"
That about right?
“The Supreme Court’s landmark abortion ruling last week has triggered an anti-Catholic backlash, with critics pointing to the Catholic faith of the five justices in the majority and suggesting their religious views influenced their decision in the case. “
Morons. Evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants and Orthodox Jews oppose abortion also. So do Orthodox Christians.
My guess is the two “Jewish” justices who voted for it are secular cultural Jews rather than religious Jews.
Rosie’s comment was crude and stupid (not to mention very unoriginal). However, I do think it’s reasonable for people to be concerned about a Catholic majority on the court when 1) this doesn’t reflect the religious make-up of the country, and 2) The Catholic Church is fond of issuing pronouncements telling politicial figures that as Catholics they are obligated to vote in accordance with the Church’s teachings, especially on this topic. Same would hold for any other religion: a one-religions majority on the court is somewhat problematic if it’s not reflective of the country’s religious make-up, and even more problematic if the religion in question officially teaches that political figures are obligated to vote in accordance with its teachings.
One prick would do it, I do believe!
...I doubt most people would even know they were Catholic without ABC out there waving the bloody shirt around.
Looks like ‘08 is going to be a long year to be a Catholic....or a Mormon.
Any individual that thinks anti-abortion activity is an exclusive concern to Catholics is an ass.
The small minded who crawl to the refuge of Catholic Hate as a diversion away from facing the harsh reality of the violence perpetrated on innocent new life are to the rest of us pathetic, self-indulging fools. It’s far too plain for pro-abortionists to accept the simple principle that those of us who abhor the systematic process of abortion are concerned about ‘the children’ and not what the fools perceive as blind adherence to the coincidence of religious values.
So, in other words, we need some affirmative action on the SCOTUS? Why stop there? Let’s analyze the religious makeup of Congress. And the Presidential cabinet. And the Defense Department. You know, there are too many neo-con Jews in the Department of Defense. That’s why we’re in Iraq, right? At least, that’s what the media says.
The Ginzburg broad hardly votes to support “precedent”. She’s the worst ideologue on the court and consistently votes to kill the innocent and enrich the guilty.
Exactly right. The public would have no clue with the exception of Justices Scalia and maybe Alito. And that’s simply because they’ve got blatantly Italian names. Kennedy? Maybe.
But then again, I’d be surprised if 30-40% of the public can name a single justice on the Surpreme Court. And that’s with all the press they’ve had recently.
As the non-Catholics die off, retire or get kicked off the Court, it is time to nominate no one but Holy Rollers ~ (to keep up with that "represenative of the population" part).
The Supreme Court has a serious Catholic problem.
There are only five!
Psssst! Plan B is now in effect! Kennedy has been activated!
Shhhhh!
righty-o!
There are only five!"
I wish brother. There are only four. Anthony Kennedy is a heretic. He continues to support Roe v Wade. Also IIRC Kennedy supports sodomite rights.
He served at the Court under Brennan, a bigger hypocrite than which one cannot imagine. Brennan pushed Blackmun into his opinion, because he was afraid, as a nominal Catholic, to get his hands dirty by openly taking the lead.
Ping
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